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Thanks HN: We’ve launched (the dating site about books)
- mwsherman 17y agoHN folks were kind enough to alpha test and offer feedback. Thanks! Feedback is still welcome, of course.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- antidaily 17y agoJust me or is the search kinda slow (or broken)?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- rjett 17y agoI think a widget compatible with amazon would be cool to attract people to your site. I.E. when someone reviews a book on amazon, they could click the alikewise widget that took them to your site and pulled their relevant amazon data to pre-populate a profile on your site. Of course you could then do the whole amazon affiliate link thing on your site to reciprocate people back there.
- mwsherman 17y agoSmart! The are other sites with book info too. We should look at their APIs.
- pmjoyce 17y agoI've been toying with the idea of creating a basic API for my book site http://bookhu.com http://bookhu.com (book readership gender analysis). I'd be willing to prioritise it if you (or anyone else) were interested in integrating it.
- mwsherman 17y ago@pmjoyce you'll find my contact info here: http://alikewise.com/About/People http://alikewise.com/About/People. I'm the first Matt. Drop a line.
- RevRal 17y agoHint to others: Nab the good usernames while they're still around. I'll put up a profile and see what happens, as I'm not having much luck searching for people with my taste in books. I see great potential. I'm debating putting my profile name into my HN profile. . . .
- listic 17y agoDoes your site intend to be US-only? It wants me to enter 5-digit Zip code, insists on that even.
- mwsherman 17y agoTo start, we are US-only. We are running as fast as we can to go international. Mostly has to do with legal stuff.
- listic 17y agoOk, nice to know that you are aware that 5-digit Zip code doesn't cover all possible locations.
- kksm19820117 17y agoCould you elaborate on the legal issues you're facing en route to going worldwide?
- mwsherman 17y agoWell, a lawyer friend described some EU privacy laws and it's not clear to me what we'd have to change to comply. Or if we even have to comply, since we operate in the US. We are looking into it.
- lena 17y agoIt would be nice if you mentioned that somewhere on your "get started" form.
- moultano 17y agoNot a big fan of the graphic design on the front page. It's usable, and fairly attractive, but if I squint my eyes and don't read anything I could be looking at a middleware consulting company.
- iamcalledrob 17y agoIt is not clear where to focus my attention. There is no "do this, now" on the homepage. I'd make the focus right now on registering with the site, since your userbase is going to be really small at the start. A really simple registration form that stands out could do wonders for you. I'm short of time, it helps when your site tells me what to do. OKCupid is a great example of how to convert visitors into members.
- proexploit 17y agoAgreed, a little too plain perhaps. Don't get me wrong, you've done a great job by not "going all web 2.0" or a number of other horrendous mistakes, but there's room for improvement. Try starting by giving the #main and #border sections the #FFF background color and the #content container a #EEE background just to set them apart a little (see it at http://imgur.com/pn0fR.jpg http://imgur.com/pn0fR.jpg). Little things like that will take you a long way.
- mwsherman 17y agoThanks proexploit, I'll play with that.
- proexploit 17y agoNo problem, just shoot me an email if you want some simple tips. :)
- mwsherman 17y agoHi proexploit, I don't see your email address anywhere. Would love to chat. My contact info is here: http://alikewise.com/About/People http://alikewise.com/About/People (I'm the first Matt)
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- anonjon 17y agoI'd like this better if it weren't a dating site. Like, a place where you can find people who like the same books as you, and then talk about books.
- mwsherman 17y agoThose do exist...check out goodreads.com and librarything.com. We don't really think of them as competition to what we're doing, btw. Different goals.
- anonjon 17y agoThanks for the links, I will check them out. It would be cool if you could integrate their APIs into what you are doing. (Create Alikewise account based off of already existing Goodreads or Librarything account). I guess what I'm concerned about is that it becomes a very niche site without a community that is hanging out and talking about the books that they are reading. Presumably if you go on, you find someone, and you leave, you don't have the 'all my friends are on it' factor. (It is also kind of limited group, a lot of people will not be looking for partners that read the same books as they do). It kind of appeals to people you might think of (or who might think of themselves) as intelligentsia. But is a cool idea, and is definitely intriguing at very least in terms of social experiments, kind of figuring out if people are compatible because of similar intellectual interests. I hope it goes well for you!
- dkarl 17y agoI agree, integration would be great. It's a pain to input a bunch of books, reviews, and ratings. If Goodreads had a "turn this into a dating site" button, I'd press it in a heartbeat, but there's no way I'm going to start over inputting books and ratings on a new site.
- blackswan 17y agoYou might want to check out http://alikewise.com/Profile/testingstagingagain http://alikewise.com/Profile/testingstagingagain ! Other than that I think the idea is excellent - if you manage to get enough people then the site will work really well. That's the problem though isn't it... Best of luck.
- mwsherman 17y agoHa! Thanks. One of our testing accounts. :)
- rokhayakebe 17y agoVery nice idea. Can I have dating based on my (safe) browser history?
- SapphireSun 17y agoAre you sure you wouldn't like your dating based on your unsafe browser history? ;-)
- rokhayakebe 17y agoI think Adult Friend Finder fixed that issue already :) .
- sinzone 17y agohttp://www.pickv.com http://www.pickv.com has the same concept but with movie,tvshow,music and food as well
- vtail 17y agoCool idea, but bootstrapping this could be an issue. E.g. as of right now, if you do a simple search for "Man seeking women" or "Woman seeking women" you'll only get ~20 results (not to mention that search is broken).
- vtail 17y agoWell, the search seems to be working now.
- naturalethic 17y agoThis will never work. Women read trash.
- axod 17y agoI don't know why you're being downmodded, I agree. I don't think 'books you like' is a good way at all to match people up. But then I hardly ever read any fiction.
- mseebach 17y agoIt's probably being downmodded because it's bigoted, but you're both missing the point. It's a niche-site for people who like reading fiction - for people for whom 'books you like' is a good way to be matched up. Someone who thinks they like reading because they read the latest Dan Brown, or people who don't like reading, will be probably be disappointed, but they're not in the niche, so that's not really a problem.
- axod 17y agoSuggesting that Women have different tastes in general to men is bigoted now is it? He could have put it more delicately, but I believe he has a point. How many men read Mills&Boon? How many women read Terry Pratchet?
- mseebach 17y ago> Suggesting that Women have different tastes in general to men is bigoted now is it? No. Stating that they read thrash is. > How many men read Mills&Boon? How many women read Terry Pratchet? There's plenty of trash to read. Some of it caters to women, some of it to men. And since when is liking Terry Pratchet the shibboleth of literary taste? While I never got the whole "geeks should like Science Fiction"-thing, I can see the charm of Pratchet. So we'd probably appeal to different kinds of partners on a literary dating site, but I guess that's pretty much the point.
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- rudyfink 17y agoI'd love to be able to bring in my goodreads or librarything entries. The idea of sitting there and entering all that data in again just makes my laziness ascend.
- djm 17y agook, I searched for two books -founders at work and the little schemer. Founders at work found me 'Kate' who is a total babe but sadly in America. The thing is, founders at work isn't actually in the list of books in her profile. little schemer found me 'Polina' but she doesn't have it in her book list either. I tried searching with and without quotes around the title. Hope you fix that. I like the idea of the site itself though. Bookmarked for future use.
- RevRal 17y agoI'm having trouble adding the books I want to my profile.
- mwsherman 17y agoThanks djm. We start with an exact search and (if we don't find anyone) then we bring in "related" books, using Amazon's recommendation engine. Given the small # of people we are starting with, this progressive search is gonna "go broad" pretty often. So it's looking for all kinds of books relating to the words "founders" or "work". Not satisfying in the short term, I realize. As we get more people, the "exact" part of the algorithm will give better results and the "broad" part will get less relevant. And yeah, Kate is a babe.
- jacoblyles 17y agoIt seems that men and women read different books, so matching based on simple similarity is likely to be ineffective.
- mquander 17y agoI absolutely don't agree with that. I mean, I'm sure there are some books that bias to one sex or the other, but in my experience, most fiction is universal. I've met a number of women in my short life who matched very closely my personal taste. Do you have any particular reason you suspect this is true?
- kksm19820117 17y agoWell, I for one haven't yet met a girl in my area who enjoyed sci-fi.
- jacoblyles 17y agoIf you are looking for a 20-something MALE who likes Atlas Shrugged, you are in luck. I think there are only three females on the site at the moment, but it appears you would be better off there with Anna Karenina.
- jrockway 17y agoPretty sure OkCupid is the dating site about books. Or at least every profile I've ever read there is.
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- jacoblyles 17y agoYour gender ratio seems to be biased in the wrong direction, probably an artifact of seeding it with Hacker News folks. In a community site, the quality of your community is a feature. Features aren't just things you can code.
- kksm19820117 17y agoVery nice. How about something that can be used worldwide (India, for instance)?
- GeneralMaximus 17y agoThis. I'm tired of most websites assuming I'm an American.
- derefr 17y agoEspecially if your service doesn't involve mailing me anything, and I live in an English-speaking country anyway. You don't have to do anything special for me; just let me in! ...just don't use ZIP codes for anything. That's braindead in this day and age, even if you do live in the US. Give the user Google Maps and a pin to drop—this lets people actually be exact with their location if they want to be, without giving you an address that could be used for spam mail.
- mwsherman 17y agoI hear you! We are moving international as quickly as possible. Has mostly to do with legal stuff. Soon!
- aaronbrethorst 17y agoThe Seattle alt weekly newspaper, The Stranger, covered you on their blog today. Congrats again! http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/04/02/judging-a-date-by-his-books http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/04/02/judging...