Thanks for the suggestion - it sounds interesting, but will people be embarrassed to be on it? Also there is the chicken and egg problem with dating sites which will be difficult to overcome
Sounds a little bit like an idea I've had kicking about in my head for a while (feel free to steal). A 'dating' site for people who just want to meet up with new and interesting people, do something fun and then definitely not at all have it lead to anything physical or relationship related.
Rings a bell; I remember a similar idea coming up in the past. You could work out affiliate deals with bars and restaurants (or other activities, I hate going on dates to bars).
I think the idea we threw around (it might even have been here on HN) was a sort of clever matched blind date (to avoid the problem of people just bypassing the system :D) rather than a "normal" dating site.
There are privacy/stalker and scale concerns there though.
i'm just kind of throwing this out there, since its similar. feel free to take any ideas and use them (just give me a high five if you use them):
i was mulling over the idea of a dating site that was more anonymous/private than the standard version. no searching allowed, no direct profile access allowed.
you're given a list of maybe 5 profiles that the site thinks you might like. you're required to interact directly (email style messages only) with at least one of them, and then give anonymous, private feedback on that person. the feedback is used to generate new, better matches, improve the algorithm, and weed out people who are spammers/jerks/etc.. you don't get new matches until you interact with people both ways, initiating with people on your list and responding to someone who has you on their list.
messages work somewhat like tokens. you get X number to start, they replenish over time, but sending a message costs you 1 token, and receiving a message gives you 1 token. this prevents spam, mass "lol ur hot" messages, encourages you to interact with people in a way that warrants them talking back to you, and encourages you to respond to people that you might not have been so hasty to respond to on other sites. but it still gives you the leeway to ignore people.
this is just a very brief bar napkin overview of something different from the standard way of doing things. thoughts?
There was a similar site in the UK relatively recently, advertised quite heavily on TV I recall. It was named something like My Single Friend. I no longer have a TV so I don't know if they're still advertising.
As hackers we're always coming up with new ideas for dating sites like these. They frequently fail though, mostly due to the inability to pull in a large enough number of users. I've been hired to work on dating sites before, they've all failed due to lack of users. I'm now quite wary of working with anybody who has an idea for the next big dating site. I have ideas of my own, but not confident ones I'd actually risk spending time/money on.
I really like this idea. I've had some girls that I'm friends with have some really bizarre experiences on dating sites. This one seems like a much safer route and doesn't require a long survey to match your compatibility. Seems fun also and not like the other sites where most people are looking for 'the one'. I wish them luck!
I have tried out several of these services before in a way to finding new friends but 99% of them is filled with people that actually are more interested in finding a date instead of a mate.
reply