I'm pretty sure all dating platforms suck because dating itself just kinda sucks and, as hard as it is to believe for the HN crowd, there are some problems you just can't fix with a website.
But fundamentally it's a numbers game -- the more people you meet, the more likely that you'll find someone that you're compatible with on enough levels. To that end I think that online dating can be really helpful: it makes it much easier to find many other people that you know are also (presumably and hopefully) single.
So, dating sites don't necessarily make dating suck less, they just make it more likely that, with enough effort, you'll be able to stop dating.
I imagine that "dating sites suck" is a way of saying "it's really hard to make a dating site that works for people." Sure, lots has changed in the dating world, but I would not be surprised if there is substantial room for improvement for a long time to come.
1. The only good sites are the ones your potential mate is on. Size is a bigger feature than any you can design.
2. If your site sucks, then people get frustrated and everyone leaves. If your site is great, then people get paired off and everyone leaves.
Online dating doesn't just suffer from network effects, it suffers from second order network effects. Unless you're getting a constant stream of new customers into your site every day, your site will fail.
All innovation in online dating comes from the customer acquisition side, not the product side. If you manage to figure out an innovative new form of customer acquisition, you can make a go at creating a viable new entrant to the market. If you can't, it doesn't matter how good your product is, you will fail.
Wait, what? No, dating in person is awesome. New people, endless possibilities, women laughing at jokes, stories and anecdotes your actual friends already heard 50 times, that slight rush with every approach, the new persona every time you're a little bored with your life... it's like travelling but less expensive and only takes an evening at a time.
Online dating sucks because it turns all that delicate social interaction into comparing of compatibility lists while those lists go out the window two minutes into a conversation in real life. Dating sites completely lack the ability to transmit behaviour, mannerisms, social reflexes, looks (photos barely count), all those characteristics of a person that actually matter, and instead basically allow anyone to publish their dating resume.
Yeah this is a good point. All these comments about dating sites are true, and they really suck. Which is a great reason to get off dating sites if you can. They make every problem with dating much worse.
If I were building a dating site, it wouldn't be anything like what the original author suggests. Rather than focus on matching algorithms or ways to stimulate initiative (okcupid is already reasonably good at that), I'd focus on providing value after the initial connection has been made. I don't know of any dating site that does that well, at the moment.
Seeing that something sucks is not the important point. Everybody can do that. You must ask WHY, before working on solving your problems with the situation on hand.
And I think the reason for dating sites being quite bad is not, that nobody sees the problems. It's just that there are way bigger problems that need to get solved first and when these problems are solved you don't need to solve any other problem anymore to be successful (at least in the short run). And the big problem of all social communities and market places (dating site is something of both in my eyes) is that you need get people to come in. If there are a lot of people, other's will come automatically. If there are no people, nobody will come. The software or the service quality is only a second rank problem. So I wonder, how do u solve the community problem first?
Online dating is elance of romance. It's a race to the bottom.
"Myspace, Match, eHarmony, CL… they all suck for the elegantly simple reason that online there are too many indiscriminate horny men and too few cute girls. The dynamics are totally in the woman’s favor, ridiculously so in that it encourages massive self-assessment inflation that will carry over into real life social interactions, guaranteeing disappointment."
Dating sites are a stupid idea in the first place. Your system or algorithm cannot ever hope to compete with 30 seconds of face to face interaction, ideally with that first meeting occurring by way of mutual friends.
Sorry, but building a better dating web site is trying to drive a nail with a screw driver. People who need help dating need a larger and more active social circle. They don't need a dating website. Anyone trying to sell a dating site will inevitably discover they're hawking snake oil and surrender to that reality.
I know what you mean, "traditional" sites like eharmony and Match.com are truly awful. I haven't tried tinder yet, so I can't comment.
But is OkCupid really the best we can do? Is there no combination of computer bits and human processes that would result in fewer guys getting ignored and more getting dates?
Online dating seems to be a perennial problem, like a note-taking or "todo app" that attracts many different approaches from startups, but whose end result never quite scratches the itch (for me, at least).
a bit offtopic, but have any HN users successfully used dating websites in the past 2-3 years to find long-term partners or spouses? If so, which did you use and do you feel the site/app helped facilitate that process, or was it more of luck that it worked out?
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