6 ms·

Is Your Dating Site Selling Your Profile?

37 points by Ataub24 15y ago

nitashatiku 15y ago
"But every new dating site faces the same problem: finding souls to mate." Just ask the new-and-improved Nerve.com!
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > finding souls to mate Obligatory meme image, after which I'll be a good HN contributor for the rest of the day: http://i.imgur.com/s70a7.png http://i.imgur.com/s70a7.png
goodside 15y ago
For the record, OkCupid doesn't do anything even remotely like this. It's strictly the purview of assholes. Riley Goodside, Yield Optimizer, OkCupid
- untog 15y ago
  Kudos on a great site. Dating sites fascinate me in a 'customer retention' sense- once someone ends up in a relationship, surely they stop using the site altogether? An interesting challenge. I used to work for a housemate matching site that faced similar challenges, but at least apartments are usually based around 12 month leases. If only relationships were...
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    As I recall, OKCupid offers a way to only search for new friends, etc. I'd be interested in how many people on OKC have that marked in their profile, and how many successfully find new friends that way (that statistic may be harder to obtain).
    - untog 15y ago
      They do. But (and maybe I'm cynical here) is your other half OK with you being on a dating site to "make friends"? What ratio of those potential friends are of the opposite gender?
      - pavel_lishin 15y ago
        The ratio of potential friends' genders doesn't matter, only the gender of friends I'm looking for. (Are super-conservative parents worried about the ratio of potential mates being of the same gender?) And mine, personally, would be ok if I explained what I was doing and didn't actually cheat on her, and showed her some actual friends I met. But I agree, it may be a problem.
      - kaens 15y ago
        I've actually met more friends off of OKC than I've had dates, and the SOs I've found from OKC have been fine with keeping the profile up -- you just mark yourself as not looking, and meet people off the site as mutual friends, assuming you're in a "serious" relationship.
  - __alexs 15y ago
    OkCupid is pretty popular with a lot of people living "alternative lifestyles" although it's probably only a few percent of their main customer base.
  - goodside 15y ago
    We never worry about this. Helping people find happy relationships is hard, and there's no risk of us succeeding so completely that there's nobody left to pair up. People in happy relationships also tell their friends that they met on OkCupid, and we rely on that fact almost exclusively to bring new members. We spend no money whatsoever on marketing.
    - klbarry 15y ago
      I'm not sure that's true. I believe the founder of OKCupid is speaking at an internet retailer conference this summer on content for SEO. The lovely linkbait data OKCupid releases certainly is marketing, and certainly cost money to produce. If you mean that you don't spend money on advertising, I can certainly believe that.
      - goodside 15y ago
        You're correct. It's only "zero" in the sense that it's so low that nobody cares enough to quantify it. Several of our competitors spend over $100 million per year (each) on TV commercials, billboards, and online display ads. We have a guy that writes blog posts when he has time. Oh, and we have a Twitter account. So, yeah, there is that.
  - rogerbinns 15y ago
    There isn't only a customer retention issue with people who do end up in relationships, but also those who don't. I'll admit that I am now on my third OKC profile as I usually try for a while and then give up. A few years later I try again. From the comments on other people's profiles, it is obvious that I am far from the only one who has experienced this.
  - maratd 15y ago
    > surely they stop using the site altogether? An interesting challenge. Nope, a very simple one. Just keep the experience mediocre. Not bad enough for them to leave dissatisfied, but not good enough for them to leave satisfied. This will maximize their time on the site. This is largely the result of the monthly subscription model, which creates a fairly twisted set of incentives. Interestingly, the old school matchmaker model doesn't suffer from this problem. You pay a fee for a successful "match". This creates an incentive for the matchmaker to do her best in finding the right match. This model is out of fashion now, because people prefer to have more control over the process and dating is no longer always about marriage. Also, most relationships have a shorter duration than most leases, providing a very lucrative repeat business stream.
  - jshintaku 15y ago
    This assumes people are faithful in their relationships right? I wonder if any dating sites have quantified the churn rating for their usage and does it correlate with wider trends in dating such as average length of relationships % of people who cheat on a regular basis. Or are the subset of people who use dating apps those who tend to be in and out of relationships more?
- nitashatiku 15y ago
  @Riley Have you guys ever had a problem with someone scraping public OkCupid profiles?
  - sosuke 15y ago
    Starting a dating site with fake or scraped profiles just makes it a ghost town. New members would leave quickly before you built up a real user base.
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      Not if you have bots messaging new members from fake accounts, and/or having them respond to queries.
      - kaens 15y ago
        Well, they'll still leave quickly, but they'll stay long enough for you to get their credit card info.
- Alex3917 15y ago
  Just out of curiosity, why did CrazyBlindDate get killed off? At least from the perspective of a single guy in NYC, that was pretty much the best website of all time.
- GFischer 15y ago
  I loved the OkTrends posts, and I'm really looking forward to the next one :) I tried OkCupid in the past, it's great, but it never took off in my country (and I'm on a relationship now).
jspaur 15y ago
the question is are those sites selling it or did some scripter just scrape a bunch of the public information from bigger sites?

37 points by Ataub24 15y ago

nitashatiku 15y ago

"But every new dating site faces the same problem: finding souls to mate." Just ask the new-and-improved Nerve.com!

pavel_lishin 15y ago
> finding souls to mate Obligatory meme image, after which I'll be a good HN contributor for the rest of the day: http://i.imgur.com/s70a7.png http://i.imgur.com/s70a7.png

goodside 15y ago

For the record, OkCupid doesn't do anything even remotely like this. It's strictly the purview of assholes. Riley Goodside, Yield Optimizer, OkCupid

untog 15y ago
Kudos on a great site. Dating sites fascinate me in a 'customer retention' sense- once someone ends up in a relationship, surely they stop using the site altogether? An interesting challenge. I used to work for a housemate matching site that faced similar challenges, but at least apartments are usually based around 12 month leases. If only relationships were...
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  As I recall, OKCupid offers a way to only search for new friends, etc. I'd be interested in how many people on OKC have that marked in their profile, and how many successfully find new friends that way (that statistic may be harder to obtain).
  - untog 15y ago
    They do. But (and maybe I'm cynical here) is your other half OK with you being on a dating site to "make friends"? What ratio of those potential friends are of the opposite gender?
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      The ratio of potential friends' genders doesn't matter, only the gender of friends I'm looking for. (Are super-conservative parents worried about the ratio of potential mates being of the same gender?) And mine, personally, would be ok if I explained what I was doing and didn't actually cheat on her, and showed her some actual friends I met. But I agree, it may be a problem.
    - kaens 15y ago
      I've actually met more friends off of OKC than I've had dates, and the SOs I've found from OKC have been fine with keeping the profile up -- you just mark yourself as not looking, and meet people off the site as mutual friends, assuming you're in a "serious" relationship.
- __alexs 15y ago
  OkCupid is pretty popular with a lot of people living "alternative lifestyles" although it's probably only a few percent of their main customer base.
- goodside 15y ago
  We never worry about this. Helping people find happy relationships is hard, and there's no risk of us succeeding so completely that there's nobody left to pair up. People in happy relationships also tell their friends that they met on OkCupid, and we rely on that fact almost exclusively to bring new members. We spend no money whatsoever on marketing.
  - klbarry 15y ago
    I'm not sure that's true. I believe the founder of OKCupid is speaking at an internet retailer conference this summer on content for SEO. The lovely linkbait data OKCupid releases certainly is marketing, and certainly cost money to produce. If you mean that you don't spend money on advertising, I can certainly believe that.
    - goodside 15y ago
      You're correct. It's only "zero" in the sense that it's so low that nobody cares enough to quantify it. Several of our competitors spend over $100 million per year (each) on TV commercials, billboards, and online display ads. We have a guy that writes blog posts when he has time. Oh, and we have a Twitter account. So, yeah, there is that.
- rogerbinns 15y ago
  There isn't only a customer retention issue with people who do end up in relationships, but also those who don't. I'll admit that I am now on my third OKC profile as I usually try for a while and then give up. A few years later I try again. From the comments on other people's profiles, it is obvious that I am far from the only one who has experienced this.
- maratd 15y ago
  > surely they stop using the site altogether? An interesting challenge. Nope, a very simple one. Just keep the experience mediocre. Not bad enough for them to leave dissatisfied, but not good enough for them to leave satisfied. This will maximize their time on the site. This is largely the result of the monthly subscription model, which creates a fairly twisted set of incentives. Interestingly, the old school matchmaker model doesn't suffer from this problem. You pay a fee for a successful "match". This creates an incentive for the matchmaker to do her best in finding the right match. This model is out of fashion now, because people prefer to have more control over the process and dating is no longer always about marriage. Also, most relationships have a shorter duration than most leases, providing a very lucrative repeat business stream.
- jshintaku 15y ago
  This assumes people are faithful in their relationships right? I wonder if any dating sites have quantified the churn rating for their usage and does it correlate with wider trends in dating such as average length of relationships % of people who cheat on a regular basis. Or are the subset of people who use dating apps those who tend to be in and out of relationships more?
nitashatiku 15y ago
@Riley Have you guys ever had a problem with someone scraping public OkCupid profiles?
- sosuke 15y ago
  Starting a dating site with fake or scraped profiles just makes it a ghost town. New members would leave quickly before you built up a real user base.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    Not if you have bots messaging new members from fake accounts, and/or having them respond to queries.
    - kaens 15y ago
      Well, they'll still leave quickly, but they'll stay long enough for you to get their credit card info.
Alex3917 15y ago
Just out of curiosity, why did CrazyBlindDate get killed off? At least from the perspective of a single guy in NYC, that was pretty much the best website of all time.
GFischer 15y ago
I loved the OkTrends posts, and I'm really looking forward to the next one :) I tried OkCupid in the past, it's great, but it never took off in my country (and I'm on a relationship now).

jspaur 15y ago

the question is are those sites selling it or did some scripter just scrape a bunch of the public information from bigger sites?