3 ms·

Let's fix them? Competitive. Yes. But, their may be a model for a small annual subscription instead of the quite high current monthly subscription model. How

Let's fix them? Competitive. Yes. But, their may be a model for a small annual subscription instead of the quite high current monthly subscription model. How about $20 per year? £10 I'm thinking - I live in the UK. okcupid/pof are great, but well... not that great. Paid means you just have the people taking it seriously, and you can validate who people are. But no need to take all there money that could be spent on going out on dates ... My 2p. Any other rails coders fancy helping out?

Joakal 15y ago
Monthly is better than annual for one reason: People over-estimate that they'll get a date so they'll avoid annual unless you offer something very compelling beyond trying to get a relationship on the website. eg person will hang around to chat to friends or do quizes. If you really want to create a dating website, you have these classic problems: 1) Abundant men. eg spam 100 women a day over several accounts until they get a response. 2) High turnover. Got a date? Great, they're not coming back. Your email gets quickly marked as spam. Among other issues. 3) Over-estimation. People don't say their true height, weight or even show the correct pictures. 4) Chicken and egg problem. The biggest hurdle to overcome first. How you overcome it will affect the above three. Have fun!
- oceanician 15y ago
  1) Ok, so let's say, you get ratio the number of men to no more than 20% of the women (overall/in certain geographic areas), and remove inactive profiles from search 2) That's fine - let's go for the low cost end. A fee that's half to 1/3 of the major sites, but for a whole year. No hassle of remembering to stop the billing, or checking your bills. Yes, this will mean after a year, you're likely to loose a high % due to not rebilling...but hey maybe this is a great product? 3) Fuzzy matching? i.e. I would like to meet someone <around> my height, or meet someone <slightly shorter> than my height. Perhaps we could have a feedback mechanism for those that actually meet. Perhaps we could just remove those people that never meet up with anyone? (Shocking approach I know - but the quality of the user experience would drastically improve!!) 4) Build it and they will come. (errm word play. bad) But no seriously, whilst it's a competitive market, if you match up someone, and don't rip them off in the mean time, why on earth wouldn't they tell their single mates about the site? It's all about good user experience, which is sadly lacking in the majorly exploitative dating site game.
  - Joakal 15y ago
    1) Men are very aggressive, I would assume it needs to be something like 1:1.5 men:women ratio. But I do not have statistics. 2) Try it out with some market research! 3) Any sort of matching is going to fail if the data is not reliable. If I truthfully put 1.8m. Someone puts 1.9m when they're 1.7m. How do you determine that my input is true? Especially that since due to OkCupid, everyone is now automatically assuming the person is actually ~0.2m shorter. So if you put me and the other person together. The 1.9m person wins? 4) I can't tell if you have a plan for this. But a website that depends on a feedback loop seriously needs to overcome it somehow. Even PlentyOfFish for all the errors when I registered, I still tried to use it.
    - oceanician 15y ago
      4) Start in a small geographical area. A city. On the basis that most people are looking for a date close to them. Saw within 20 miles? Get it right there, then move to the next few closest cities. Use geographically targetted advertising for this - facebook perhaps, for online. Local papers could work for offline....or even maybe LoveFilm subscription drop-in-fliers?
rickr 15y ago
You don't have an email in your profile but if you'd like to chat shoot one over this way.
- oceanician 15y ago
  Cool - are you on twitter? I'm http://twitter.com/oceanician http://twitter.com/oceanician
Shenglong 15y ago
I don't think improving on the current system is the way to go. There are too many fundamental mistakes. The entire system desperately needs an overhaul.

Joakal 15y ago

Monthly is better than annual for one reason: People over-estimate that they'll get a date so they'll avoid annual unless you offer something very compelling beyond trying to get a relationship on the website. eg person will hang around to chat to friends or do quizes. If you really want to create a dating website, you have these classic problems: 1) Abundant men. eg spam 100 women a day over several accounts until they get a response. 2) High turnover. Got a date? Great, they're not coming back. Your email gets quickly marked as spam. Among other issues. 3) Over-estimation. People don't say their true height, weight or even show the correct pictures. 4) Chicken and egg problem. The biggest hurdle to overcome first. How you overcome it will affect the above three. Have fun!

oceanician 15y ago
1) Ok, so let's say, you get ratio the number of men to no more than 20% of the women (overall/in certain geographic areas), and remove inactive profiles from search 2) That's fine - let's go for the low cost end. A fee that's half to 1/3 of the major sites, but for a whole year. No hassle of remembering to stop the billing, or checking your bills. Yes, this will mean after a year, you're likely to loose a high % due to not rebilling...but hey maybe this is a great product? 3) Fuzzy matching? i.e. I would like to meet someone <around> my height, or meet someone <slightly shorter> than my height. Perhaps we could have a feedback mechanism for those that actually meet. Perhaps we could just remove those people that never meet up with anyone? (Shocking approach I know - but the quality of the user experience would drastically improve!!) 4) Build it and they will come. (errm word play. bad) But no seriously, whilst it's a competitive market, if you match up someone, and don't rip them off in the mean time, why on earth wouldn't they tell their single mates about the site? It's all about good user experience, which is sadly lacking in the majorly exploitative dating site game.
- Joakal 15y ago
  1) Men are very aggressive, I would assume it needs to be something like 1:1.5 men:women ratio. But I do not have statistics. 2) Try it out with some market research! 3) Any sort of matching is going to fail if the data is not reliable. If I truthfully put 1.8m. Someone puts 1.9m when they're 1.7m. How do you determine that my input is true? Especially that since due to OkCupid, everyone is now automatically assuming the person is actually ~0.2m shorter. So if you put me and the other person together. The 1.9m person wins? 4) I can't tell if you have a plan for this. But a website that depends on a feedback loop seriously needs to overcome it somehow. Even PlentyOfFish for all the errors when I registered, I still tried to use it.
  - oceanician 15y ago
    4) Start in a small geographical area. A city. On the basis that most people are looking for a date close to them. Saw within 20 miles? Get it right there, then move to the next few closest cities. Use geographically targetted advertising for this - facebook perhaps, for online. Local papers could work for offline....or even maybe LoveFilm subscription drop-in-fliers?

rickr 15y ago

You don't have an email in your profile but if you'd like to chat shoot one over this way.

oceanician 15y ago
Cool - are you on twitter? I'm http://twitter.com/oceanician http://twitter.com/oceanician

Shenglong 15y ago

I don't think improving on the current system is the way to go. There are too many fundamental mistakes. The entire system desperately needs an overhaul.