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Rate my online dating app idea: There are no profile pictures. However, you do upload pictures of yourself and are asked to rate pictures of others - possibly

by anonu 6y ago

Rate my online dating app idea: There are no profile pictures. However, you do upload pictures of yourself and are asked to rate pictures of others - possibly not in your geographic area. The AI gets a feel for what your preferences are and matches you. Granted - its all a bit superficial that its really just about how you look - but this seems to be the underlying issue with tinder: the benefits accrue to the top percentile "best looking" people. Everyone else gets (unfairly) left in the dust. Thats as far as I got... thoughts?

ironmagma 6y ago
I'm not a psychologist, but I'm pretty sure attraction is in the top 2 "need-to-haves" of a relationship. While yes, it's shallow, it's only shallow because we evolved to have this bias in the most primitive parts of our brains, which means it's important to a successful existence.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  Attraction is not just about appearances though. I don't know if you have ever experienced it, but I can assure you from personal experience it is completely possible to not find someone attractive at first meeting but become attracted to them as you get to know them.
  - ironmagma 6y ago
    That is true; it's also possible to find someone attractive in person but not in a picture, and to draw a contrast, possible to find them attractive at first but then upon meeting them, realize their personality renders them unattractive. I'm not sure what's actionable about any of these facts, though, because the visual part still seems to be the most important to people.
  - decafninja 6y ago
    While true, I feel this is more conducive in unforced, organic encounters. i.e. if you and the other person meet and interact in some other group or activity that has nothing to do with dating. In an online dating situation, you have extremely little to determine what the other person is like, so appearances (photo) becomes significantly more weighted. You look at the photo, find him/her unattractive, and move on. Whereas in a more organic situation, you may find the person unattractive at first meet, but as you interact with them, decide otherwise.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      Yeah, see this is one of the ways in which I find online dating now even worse than it was in the oughties. People didn't even bother trying to inject some kind of personality into their profile, so even if I matched them I had nothing to say to them. There is no online dating anymore really, there is only online hookup. That's fine if that's what you're into, but goddamn is this shit shallow. I think it is time we admit that there are some problems that just can't be solved with a website.
      - toyg 6y ago
        The issue is that personality can be faked, or even just show friction between “personality via delayed text media” and “personality in immediate conversation”. So the apps try to tone it down and just leave that side to the date experience.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
aphextron 6y ago
>Thats as far as I got... thoughts? I worked for $large_dating_site years ago at their peak. We spent countless days weeks and months in meetings, spitballing all kinds of ideas, building prototypes, and coming up with "innovative" ideas for new dating app products. In the end it turns out the only thing users really want is a picture, a name, and a paragraph. Everything beyond that is in the realm of direct human interaction. Any kind of artificial friction you create between people that is any more complex than that just ends up being annoying and driving away casual users. The problem with dating apps is not a technological one. It all comes down to who's using them. Wherever the women go, the men will follow. This is why Bumble has been so successful. Catering to women is the only way to have a successful dating app. At any given time, there's a curve of adoption for dating apps, and they all go through the same lifecycle. Cool/new/hip/cheap/free with a 50/50 young male/female ratio and no bots -> established/revenue generating/mature users with fewer women than men -> bot ridden scam with no real women. At any given time there are three major apps that fill these roles. Right now it's Hinge -> Bumble -> Tinder.
- medium_burrito 6y ago
  My wife says I am almost supernaturally attuned to what I term the "sausage-party coefficient". In any public space, I can give a very accurate ratio of the number of men and women, and it's remarkable how as soon as there are sufficient women, all these dudes just appear and all the women leave, like gazelles in the presence of hungry lions. In any bar (when they open again), sit down with your double scotch and count that ratio every few minutes. It's like a law of nature.
- toyg 6y ago
  It sounds like one could try to solve that mismatch by aggressively tracking usage and queueing up registrations, so that the ratio of actually-active users is always close to 50-50. It means leaving money on the table though.
sokoloff 6y ago
I'm not sure that "(unfairly)" is quite how I'd put it, but that's neither here nor there. The main problem I see with this idea is if I knew that's how the app worked, I could upload a picture of someone from the "best looking" subset of my gender, probably get quite a few matches, and no user of the app would be able to call me out on my BS, because "oh, the AI must have been really terrible at understanding my preferences..." rather than "this user just uploaded a model's photo"
- anonu 6y ago
  good pt. we could solve this with a "photo reveal" at the end. of course, I'm over-engineering this now...
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    It might be more soul-crushing though to be matched, exchange a couple of messages, agree to meet, then have the photo reveal, then "oh sorry, something came up"? (Like today's dating apps, but with an extra step or two and more investment at the time of rejection.) Right now, you just get invisibly and unknowingly filtered out by those who don't find you attractive. That gives a certain amount of esteem preservation to the activity at least.
    - chillacy 6y ago
      I recall OK cupid did an event called "love is blind" and this basically happened. As soon as the event ended a lot of conversations just stopped.
jjones2 6y ago
Lol no won't work without pictures.
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
I'm currently looking into this with a twist for bot deterrence.

by anonu 6y ago

ironmagma 6y ago

I'm not a psychologist, but I'm pretty sure attraction is in the top 2 "need-to-haves" of a relationship. While yes, it's shallow, it's only shallow because we evolved to have this bias in the most primitive parts of our brains, which means it's important to a successful existence.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Attraction is not just about appearances though. I don't know if you have ever experienced it, but I can assure you from personal experience it is completely possible to not find someone attractive at first meeting but become attracted to them as you get to know them.
- ironmagma 6y ago
  That is true; it's also possible to find someone attractive in person but not in a picture, and to draw a contrast, possible to find them attractive at first but then upon meeting them, realize their personality renders them unattractive. I'm not sure what's actionable about any of these facts, though, because the visual part still seems to be the most important to people.
- decafninja 6y ago
  While true, I feel this is more conducive in unforced, organic encounters. i.e. if you and the other person meet and interact in some other group or activity that has nothing to do with dating. In an online dating situation, you have extremely little to determine what the other person is like, so appearances (photo) becomes significantly more weighted. You look at the photo, find him/her unattractive, and move on. Whereas in a more organic situation, you may find the person unattractive at first meet, but as you interact with them, decide otherwise.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    Yeah, see this is one of the ways in which I find online dating now even worse than it was in the oughties. People didn't even bother trying to inject some kind of personality into their profile, so even if I matched them I had nothing to say to them. There is no online dating anymore really, there is only online hookup. That's fine if that's what you're into, but goddamn is this shit shallow. I think it is time we admit that there are some problems that just can't be solved with a website.
    - toyg 6y ago
      The issue is that personality can be faked, or even just show friction between “personality via delayed text media” and “personality in immediate conversation”. So the apps try to tone it down and just leave that side to the date experience.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

aphextron 6y ago

>Thats as far as I got... thoughts? I worked for $large_dating_site years ago at their peak. We spent countless days weeks and months in meetings, spitballing all kinds of ideas, building prototypes, and coming up with "innovative" ideas for new dating app products. In the end it turns out the only thing users really want is a picture, a name, and a paragraph. Everything beyond that is in the realm of direct human interaction. Any kind of artificial friction you create between people that is any more complex than that just ends up being annoying and driving away casual users. The problem with dating apps is not a technological one. It all comes down to who's using them. Wherever the women go, the men will follow. This is why Bumble has been so successful. Catering to women is the only way to have a successful dating app. At any given time, there's a curve of adoption for dating apps, and they all go through the same lifecycle. Cool/new/hip/cheap/free with a 50/50 young male/female ratio and no bots -> established/revenue generating/mature users with fewer women than men -> bot ridden scam with no real women. At any given time there are three major apps that fill these roles. Right now it's Hinge -> Bumble -> Tinder.

medium_burrito 6y ago
My wife says I am almost supernaturally attuned to what I term the "sausage-party coefficient". In any public space, I can give a very accurate ratio of the number of men and women, and it's remarkable how as soon as there are sufficient women, all these dudes just appear and all the women leave, like gazelles in the presence of hungry lions. In any bar (when they open again), sit down with your double scotch and count that ratio every few minutes. It's like a law of nature.
toyg 6y ago
It sounds like one could try to solve that mismatch by aggressively tracking usage and queueing up registrations, so that the ratio of actually-active users is always close to 50-50. It means leaving money on the table though.

sokoloff 6y ago

I'm not sure that "(unfairly)" is quite how I'd put it, but that's neither here nor there. The main problem I see with this idea is if I knew that's how the app worked, I could upload a picture of someone from the "best looking" subset of my gender, probably get quite a few matches, and no user of the app would be able to call me out on my BS, because "oh, the AI must have been really terrible at understanding my preferences..." rather than "this user just uploaded a model's photo"

anonu 6y ago
good pt. we could solve this with a "photo reveal" at the end. of course, I'm over-engineering this now...
- sokoloff 6y ago
  It might be more soul-crushing though to be matched, exchange a couple of messages, agree to meet, then have the photo reveal, then "oh sorry, something came up"? (Like today's dating apps, but with an extra step or two and more investment at the time of rejection.) Right now, you just get invisibly and unknowingly filtered out by those who don't find you attractive. That gives a certain amount of esteem preservation to the activity at least.
  - chillacy 6y ago
    I recall OK cupid did an event called "love is blind" and this basically happened. As soon as the event ended a lot of conversations just stopped.

jjones2 6y ago

Lol no won't work without pictures.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago

I'm currently looking into this with a twist for bot deterrence.