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Are you really going to market this as a dating site? Because you will be steamrolled by actual dating sites that provide substantially more.. flesh.. Dating si

Are you really going to market this as a dating site? Because you will be steamrolled by actual dating sites that provide substantially more.. flesh.. Dating sites make money because people are willing to pay money to get laid. Doing dating through book taste doesn't exactly signal hookups, so why even label it as a dating site? Make it a social site around book taste and let dating happen in the community by itself?

mwsherman 17y ago
Good questions. Niche is the only way to go, I think, the big guys have the big middle ground. And honestly, none of them are so great that people should be loyal. (OkCupid does a nice job.) There are other social book sites out there, and they seem to do well. In our case, the difference is that user intentions are clearly about dating. I think (hope) that matters.
- henrikschroder 17y ago
  When it comes to big dating sites, people aren't loyal at all, but people go where everyone else is, because that increases their chances of hooking up. Having the best features or design or functionality won't help you one bit if you don't have people on your site. So yeah, niche dating it is, which is why I suggest that you tone down the dating aspects of it.
notauser 17y ago
I don't know, the Cambridge-grad-only dating site seems to be pretty popular. Elitism can be a powerful motivator, especially for people thinking about settling down and having kids. Late 20s and no kids yet is a demographic with a lot of disposable income. And while it might be a small niche, this is a _huge_ market and attacking a niche then working out how to expand (movie matching? music matching?) is a perfectly valid strategy.
- henrikschroder 17y ago
  Sure, but I think that for that to work, you have to tone down the dating parts of the site and emphasize the matchmaking parts of the site. Basically, a site that is good for hookups or dating makes it very easy for users to quickly browse through the other users' images. The best ones I've seen basically lets you make a (detailed) search, then just shows the results one by one with a big NEXT button on each. No lists, no clicking back and forth, no popups, just a very simple flow through the results. But matchmaking needs a workflow that is more refined and feels less like a flesh-market. In the market research we did where I worked many years ago we found out that matchmaking appeals to people with little time. They don't want to spend hours browsing profiles, they want to be fed a slow stream of new profiles that the system has decided is good for them. This could possibly work with book taste as a base. If you make a recommendation engine like Netflix or Amazon, you could then grab other users that actually liked the books and have that as a starter. "User X shares your taste in books, but hasn't read book Y, why don't you tell him/her about it?"

mwsherman 17y ago

Good questions. Niche is the only way to go, I think, the big guys have the big middle ground. And honestly, none of them are so great that people should be loyal. (OkCupid does a nice job.) There are other social book sites out there, and they seem to do well. In our case, the difference is that user intentions are clearly about dating. I think (hope) that matters.

henrikschroder 17y ago
When it comes to big dating sites, people aren't loyal at all, but people go where everyone else is, because that increases their chances of hooking up. Having the best features or design or functionality won't help you one bit if you don't have people on your site. So yeah, niche dating it is, which is why I suggest that you tone down the dating aspects of it.

notauser 17y ago

I don't know, the Cambridge-grad-only dating site seems to be pretty popular. Elitism can be a powerful motivator, especially for people thinking about settling down and having kids. Late 20s and no kids yet is a demographic with a lot of disposable income. And while it might be a small niche, this is a _huge_ market and attacking a niche then working out how to expand (movie matching? music matching?) is a perfectly valid strategy.

henrikschroder 17y ago
Sure, but I think that for that to work, you have to tone down the dating parts of the site and emphasize the matchmaking parts of the site. Basically, a site that is good for hookups or dating makes it very easy for users to quickly browse through the other users' images. The best ones I've seen basically lets you make a (detailed) search, then just shows the results one by one with a big NEXT button on each. No lists, no clicking back and forth, no popups, just a very simple flow through the results. But matchmaking needs a workflow that is more refined and feels less like a flesh-market. In the market research we did where I worked many years ago we found out that matchmaking appeals to people with little time. They don't want to spend hours browsing profiles, they want to be fed a slow stream of new profiles that the system has decided is good for them. This could possibly work with book taste as a base. If you make a recommendation engine like Netflix or Amazon, you could then grab other users that actually liked the books and have that as a starter. "User X shares your taste in books, but hasn't read book Y, why don't you tell him/her about it?"