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Show HN: Dating app focused on chatting and gamification
- tyfon 7y agoI'm married so I'm not really in the target audience, however when I see things like this my first question is always data and privacy. In fact, I have a question, is there any privacy focused dating apps that have been externally audited etc? It might be an opportunity. Back to this app. How does it store data? How does it use analytics? How do they make money? Especially since they seem to _give_ money to use it: "No Need To Pay, Earn Coins By Watching Videos You don't need to pay us to get boosted. You can watch videos and earn Blurcoins to use for gems. It's not over, we also give you Blurcoins for each day of usage."
- davidajackson 7y agoI thought most people want a visual filter first? And if this is a product for another part of the market, how does this their experience more efficient? Doesn't blurring an image just decrease the efficiency of the filter? (i.e. one side feels they have 'wasted' time chatting that they wouldn't have initiated shown the non-blurred images first). Eager to be proven wrong, and would love to hear other thoughts.
- cstechofficial 7y agoThanks for the feedback. In other platforms it is really hard to find a match because the biggest reason to be able to match is your appearance. For example; even the good-looking guys cannot get match in Tinder lately. Even the appearance isn't enough to get to talk to people. In Blurry Chat you need to have a good conversation to reveal the person you talk to. The conversation you have will be the key point to your journey. Blurring isn't decreasing the efficiency of the filter, you can still filter the gender, age and most importantly location. If you don't want to waste your time on talking, you can reveal people's photos using reveal or blurdrop gems. While we are offering this, we are offering privacy on your photos too. You can use shield gem to be immune to reveal and blurdrop gems as well. In addition, guys might be looking for rapid results but the ladies aren't the same :)
- bszupnick 7y agoI'm definitely not in the dating scene, but I just love the novel approach to what feels like a dead horse. Awesome job!
- grabball 7y agoThat man on the hero is a bit creepy
- cstechofficial 7y agoI totally agree :D Thank you for the feedback.
- tyleo 7y agoThis was also my first thought. The impression I get is that the app is for older men to date younger women. Even after reading the rest of the text I feel this thought pervading my mind for no sensible reason.
- sneak 7y agoAfter reading the OKCupid founder’s data book, I am of the belief that any dating app that is designed effectively to make a decent profit (IAPs and the like) is mostly just a platform for older men to date younger women.
- Numberwang 7y agoStill better than using models like the other apps.
- zabana 7y agoUnrelated to the post but I have a question: for those of you who actively use dating apps, what advantages do you find over approaching women (or men) in real life ? I ask because yesterday I played around with tinder on my friend's phone and I felt a bit off after half an hour of dismissing people based on just their looks and a couple of lines on their profile.
- smt88 7y agoDating apps are primarily a filter. The value is supposed to be that you never waste time chatting with someone who's uninterested in you or not looking for a relationship. Filters are also useful. For women, there are also some safety issues that dating apps can mitigate. If you reject someone and they get angry, they can't insult, stalk, or otherwise harm you. You just unmatch. Your experience is typical, though. Dating apps are in some ways uncomfortable and dystopian. You may be interested in Aziz Ansari's book Modern Love for a quick, readable explanation of how we got to this point in dating culture.
- Kaze404 7y ago> they can't do insult, stalk, or otherwise harm you. You just unmatch. They absolutely can. I used Tinder for a good while (met my current girlfriend of 1 year there) and a common theme throughout most people that I met is that they were stalked at least once. Even I was, though admittedly to a not very serious degree.
- smt88 7y agoYou and your girlfriend were stalked by people who you'd only matched with? You hadn't met them in person?
- Kaze404 7y agoYes, e-stalked. No one showed up at my house thankfully, but it's pretty disturbing for a single person to message you everywhere (Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc) after you reject them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- neya 7y agoI don't know if it's just me, the background image of the app just gave me a paedophile-ish vibe
- abc-xyz 7y agoHopefully it's just you, because that's absurd.
- cstechofficial 7y agoThank you for the feedback. I agree that the guy is creepy but disagree about the paedophile-ish vibe you get. As a result we need to change it anyway :)
- tacticaldev 7y agoit certainly sets a tone for the intended audience.
- waitwhatt 7y agoPlease sir, only Elon Musk is allowed to declare people pedo guys.
- goatinaboat 7y agoIt’s a common saying in South Africa. Just like a common expression of happiness there is “funding secured!”
- StavrosK 7y agoThe lady doesn't look underage at all, though.
- krapp 7y agoLegally, no. Socially, though, yes. The generally accepted limit on age differential in romantic relationships is ten years - 50 year olds shouldn't date younger than 40, 40 than 30, etc. While it's perfectly legal and possible to have a healthy relationship with a wider age gap, it's not socially acceptable.
- tlackemann 7y agoGamification is not a selling point. Users do not care about gamifying the experience. Users care about the experience. Does this solve interesting and new problems in the dating space? That's the selling point. The goal of gamification is to act in parallel to an already existing and positive feedback loop in your app. It rewards what users do. It doesn't drive what they do.
- cstechofficial 7y agoIt certainly is not a selling point. The reason I pointed it out in the title was to get professional feedbacks in addition to user feedbacks. You do not have to follow all gamification scheme to use the application, you can think of them as extras.
- erikbye 7y agoI agree gamification should not be used as a selling point, even though, of course, it is hugely important it seems to keep your users hooked. But are you sure gamification does not sometimes also drive users' behavior on e.g., Facebook and Instagram?
- tlackemann 7y agoIf you're going to look at gamification as the primary motivator, I think a better examples to look at are Untappd and Foursquare. Both of these apps have very clear and positive feedback loops and use gamification well. One app encourages me to share various beers I've had with friends. Badges are a way to have fun while doing that but the willingness for me to share in the first place was the driving motivator, not the badges. The badges are what keep me hooked however because I want to collect as many as my friends. Independent of sharing, badges mean nothing to me as an end user and were never the motivator for using the app. Sharing was.
- lr4444lr 7y agoA dating service where you can't view pictures up front? Reminds me of the late 1990s, early 00s...
- xxpor 7y agoFolks, if you're going to write an app (ESPECIALLY a dating app, which has tons of sensitive info), please hire a native English speaker to write the strings and the website for you. I know this is not how it's supposed to work, but this site gives off a strong "creepy foreign company that's going to leak all your data" vibe. Some things I noticed: Using a period instead of a comma as a thousands separator. Putting the % before the number rather than after. And the prose in general is just awkward has hell.
- cstechofficial 7y agoWe got that feedback before, thank you again :) You are right. We will fix it real soon.
- StavrosK 7y agoMaybe it gives off a "foreign company" vibe, but the "creepy" and "is going to leak all your data" is you, I think. I certainly have never heard anyone say "oh thank God it's Facebook, my data is safe".
- sigio 7y agoThis reminds me of paiq(.nl) ... which has been around for 15 years or so ? .... You chatted with randomly selected matches, and the more you chatted, the less blurry the pictures became.
- ftio 7y agoThe premise is good, I think (I'm not the target audience), but the copy and positioning need a lot of work. The positioning reads to me like: "Look at all the awesome features we've built!" Gems! Coins! Filters! Profile details! I have no idea what any of those things are, and frankly it's a lot to take in before even downloading something like this. I'd look at those features through another lens: "Ever feel like the connections you make on other dating sites are shallow? Use Blurrychat to connect on a deeper level. [Then references science that shows how hiding images produces better outcomes in relationships.]" The focus should be on how this is better than what's come before — how it produces better outcomes, not on how people can get Gems or whatever. They'll figure that out later. Totally subjective impression: the image at the top of the page is creepy to me. It's something about the guy. The way he looks at the much younger woman does not give me the warm and fuzzies. Quite the contrary, actually. Last thing: I think the brand in general is very techy. It'd be great for a Slack plugin or a hip new CRM, but I think it's too clinical/cold for a dating app. Check out other dating apps' sites — they're filled with images of couples hugging, etc. Again, they focus on outcomes, not on the app. (If you want something edgier, check out OkCupid's site, which to me strikes a nice balance between edge and warmth.)
- cstechofficial 7y agoThank you for the great feedback. I guess we need to get some advice from a product vision guy to fix this. We'll fix it soon, I hope :)