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LikeALittle (YC W11) Builds on Quick Growth of College Flirtation Site

38 points by turoczy 16y ago

collegeportalme 16y ago
My opinion is that this is not web 2.0 at all. The moment you start selling anything on this site, i have a feeling these college kids are going to turn their heads away. It will be only a matter of time before horror stories of stalking sprout up!
newchimedes 16y ago
Alright, someone smarter than is going to have to explain the popularity of this site... I checked it out real briefly and didn't get the allure. Is it just like the misconnections section on cragislist...only this is for a specific college campus? I thought there was also a UK company doing something similar as well... Is it a "billion dollar" idea?
- omnivore 16y ago
  Can't imagine it is, but is that what they're aiming for? Hadn't heard of it until showing up here but it looks to me like it's a concept that won't have legs because all of the girls they're writing have names and are facebook.
- estel 16y ago
  Yeh, that was Fit Finder, which had a great growth immediately after release, but was pulled after UCL threatened the developer's degree as it apparently bought the University into disrepute. He's come back with Floxx now that he's graduated, though possibly slightly annoyed that LikeALittle has stolen his thunder.
- astrofinch 16y ago
  I'm a college student and I thought it was pretty cool--like omegle.com except I'm actually chatting with people who are close to my age and live nearby.
- pclark 16y ago
  It's one step to go from a dating site to a more general college connections site, and then another step to open that up to non-college destinations, and then you're a billion dollar market.
rebelidealist 16y ago
Who in the right mind would invest in this? One cannot flirt anonymously it is just mind masturbation. Flirting the boldest and the most interesting part of attraction. This site does not add anything to the interaction. --Edit-- After a reading thru the testimonial. It seems like people are meeting each other thru the chat program. That's cool, but I didn't figure out at first that chat was a main feature.
aneth 16y ago
This site seems like a curiosity to me, and Alexa would agree. However, they could potentially turn the traffic into something real in the campus dating space. I'm not long, but it's a cool idea and a nicely executed site.
plusbryan 16y ago
I'm just seeing a lot of lonely-sounding dudes. A missed-connection site without the womenfolk isn't likely to have much staying power.
- Skywing 16y ago
  You know, that's strange, because I first heard about this site nearly a year ago through somebody on IRC. When I first heard of it, I thought the same thing - this is going to go nowhere. Then a few months later I recall seeing them make a post on HN about their growth, which was pretty good at the time. I remember thinking, even then, a second time that they were going to go nowhere. That was probably half a year ago and I haven't heard a single thing about the site until now. I've never once heard it mentioned in person, via my friends or on campus. I'm in Texas, which apparently has a large user-base for the site ... still, never heard this site mentioned by friends. I don't know what they're doing or if the site is any good, but I feel like they're the sleeping giant type of website. Like, they're just going to come out of nowhere and post some usage stats about their millions of college student users or something.
martinshen 16y ago
This site kind of reminds me of fitfinder which got shut down at UK universities.
jmtame 16y ago
LikeALittle had 20 million page views in their first 6 weeks (http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/19/likealittle/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/19/likealittle/) Also, really cool story about Evan from his childhood, from Startups Open Sourced: 'When I was 16 or 17 I convinced my parents to give me $10,000 to invest for them; two weeks later I lost $8,000 of it. I put it in all these ridiculously risky stocks. I was really confident, lost 80% of it, and was at $2,000. For the next few months, every week my dad would say, “So how is the portfolio doing?” and I would say, “Oh, good, very good,” and I was totally lost and didn’t know what to do but was determined to figure it out. I studied the market relentlessly to try and figure out an algorithm to gain money back; I got back up to $10,000 within the year so finally, I could tell my dad, “yeah, we’re at $11,000, we’re good, we have a 10% return so far.” So, I didn’t tell them that I actually lost most of it, initially, but that experience ended up teaching me so much that I actually took the $10K to about $200,000, over the next couple of years.' These 1 page press stories never do justice to the founders.
bertolli 16y ago
Yeah, Floxx.com is the new incarnation of FitFinder - without being glibb about LikeALittle's success, they seem to skirt the issue of how many users they actually have... Not to mention that Floxx, as FitFinder did, does have a lot of female (well, or gay...) users - this will doubtless keep the guys interested for longer...

38 points by turoczy 16y ago

My opinion is that this is not web 2.0 at all. The moment you start selling anything on this site, i have a feeling these college kids are going to turn their heads away. It will be only a matter of time before horror stories of stalking sprout up!

newchimedes 16y ago

Alright, someone smarter than is going to have to explain the popularity of this site... I checked it out real briefly and didn't get the allure. Is it just like the misconnections section on cragislist...only this is for a specific college campus? I thought there was also a UK company doing something similar as well... Is it a "billion dollar" idea?

omnivore 16y ago
Can't imagine it is, but is that what they're aiming for? Hadn't heard of it until showing up here but it looks to me like it's a concept that won't have legs because all of the girls they're writing have names and are facebook.
estel 16y ago
Yeh, that was Fit Finder, which had a great growth immediately after release, but was pulled after UCL threatened the developer's degree as it apparently bought the University into disrepute. He's come back with Floxx now that he's graduated, though possibly slightly annoyed that LikeALittle has stolen his thunder.
astrofinch 16y ago
I'm a college student and I thought it was pretty cool--like omegle.com except I'm actually chatting with people who are close to my age and live nearby.
pclark 16y ago
It's one step to go from a dating site to a more general college connections site, and then another step to open that up to non-college destinations, and then you're a billion dollar market.

rebelidealist 16y ago

Who in the right mind would invest in this? One cannot flirt anonymously it is just mind masturbation. Flirting the boldest and the most interesting part of attraction. This site does not add anything to the interaction. --Edit-- After a reading thru the testimonial. It seems like people are meeting each other thru the chat program. That's cool, but I didn't figure out at first that chat was a main feature.

aneth 16y ago

This site seems like a curiosity to me, and Alexa would agree. However, they could potentially turn the traffic into something real in the campus dating space. I'm not long, but it's a cool idea and a nicely executed site.

plusbryan 16y ago

I'm just seeing a lot of lonely-sounding dudes. A missed-connection site without the womenfolk isn't likely to have much staying power.

Skywing 16y ago
You know, that's strange, because I first heard about this site nearly a year ago through somebody on IRC. When I first heard of it, I thought the same thing - this is going to go nowhere. Then a few months later I recall seeing them make a post on HN about their growth, which was pretty good at the time. I remember thinking, even then, a second time that they were going to go nowhere. That was probably half a year ago and I haven't heard a single thing about the site until now. I've never once heard it mentioned in person, via my friends or on campus. I'm in Texas, which apparently has a large user-base for the site ... still, never heard this site mentioned by friends. I don't know what they're doing or if the site is any good, but I feel like they're the sleeping giant type of website. Like, they're just going to come out of nowhere and post some usage stats about their millions of college student users or something.

martinshen 16y ago

This site kind of reminds me of fitfinder which got shut down at UK universities.

jmtame 16y ago

LikeALittle had 20 million page views in their first 6 weeks (http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/19/likealittle/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/19/likealittle/) Also, really cool story about Evan from his childhood, from Startups Open Sourced: 'When I was 16 or 17 I convinced my parents to give me $10,000 to invest for them; two weeks later I lost $8,000 of it. I put it in all these ridiculously risky stocks. I was really confident, lost 80% of it, and was at $2,000. For the next few months, every week my dad would say, “So how is the portfolio doing?” and I would say, “Oh, good, very good,” and I was totally lost and didn’t know what to do but was determined to figure it out. I studied the market relentlessly to try and figure out an algorithm to gain money back; I got back up to $10,000 within the year so finally, I could tell my dad, “yeah, we’re at $11,000, we’re good, we have a 10% return so far.” So, I didn’t tell them that I actually lost most of it, initially, but that experience ended up teaching me so much that I actually took the $10K to about $200,000, over the next couple of years.' These 1 page press stories never do justice to the founders.

bertolli 16y ago

Yeah, Floxx.com is the new incarnation of FitFinder - without being glibb about LikeALittle's success, they seem to skirt the issue of how many users they actually have... Not to mention that Floxx, as FitFinder did, does have a lot of female (well, or gay...) users - this will doubtless keep the guys interested for longer...