4 ms·

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 o

by ErrantX 16y ago

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. Certainly worth exploring.

cophelan 16y ago
www.howaboutwe.com is an intriguing player in this field. They are built around date proposals. Nice way to introduce local deal and minimize the 'stalker' factor. Apparently, they have a decent base in NY, but currently their Midwest member-base is limited.
IgorPartola 16y ago
Maybe a system where you get the description of the person as written by their friends (also members of the site)? So you have two types of users: people who want to date and people who want to set their friends up with someone. You could also charge per-date this way: if both people agree that the other sounds attractive and decide to go on a date, they pay a small fee to reveal the match.
- kaerast 16y ago
  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.

by ErrantX 16y ago

cophelan 16y ago

www.howaboutwe.com is an intriguing player in this field. They are built around date proposals. Nice way to introduce local deal and minimize the 'stalker' factor. Apparently, they have a decent base in NY, but currently their Midwest member-base is limited.

IgorPartola 16y ago

Maybe a system where you get the description of the person as written by their friends (also members of the site)? So you have two types of users: people who want to date and people who want to set their friends up with someone. You could also charge per-date this way: if both people agree that the other sounds attractive and decide to go on a date, they pay a small fee to reveal the match.

kaerast 16y ago
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.