

Ask HN: Best ways to approach online dating (from a site design perspective)? - personlurking

What are the best ways to theoretically approach online dating? Not personally, but from a site design perspective. Some sites might want the users to &#x27;Like&#x27; each other in order to unlock the messaging service, others want you to answer questions (OKC) to highlight the match factor, etc.<p>It seems the main problem, aside from the chicken and the egg, is women don&#x27;t really participate (or perhaps reciprocate is the right word), yet they have gone through the trouble of creating an account.<p>Using a hetero context as an example, wouldn&#x27;t the best way be to use a free credits system where women get 5 credits per month (meaning they can contact up to 5 men) and men get 2 such monthly credits (in order for the women to not get bombarded)? To make this potentially viable, the site would also have to apply a &#x27;use it or lose it&#x27; solution...that is, use the site actively or else your profile gets deactivated (not deleted, per se) or less visible for a certain amount of time as a penalty.<p>Are there better ways?
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dreamling
What kind of messages are you sending?

Ones that say 'Hi' or 'Hey' or don't seem like they've read the profile, or
ones with long rambling cut and pasted generic rambling letters about how they
are 'good people and want to treat you XYZ' don't really deserve replies. Do
they just want anyone? Or are they looking specifically for something more?

Some message sent do deserve replies, but the people receiving them might just
have a full schedule of work/life/ect. Not everyone who is on a dating site is
actively searching daily.

Additionally, you can't know who is participating, only who is not
participating with you. You may have really lovely words to share, but the
recipient might be tracking 3 other message threads. No one is obligated to
respond.

It's not really plausible to punish people for not being the right level of
active on these sitss. The search results do tend to favor more active/updated
profiles.

That said, if you can come up with a great way to improve engagement across a
new dating platform, you may find some measure of success.

The IAC owns Match.com, OKC, Tinder and recently bought PlentyOfFish. Maybe
you can make something new in a space that seems saturated, but is rapidly
becoming more consolidated.

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sjs382
I met my wife about 6 years ago on OKCupid. From what I understand, the site
has grown quite a bit and the audience has changed a bit.

With that said though, my advice: Send lots of messages, and go on as many
dates as possible.

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personlurking
I'm living outside the US so users are limited, unfortunately. But the 'send
lots of messages' idea is always one way to do it [1]

[http://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-
okcupid/](http://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/)

