16 ms·

OK Cupid launches Crazy Blind Date

197 points by rms 14y ago

Breakthrough 14y ago
This is crazy... So crazy I can see it actually catching on. I'm quite interested to see how many people start using this. I also like how they say "[each] Crazy Blind Date account is tied to a phone" I'd argue that's a very false sense of security/safety, as it's trivial for anyone to obtain a different (or temporary) phone number. On that point though, I guess you're just as safe with a blind internet date as with one you "electronically know". And heck, let's be honest with ourselves. Maybe it will work better if you, the technically-inclined HN reader, is not allowed to pick-and-choose who you're going to date next, but your next date is chosen based on your interests and some "magic". After all, isn't that how love is supposed to work?
- ajays 14y ago
  2-3 years ago OKC tried this CBD here in SF. I tried it, but couldn't get 1 date out of it. Most of the times, there was no response; and the one time we decided to meet somewhere, she didn't show up. Then OKC shut it down. On asking women friends, the general feeling I got was that women were much more leery of going on a blind date, figuratively, blind about the other person. However: that was my experience with women in their 30s. Will it be the same for women in their, say, early 20s? Who knows. As it is we're seeing a massive shift in social interactions with SnapChat, FB Poke, etc. People are sexting more, for instance. It is a good idea, which, if executed well, can have legs.
  - wtracy 14y ago
    I'm 26. I've had one young woman on OKC make the first move and ask me out, so I suspect you're right that 20-somethings are more willing to date online. (Since I'm sure everyone is curious now: Neither one of us wanted a second date. Yeah.)
  - king_jester 14y ago
    Women have much more to lose on a blind date then men in general, as it only takes one creeper to ruin blind dating for someone. As others pointed out, traditional blind dates are set up by people who know something about both parties, so I'm not sure how well this will take off. As for SnapChat et al., are people using it anonymously between strangers? I had thought that the usage was mostly for people who already knew each other but wanted disposable messages.
    - monksy 14y ago
      Are you saying women can't be overly clingy or frequently misinterpreting non-spoken communication?
      - king_jester 14y ago
        No, women can totally do that, I'm more referring to things that threatens your safety or integrity, like someone assaulting or stalking you.
        PeterBB 14y ago
        And just to head off the inevitable shitstorm at the pass: No one is saying that assault or stalking cannot happen to men. It does happen, and is tragic. However, women are more systematically threatened by such things in our society, and modify their behavior to avoid such things to a far greater extent than men do.
        monksy 14y ago
        Personally I see it more of a game that women play to frustrate men as much as possible and this is a consequence of being overly picky. I'm not saying its right to behave hurt, or act aggressively. But it is rather screwed up when women collect points between each other for intentionally misleading guys or falsely leading them on to reject them. [Builds the ego]
        14y ago
  - krenoten 14y ago
    Have they come up with a way to incentivize following through with plans, or reducing the fear of spending time with somebody you haven't had some contact with? There seems to be a very low social/emotional cost to abandoning plans you make with a stranger that you have not vetted. I can imagine a very high abandonment effect, as you experienced.
  - fossuser 14y ago
    Since regular online dating is completely broken - this approach seems better but still doesn't get it quite right. I actually think the situation is even worse with women in their early twenties (that they'd be even less likely to use a service like this). Anecdotally it seems women 28-35 are much more willing to try different methods of dating than younger ones (or are even looking to actually date in general).
    - pavel_lishin 14y ago
      > Since regular online dating is completely broken It is?
    - hnriot 14y ago
      "regular online dating is completely broken" - hogwash! Facebook is the dating site of choice. Women use it to get a feel for guys they hear about/meet through their friends. By checking their social interactions, their friends, their education etc they can get a good idea of the person. People are as good at this as they are picking out a face in a crowd, several million years of evolution has ensured this. the women under 28 don't bother with any of this because they are typically in social situations (like college) where they meet people all the time and getting dates is trivial. Their only concern is their appearance and safety. They want to appear to their peer group to be dating well and with guys that add to their status, which is where facebook comes in. It may not be workig for you, but online dating is not broken at all...
      - fossuser 14y ago
        I guess I wasn't clear - obviously Facebook works brilliantly for this (and the relationship status piece was one of the driving forces behind its college adoption). By 'online dating' I was referring to actual online dating sites like okcupid, match, eharmony, plenty of fish etc.
    - white_devil 14y ago
      > Anecdotally it seems women 28-35 are much more willing to try different methods of dating than younger ones (or are even looking to actually date in general). This is hardly surprising, because by that time, they're well on their way to becoming "invisible" to men.
  - aetherson 14y ago
    More like four years ago. I used it back then, twice, getting two dates out of it. The first was reasonably fun but we probably weren't really right for each other and we didn't do a second date. The second resulted in a three month or so relationship. (Oh, and both I and my dates were hovering somewhere right around 30). So my experience, from admittedly few data points, is that it was at LEAST as successful as normal internet dating, maybe much more successful. I think that it matched me well on one fairly crucial axis: women who were interested in actually going out and seeing what you thought of a person. I found that a big killer of potential meetings on OKC proper was this death-slog of trying to assure perfect compatibility prior to a face-to-face meeting. All this said, I eventually found my fiancee through non-internet means.
  - jedberg 14y ago
    If they're smart, they'll allow the women to see the men's pictures, but not vice-versa. It's not fair, but it will help solve the very real problem of women being leery of blind dates.
- its_true 14y ago
  https://www.google.com/voice https://www.google.com/voice
- run4yourlives 14y ago
  I'm not sure if a "literal" blind date is a good thing. Most "blind dates" that people go on traditionally come through friends of friends. That means they aren't vetted just for interests and such but the datee/victim can be reasonably sure they are also vetted for personal appearance. Let's face it - this is huge. Depending on the friend, they can also be vetted based on a few of the hundreds of idiosyncrasies that a person has. I've been out of the dating scene for quite some time but I don't think personal profiles have advanced all that much. Especially when people are notoriously bad at actually describing themselves in an accurate way. After all, we all think we're normal. The truth is rather different. Instead of computer programs, why not just develop a site that lets your friends (your real friends) pick your perspective blind date? That would be the million dollar idea right there, IMHO.
  - untog 14y ago
    why not just develop a site that lets your friends (your real friends) pick your perspective blind date? Crowdsourcing dating. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not convinced it would work. The prospective date would have to be a friend of all the friends 'voting'- if you have that many friends in common you probably already know each other. Or even if you don't, your social circles are close enough that a bad date could be socially awkward.
    - krenoten 14y ago
      I can imagine a large percentage of first uses being friends intentionally trying to send their friends on horrible dates as a gag. Having a 2-sided suggestion may work well, where you can suggest a date, D, for one of your trusted friends, F. Any of D's trustees can see D's suggestions, and vote to confirm. If the vote is successful by some metric, F's trustees can perform a similar vote. If this final vote succeeds, D & F are presented with the opportunity.
    - run4yourlives 14y ago
      Not crowd-source, friends. As in people you know and have a beer with IRL. People that might actually care about the outcome and aren't just looking for laughs.
- 127001brewer 14y ago
  Magic? Most likely not... "The competition to attract the most desirable mates is ferocious. Consequently, those most valuable are perpetually in short supply compared to the many who desire them. People who are themselves high in mate value succeed in attracting the most desirable partners. In the crude informal American metric, the 9s and 10s pair off with other 9s and 10s. And with decreasing value from the 8s to the 1s, people must lower their mating sights commensurately. Failure to do so produces a higher probability of rejection and psychological anguish. ..." [1] [1] http://edge.org/response-detail/23862 http://edge.org/response-detail/23862
  - bjourne 14y ago
    That's so incredibly cynical. Maybe I'm the only one putting favoring other attributes higher than physical looks? Or I'm just butt ugly and can't get any of the good looking ones?
sudonim 14y ago
Looks like it's not quite live. Nothing happens upon clicking "Get Crazy".
- rms 14y ago
  I noticed via a site retheme on OK Cupid. A few minutes ago the "Get Crazy" button had a box to put in your phone number in order to get the App download link via text message. You can probably still access it via the web interface on OK Cupid, unless I'm part of a testing group instead of a launch.
- prmr 14y ago
  There appears to be a missing closing </style> towards the end of the page which means the scripts after aren't being loaded.
- mikeevans 14y ago
  Linked me to the play store when I was browsing on my phone.
terhechte 14y ago
Probably takes only a couple of hours until someone publishes an app on Github to take a screenshot and descramble the user pictures.
- jbrukh 14y ago
  http://decrazifier.appspot.com http://decrazifier.appspot.com. You can check out the source here: http://github.com/jbrukh/decrazifier http://github.com/jbrukh/decrazifier. :)
rdl 14y ago
I was really sad when they killed the original web-based Crazy Blind Date a few years ago -- I was single and in the Bay Area at the time, and it seemed just random enough to be awesome. Would strongly recommend this to anyone in the market. Although hopefully it gets promoted in places other than just hacker news, or there will be obvious issues. I know a surprisingly large number of tech people who have gotten long-term girlfriends or married via OkCupid. I only ever met actually crazy people (although interesting and fun for a few months), but somehow it seems to work for other people. I'm not sure how well it works outside the Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, and NYC, but in those markets, it's pretty good.
- matthuggins 14y ago
  Yeah, I read the title and thought "but Crazy Blind Date isn't new". I didn't realize they killed off the website. I wonder if they always planned on converting to mobile.
- nmcfarl 14y ago
  I met my wife via OkCupid, in Seattle. So it certainly worked for me (with more than a few of the standard dating misstarts).
  - junto 14y ago
    I'm glad to hear you "met" a few Miss Tarts before you settled down. ;-) You need to get that sort of thing out of your system before you finally settle down.
    - rexreed 14y ago
      Maybe it was a joke, but you missed the implicit hyphen between mis and starts. So, not Miss Tarts, but rather Mis-starts. Maybe @nmcfarl meant to say near-misses? or rather, just misses. But not as in ladies, but as in horseshoes.
      - junto 14y ago
zopticity 14y ago
I threw a wish in the well, Don't ask me, I'll never tell I looked to you as it fell, And now you're in my way I'd trade my soul for a wish, Pennies and dimes for a kiss I wasn't looking for this, But now you're in my way Your stare was holdin', Ripped jeans, skin was showin' Hot night, wind was blowin' Where you think you're going, baby? Hey, I just met you, And this is crazy, But here's my number, So call me, maybe?
- codva 14y ago
  That is one of the first songs I learned on my new ukulele. Only 3 chords in the whole tune!
nickpersico 14y ago
As someone who is extremely indecisive and laid back on little decisions like "where do you want to eat" or "what do you want to do today", I love this idea. Just pick for me, and I'll go do it. It's fun!
codva 14y ago
I met my wife via a blind date set up by a friend. No dating algorithm would have ever put us together. However, I think people do get too wrapped up in superficial likes / dislikes as a filtering mechanism, when it's been my experience that those on the surface things really have little correlation with you who might end up with long term. So "forcing" people to get to know each other by actually meeting might have some value here.
- rhizome 14y ago
  However, I think people do get too wrapped up in superficial likes / dislikes as a filtering mechanism And the nature of dating sites is to foreground this method of "analyzing" potential dates, which I think has to be a huge weakness in the whole model. This is to say, it's the only thing people can do on these sites.
davidjgraph 14y ago
I predict - men will think it a good idea, women won't - idea will tank.
- kzahel 14y ago
  I agree with this assessment. Also, I am a man, and I think it's a bad idea, too. The whole point of online dating was to be able to judge beforehand how awkward the situation would be. It's very hard to duck out in the first few minutes ("Sorry, I'm not remotely attracted to you, but I'm sure you're a lovely person")
  - wickedbass 14y ago
    Just order the lobster and steak and you'll be fine...
  - jhenkens 14y ago
    I think it'd be quite easy actually. You have no mutual friends, and you are both going into it with the exact same feeling. If either person is disinterested, it should be expressed immediately, as both parties are better off.
    - Firehed 14y ago
      That works with a pair of highly-logical people, but for anyone else it would seem extremely offputting and awkward. Even when I go out of my way to not bullshit people, "sorry but I'm just not feeling this" without at least a reasonable conversation first (even just half an hour) would be tough. Having said that, I still signed up. What do I have to lose - an hour on HN, and three bucks on coffee? If it's awkward it's awkward; everyone could do with getting better at handling awkward situations.
untog 14y ago
Interesting, because in some ways it's the opposite of OK Cupid. As multiple (brilliant: http://blog.okcupid.com/ http://blog.okcupid.com/) blog posts attest, people do judge each other heavily on looks and their stated interests. I assume the app is still using OKC data, and just hiding it. I'm not sure that I would trust the OKC algorithm enough to rely on it, and the question is ever-present in my mind- if you're already on OK Cupid, why use Blind Date? Either you think it'll be a laugh (the best option, probably) or you haven't been at all successful at getting a date on the main site. Perhaps there is a reason for that.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "or you haven't been at all successful at getting a date on the main site" Which is to say, most of the userbase. Most people, of both genders, have trouble getting dates online - pretty much anyone not in the top quartile of attractiveness for their orientation, weighted by race, height, looks, etc. Getting a lot of messages != getting a lot of dates. Most of OKC, as it is with most dating sites, is copypasta spam. When there is no flow limit, it's individually optimal to spam as many people as possible, so that's what happens. People in the top quartile get their pick of the litter - everyone else gets either no messages, or an inbox full of "sup gurl". We've sort of kind of gotten past the stigma of online dating. We haven't really gotten past the stigma of failing at online dating. I mean think about it, how pathetic is that? You flunked dating in real life and now you can't even do well on a computer. We also know, as you pointed out, that people are highly judgmental online. I'd amend your comment and say that you've massively understated the level and scale of this judgment. Almost all messages are instigated based on looks alone, damn what you wrote in your profile. OKC's insistence on collecting your whole life story and having you answer hundreds of questions may help their matching algorithm, but it doesn't help you - as it gives opposing users irrational reasons to reject you "he doesn't like seafood? dealbreaker!" People are fucking nuts when online dating. They are more judgmental, more racist, more classist than they are in real life, and at every step of the way they will use all of the above to sabotage themselves from finding someone they might actually get along with. Blind date - properly implemented - will IMO achieve much better results for most of the dating population, but selling people on it is really the tough part. Online daters want absolute control and information, even if they will use this information to sabotage their own chances. [edit] I also happen to think that OKCupid users would get much better results if there was a substantial rate-limit on messaging. But once again, selling it to the userbase is the tough part. People want utter freedom on your system, and any restriction - even ones that will help them - is seen as draconian.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Hmm, not too hopeful about this. The idea of a "blind date" is scary enough when it's been set up by someone you trust. I could certainly see creepy or slightly unhinged types making use of this and it getting a lot of bad press very fast amongst women. I can also see it being popular amongst certain classes of gay and bisexual men who will try and use it to hook up with straight guys.
- wickedbass 14y ago
  Wow, I don't know how I'd react if I was led on by some gay guy and thought I was meeting a woman... Not because I'm homophobic but because I know that these types of people exist. When I was in college I used craigslist one drunken night and something similar happened and it creeped me out hardcore...
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Oh, it happens. The worst story was a friend of mine who travelled over an hour on the premise of having a threesome with a swinging couple who he had met on a "casual dating" website. He was given a home address but when he turned up he found a typical messy bachelor pad and a middle aged man waiting. He was told that the wife wouldn't be turning up for a while but to "make himself comfortable". Naturally he got the hell out of there. It was a few years later before he actually told me the story, after I had finished laughing I asked why he had believed the guy. Turns out the guy had been copying photos from amateur porn sites and sending those as his "wife". Naturally it should be pointed out that I'm sure the majority of gay people do not behave in such a way.
    - ikarous 14y ago
      "Naturally it should be pointed out that I'm sure the majority of gay people do not behave in such a way." They most assuredly do not. I am a gay engineer. I've never known anyone so blatantly deceptive, but if any of my acquaintances even thought about doing something like that, I would give them a dressing down that would make a drill sergeant cry. Gay people are like any population sample. 95% of them are normal, decent human beings; 5% are wackos.
kylelibra 14y ago
I always enjoy the blog posts they do analyzing big chunks of data. Hopefully they will do one regarding this.
prsutherland 14y ago
Launches? I used it in Boston ~4-5 years ago.
ebbv 14y ago
Based on my experience with OKC I am doubtful this will be successful. I went on a lot of first dates w/girls from OKC and most of the time ones that were supposedly 90% matches were the worst dates. I met my girlfriend on there too, and we were only supposedly 70% matches according to OKC but she's my perfect partner. In other words, the algorithm is kinda off. At least in my case.
drharris 14y ago
My prediction: burner phones or Google Voice leads to some very bad scenarios. Stick with blind dates from friends.
stevenp 14y ago
The concept is interesting, although OkCupid actually launched this service in 2007 and it never really caught on. I'm guessing that they're betting mobile will change things significantly. What I really don't understand is why the design is so bad. OkCupid has always looked reasonably impressive (at least in my opinion), and this new site feels flat and amateurish. The mobile apps don't look good either. It almost feels like they've fallen for the new "me-too" trend of exceptionally flat design, inspired by Metro, but the execution here is just not good. The typography is particularly bad. Maybe it's just me, but I think it could really use some additional polish.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Firehed 14y ago
  Seems like they're trying to keep an extremely casual image, although perhaps they went a bit too far. I did find myself basically squinting at things. What I'm really confused about is the mechanics. Does someone have to select me, or is this some algorithmic match-up? It gives the impression that a computer will say "hey, you both said Thursday night and look reasonably compatible, you two kids have fun" but then also gives you the option to browse and select dates as well.
tomjen3 14y ago
And those who use this will no doubt be the ones who can't get a date on the regular site (like, hm, me). Which means your potential pool is limited to those who can't get a date in real life (which may be because they have just moved, are atheists in South Texas, etc) and who can't get a date on the site. So I doubt this will be effective, but hey it is a nice try.
siwei 14y ago
I had the exact same idea, right down to using ratings to improve the random match, so this is pretty awesome in that I get to see how this will play out for free. The main idea here is that it's a behaviorial approach to optimizing mate-matching. The way it works now (e.g., on okcupid) is that you fill out a profile and answer some questions. You expose some signals in your profile which you think are correlated with what makes you a good mate (interests, income, etc.), and go about finding such signals in other people's profiles. The match % is also such a signal. However, 1. People lie, or at least exaggerate the truth/selectively filter 2. They might not lie but simply be wrong: they think they want x but actually want y 3. The match % is a completely made up algorithm. I mean, it kind of makes sense that people who agree on things they care the most about would make good couples, but unless you measure this in a scientific way (i.e., controlled experiments), you have no idea. 4. Even assuming that you can actually get a good signal from the profile, it is drowned out by the noise. Suppose that some girl and dude are perfect for each other. What are the chances that he will find her profile and that she will read his message? The solution to 1-3 is to measure the thing you want to optimize, instead of optimizing based on intuition. The solution to 4 is to set people using the thing that you measured. So, after each blind date, you ask the participants, "would you go on a date with this person again?" Imagine being okcupid and being able to say, here is a person I think you'd be interested in dating, and I can say with 95% confidence that you will have a good time. If they can get to that stage, they'd be able to make good money. There are some issues with this, of course. You could argue that the thing they should measure is whether the date leads to a happy long-term relationship, but that's pretty much infeasible for various reasons. Also, as a dating website, they'd be perversely incentivized to keep you single forever. Anyway, I am super interested to see how this does.
- cwb71 14y ago
  > So, after each blind date, you ask the participants, "would you go on a date with this person again?" Does anyone know if Crazy Blind Date actually does this? One of the great mysteries of OkCupid to me is that they do not attempt to collect this information. There is no "I met this person" button which then asks how it went and whether the match represented themselves accurately. It seems like this would be an extremely valuable data point. There must be some reason that the feature doesn't exist, but I don't see what it is...
mikikian 14y ago
Or an alternative could be a blind date game show if an in person meeting with a stranger is a bit much. We just launched a dating game show that solves many of the shortfalls of online dating. HN thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5060477 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5060477 (disclaimer, co-founder)
alexfringes 14y ago
There is a value in social services "smoothing out the details" for a user. Naturally, this step requires the user to feel comfortable about entrusting those decisions to an app and it remains to be seen if people want to do this with dates. The horror stories (which are always smirkingly relayed - nothing tragic) I hear from girls about OKC messages don't exactly give me confidence in this part of the company's hypothesis. I would be happy to be proven wrong, however. In the end, even ChatRouelette attracted a wide variety of people (for a very short time). Maybe there is an opportunity to use a Chat Roulette/Airtime interaction as the precursor to a (not-so-blind) date.
- monksy 14y ago
  The horror stories aren't exactly a raw result of what happened. Many of the stories may be inflated or have biases that you don't know about. So many of the profiles on OkCupid are: 1. Fake [a girl is testing the waters to see whos on there, or it could be a guy seeing his competition] 2. The girl is using it to boost her self esteem [lots of messages about guys complementing her are going on] Also, online dating [in her mind] may be "below" her. 3. Theres a low noise to signal rate. Guys learn very quickly that girls are very selective, and sometimes random about the messages they reply to. [There are a few possiblities for this] 4. Also there are girls who troll OkCupid. [They have no interest in dating or they're wayyyy over protective (practically requiring a background check before meeting in a very public place)] So when you hear "stories" you have to be a little bit weary of the storyteller. [Even if you believe that the story teller is honest and good.]
  - mediacrisis 14y ago
    You would be surprised. As a female who occasionally uses OKC to meet people, I've had the joy of being offered a price. Straight up. And yes, it was too low. When you see "replies selectively", go for it. We're not the trolls. We're the eyerollers waiting for an actual conversation starter.
    - monksy 14y ago
      My style is that I want to start a conversation rather than trying to be extremely direct. [From my experience starting direct is a horrible idea] When I see "replies selectively" the first thing that comes to my mind is that you're picking messages randomly. EDIT: Even when being indirect on the first message you're still put in the same categories as all the other guys, its a random chance at best... screw that. If I'm not mistaken, good on you for having a sense of humour. The girls I've met on OKC haven't had such of a thing. A lot of them mention they have a sense of humor in their profile, but completely lack it in the message.
graeme 14y ago
They would need one HELL of an algorithm to pull this off. I tried OKC. A few good dates, but also several women who were 20-30 pounds heavier than their profile pictures. I've talked to women who use OKC. In the first week, any reasonably attractive woman gets 30-150 message, 95% of them creepy/lame/from old men. You can still find good things on OKC, but you need to learn how to filter. Women set up harsh filters against the flood of spam, and men have to learn i. How to get past those filters ii. How to tell if a woman is really herself Women face more risks than men. Most men aren't crazy. But all it takes is one crazy man to really mess up your life. And crazy men are more likely to use something that lets them bypass traditional filters. Meanwhile, this lets women that won't get hit on in real life bypass the filter of physical appearance. If this could be made to work, it would be incredibly popular. But it has a ton of hurdles. You'd have to evaluate safety and attractiveness algorithmically, or you'd end up with a ton of lame/scary dates.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "You'd have to evaluate safety and attractiveness algorithmically" OKCupid already does this (the attractiveness part), and I have to say, they do it startlingly well. Attractiveness is crowdsourced, and this is present even in the default (non-blind) experience. Ever wonder what that "Special Blend" default search results sort option is all about? It's actually weighted by the user and your own attractiveness.
  - gwillen 14y ago
    That's very interesting. I had been wondering whether they were hiding matches from me for the 'attractiveness' matching; empirically it seemed unlikely. Are you saying that, if I never use 'Special Blend', I am unaffected by the attractiveness-matching system?
  - drpgq 14y ago
    So I guess you could boost your attractiveness by making profiles of the opposite sex and interacting with yours?
    - 14y ago
ameister14 14y ago
Personally, I think Grouper's model is more likely to be successful. They take a group of three friends and pair them up on a blind group date with another group of three friends. The safety in numbers aspect is, I think, a smart addition.
- ndonnellan 14y ago
  Issues I have with Grouper (having not gone on any "groupers" yet): * You must have 2 single friends in the vicinity willing to join you in paying $20 apiece for a single drink on relatively short notice * The photos they showcase on the site make it look like, as a friend put it, "a six-way sexcapade" As a startup founder who recently moved to a smaller town, I have vanishingly few friends who are both single, male and fun enough to tag a long to something like that.
  - bfung 14y ago
    And from anecdotal evidence, I've heard of single people bringing non-single friends (from both male and female sides) on Grouper. Those aren't so fun when the match-ups don't go in your own favor.
- engtech 14y ago
  That actually sounds like a really fun time and that some good friendships could come out of it.
thirtyseven 14y ago
This is great if you have a smartphone and only want to date people that have smartphones.
stevoski 14y ago
And...it doesn't accept my Australian mobile phone number, nor does it accept my Spanish mobile phone number. :(
VikingCoder 14y ago
Prediction: Good evening. In tragic news today, a woman was killed by her "Crazy Blind Date."
- cwb71 14y ago
  If that happens, their choice of names sure is going to seem regrettable.
durpleDrank 14y ago
A word of caution about OK cupid. The emails they send out for your QUIVER MATCHES actually have your login credentials embedded in the URL. Meaning, if you right click, copy link address, and send the url to your friend, THEY ARE NOW LOGGED INTO YOUR ACCOUNT. I learned the hardway, I pasted one of these links into an 80+ chat room full of 4chan rejects on IRC.
- Leon 14y ago
  Login credentials or an authentication token? It's pretty standard to use an auth token in situations such as emails to protected content, considering that users profiles are blocked to non-members. To allow you to do a follow through from an email link it is necessary to introduce a way to automatically log yourself in through a click. You'll see the same email behavior from most websites you have an account for and you've allowed to send you emails. The trust chain that this is generally considered OK is that the email has gone through a two way verification for that account you've signed up for, so a uniquely generated auth token emailed is akin to a forget password at that point. The security failure was mostly on your part, but also on the sites for not conveying a notice that email links that automatically authenticate you are in emails. Sharing any directly copied link information from an email to a set of anonymous users, especially as unreputable as you have stated, is unadvised.
  - ios84dev 14y ago
    Assuming they haven't updated it since I was there, its an auth token that expires after a specific amount of time (I want to say 2 weeks but its been a long time)
eyeareque 14y ago
I think they mean re-launch, because this is something they had done a long time ago. With the same name even.
jcarpio 14y ago
From this Forbes piece: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/01/15/would-you-go-on-a-crazy-blind-date-ok-cupid-thinks-so/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/01/15/would-y... """ In truth, the most radical part of Crazy Blind Date (whose name and basic concept OK Cupid toyed with in an earlier form more than five years ago) may be the way users are asked to express their satisfaction or lack thereof. After a date’s conclusion, the participants are invited to rate each other by purchasing “kudos.” Spending a few dollars implies that a date was enjoyable... Why pay good money to improve the dating prospects of someone you might never see again? Because there’s more than generosity at play here. The user who never buys kudos for his or her dates will find himself increasingly shut out by the algorithm in the same way that your own friends would eventually stop setting you up if you rejected enough of their suggestions. “It’s a soft payment for access,” says Yagan. “How much you donate determines your product experience along the way.” """ Who will become successful at getting dates then? Those with the most kudos purchased? And, what does that do to the quality of dates one might expect to have?
RyanZAG 14y ago
There must be something off about the Android version. I've never seen that high a proportion of 1-star ratings. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.okcupid.cbd https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.okcupid.cb...
- PeterBB 14y ago
  It seems like about half the people are getting an "internet connection not found" error, and the other half are furious at the idea of a blind dating app.
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  Our now-dead app got absolutely slaughtered in the ratings (IMHO rightly) simply over our use of Facebook auth. Took forever for our ratings to rebound to this[0] [0] http://monosnap.com/image/ULCknIobEcO6KarrfxwmHdHJC http://monosnap.com/image/ULCknIobEcO6KarrfxwmHdHJC
  - RyanZAG 14y ago
    Makes sense, I would probably rate an app 1-star also if I had to use Facebook auth to use it - as I don't even have a Facebook account. I've noticed apps that require a Google login seem to do fine on Android though, probably because you need to have a Google account to use Android (or close to). Did you re-launch the app under a new name to get new ratings after removing Facebook auth? Seems like the sensible thing to do... I put up a small visual traceroute app up on Google Play recently - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rc.vtrace2 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rc.vtrace2 - and it was selling decently (7 sales within the first few hours), but then someone put a 2 star rating and, of course, nobody has touched it since. It's pretty interesting how much impact the first few reviews actually have on an app.
    - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
      I lost that argument; we ended up killing the app entirely (and the company itself eventually went south)
creativityland 14y ago
I'm surprised no one mentioned coffeemeetsbagel.com yet.
engtech 14y ago
I'd actually trust the OK Cupid guys to do an interesting take on this. Their blog has been a fantastic source of interesting articles of the things they have discovered with their unique dataset. http://blog.okcupid.com/ http://blog.okcupid.com/
- jessriedel 14y ago
  Well, it was certainly interesting, but it was only about a dozen blog posts and it stopped in April 2011.
greghinch 14y ago
I actually used CBD in it's first iteration briefly several years ago. I only went on one date but it actually ended up being one of the best internet dating experiences I've ever had. Didn't work out in the long run with the girl, but we did date for a little while. The idea of actually creating a "profile" for dating I think ends up resulting in a good amount of disparity between the curated persona you offer to the digital world and who you really are, no matter what you do. Wish these guys the best of luck with it. And if you are curious about the service, recommend giving it a shot!
huherto 14y ago
After reading some of the comments. What do you think about this approach? 1) Woman sets up the date. Place and time. 2) The system sends an invitation to several men until it gets 3-5 positive responses. 3) The woman chooses one of the candidates. The advantages for the woman is that she controls the terms of the date. She doesn't have to sort thru tons of messages. The advantages for the man, is that you don't have to spend a lot of time sending invitations to many women. Invitations that are basically ignored
- bti 14y ago
  Sounds like an online version of the TV dating game shows. Would this only apply to the heterosexual crowd?
  - huherto 14y ago
    I don't know how it would work for non-heterosexuals. But I guess they don't have the same problems than heterosexuals. From what I have seen, online dating sucks for men because it is very hard to get noticed. It sucks for women because they get too many choices.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- GVRV 14y ago
  One of my mates is actually working on something similar, check out 7pmanywhere.com
  - huherto 14y ago
    Nice!Consider it a validation that it may not be a bad idea. And it is seen from the woman's perspective. good! I feel the question phase may slow things because you need another round. Also the fact that she can select another set to choose, may cause her to keep going and not actually make a decision. As far as monetization, I (a man) would definitely pay for each time I am in a selection set. But I need to know that she is going to select one of us.
auston 14y ago
A friend of mine actually started something like this, it's called meetcute.org
gkoberger 14y ago
Technically, this is a relaunch: it used to exist a few years ago. I'd assume the relaunch is an answer to Grouper?
ElissaShevinsky 14y ago
Tested CrazyBlindDate last night. Recognized a friend from okcupid labs (despite the surrealist facial shuffling) and clicked to set up a date. It gave me two options to meet him at Philz in SF - 3:14am or 3:44am. So clearly there are still some bugs to work out. That said, the mobile app for CBD feels much more modern than anything I've seen okc release recently.

197 points by rms 14y ago

This is crazy... So crazy I can see it actually catching on. I'm quite interested to see how many people start using this. I also like how they say "[each] Crazy Blind Date account is tied to a phone" I'd argue that's a very false sense of security/safety, as it's trivial for anyone to obtain a different (or temporary) phone number. On that point though, I guess you're just as safe with a blind internet date as with one you "electronically know". And heck, let's be honest with ourselves. Maybe it will work better if you, the technically-inclined HN reader, is not allowed to pick-and-choose who you're going to date next, but your next date is chosen based on your interests and some "magic". After all, isn't that how love is supposed to work?

ajays 14y ago
2-3 years ago OKC tried this CBD here in SF. I tried it, but couldn't get 1 date out of it. Most of the times, there was no response; and the one time we decided to meet somewhere, she didn't show up. Then OKC shut it down. On asking women friends, the general feeling I got was that women were much more leery of going on a blind date, figuratively, blind about the other person. However: that was my experience with women in their 30s. Will it be the same for women in their, say, early 20s? Who knows. As it is we're seeing a massive shift in social interactions with SnapChat, FB Poke, etc. People are sexting more, for instance. It is a good idea, which, if executed well, can have legs.
- wtracy 14y ago
  I'm 26. I've had one young woman on OKC make the first move and ask me out, so I suspect you're right that 20-somethings are more willing to date online. (Since I'm sure everyone is curious now: Neither one of us wanted a second date. Yeah.)
- king_jester 14y ago
  Women have much more to lose on a blind date then men in general, as it only takes one creeper to ruin blind dating for someone. As others pointed out, traditional blind dates are set up by people who know something about both parties, so I'm not sure how well this will take off. As for SnapChat et al., are people using it anonymously between strangers? I had thought that the usage was mostly for people who already knew each other but wanted disposable messages.
  - monksy 14y ago
    Are you saying women can't be overly clingy or frequently misinterpreting non-spoken communication?
    - king_jester 14y ago
      No, women can totally do that, I'm more referring to things that threatens your safety or integrity, like someone assaulting or stalking you.
      - PeterBB 14y ago
        And just to head off the inevitable shitstorm at the pass: No one is saying that assault or stalking cannot happen to men. It does happen, and is tragic. However, women are more systematically threatened by such things in our society, and modify their behavior to avoid such things to a far greater extent than men do.
        monksy 14y ago
        Personally I see it more of a game that women play to frustrate men as much as possible and this is a consequence of being overly picky. I'm not saying its right to behave hurt, or act aggressively. But it is rather screwed up when women collect points between each other for intentionally misleading guys or falsely leading them on to reject them. [Builds the ego]
        14y ago
- krenoten 14y ago
  Have they come up with a way to incentivize following through with plans, or reducing the fear of spending time with somebody you haven't had some contact with? There seems to be a very low social/emotional cost to abandoning plans you make with a stranger that you have not vetted. I can imagine a very high abandonment effect, as you experienced.
- fossuser 14y ago
  Since regular online dating is completely broken - this approach seems better but still doesn't get it quite right. I actually think the situation is even worse with women in their early twenties (that they'd be even less likely to use a service like this). Anecdotally it seems women 28-35 are much more willing to try different methods of dating than younger ones (or are even looking to actually date in general).
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    > Since regular online dating is completely broken It is?
  - hnriot 14y ago
    "regular online dating is completely broken" - hogwash! Facebook is the dating site of choice. Women use it to get a feel for guys they hear about/meet through their friends. By checking their social interactions, their friends, their education etc they can get a good idea of the person. People are as good at this as they are picking out a face in a crowd, several million years of evolution has ensured this. the women under 28 don't bother with any of this because they are typically in social situations (like college) where they meet people all the time and getting dates is trivial. Their only concern is their appearance and safety. They want to appear to their peer group to be dating well and with guys that add to their status, which is where facebook comes in. It may not be workig for you, but online dating is not broken at all...
    - fossuser 14y ago
      I guess I wasn't clear - obviously Facebook works brilliantly for this (and the relationship status piece was one of the driving forces behind its college adoption). By 'online dating' I was referring to actual online dating sites like okcupid, match, eharmony, plenty of fish etc.
  - white_devil 14y ago
    > Anecdotally it seems women 28-35 are much more willing to try different methods of dating than younger ones (or are even looking to actually date in general). This is hardly surprising, because by that time, they're well on their way to becoming "invisible" to men.
- aetherson 14y ago
  More like four years ago. I used it back then, twice, getting two dates out of it. The first was reasonably fun but we probably weren't really right for each other and we didn't do a second date. The second resulted in a three month or so relationship. (Oh, and both I and my dates were hovering somewhere right around 30). So my experience, from admittedly few data points, is that it was at LEAST as successful as normal internet dating, maybe much more successful. I think that it matched me well on one fairly crucial axis: women who were interested in actually going out and seeing what you thought of a person. I found that a big killer of potential meetings on OKC proper was this death-slog of trying to assure perfect compatibility prior to a face-to-face meeting. All this said, I eventually found my fiancee through non-internet means.
- jedberg 14y ago
  If they're smart, they'll allow the women to see the men's pictures, but not vice-versa. It's not fair, but it will help solve the very real problem of women being leery of blind dates.
its_true 14y ago
https://www.google.com/voice https://www.google.com/voice
run4yourlives 14y ago
I'm not sure if a "literal" blind date is a good thing. Most "blind dates" that people go on traditionally come through friends of friends. That means they aren't vetted just for interests and such but the datee/victim can be reasonably sure they are also vetted for personal appearance. Let's face it - this is huge. Depending on the friend, they can also be vetted based on a few of the hundreds of idiosyncrasies that a person has. I've been out of the dating scene for quite some time but I don't think personal profiles have advanced all that much. Especially when people are notoriously bad at actually describing themselves in an accurate way. After all, we all think we're normal. The truth is rather different. Instead of computer programs, why not just develop a site that lets your friends (your real friends) pick your perspective blind date? That would be the million dollar idea right there, IMHO.
- untog 14y ago
  why not just develop a site that lets your friends (your real friends) pick your perspective blind date? Crowdsourcing dating. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not convinced it would work. The prospective date would have to be a friend of all the friends 'voting'- if you have that many friends in common you probably already know each other. Or even if you don't, your social circles are close enough that a bad date could be socially awkward.
  - krenoten 14y ago
    I can imagine a large percentage of first uses being friends intentionally trying to send their friends on horrible dates as a gag. Having a 2-sided suggestion may work well, where you can suggest a date, D, for one of your trusted friends, F. Any of D's trustees can see D's suggestions, and vote to confirm. If the vote is successful by some metric, F's trustees can perform a similar vote. If this final vote succeeds, D & F are presented with the opportunity.
  - run4yourlives 14y ago
    Not crowd-source, friends. As in people you know and have a beer with IRL. People that might actually care about the outcome and aren't just looking for laughs.
127001brewer 14y ago
Magic? Most likely not... "The competition to attract the most desirable mates is ferocious. Consequently, those most valuable are perpetually in short supply compared to the many who desire them. People who are themselves high in mate value succeed in attracting the most desirable partners. In the crude informal American metric, the 9s and 10s pair off with other 9s and 10s. And with decreasing value from the 8s to the 1s, people must lower their mating sights commensurately. Failure to do so produces a higher probability of rejection and psychological anguish. ..." [1] [1] http://edge.org/response-detail/23862 http://edge.org/response-detail/23862
- bjourne 14y ago
  That's so incredibly cynical. Maybe I'm the only one putting favoring other attributes higher than physical looks? Or I'm just butt ugly and can't get any of the good looking ones?

sudonim 14y ago

Looks like it's not quite live. Nothing happens upon clicking "Get Crazy".

rms 14y ago
I noticed via a site retheme on OK Cupid. A few minutes ago the "Get Crazy" button had a box to put in your phone number in order to get the App download link via text message. You can probably still access it via the web interface on OK Cupid, unless I'm part of a testing group instead of a launch.
prmr 14y ago
There appears to be a missing closing </style> towards the end of the page which means the scripts after aren't being loaded.
mikeevans 14y ago
Linked me to the play store when I was browsing on my phone.

terhechte 14y ago

Probably takes only a couple of hours until someone publishes an app on Github to take a screenshot and descramble the user pictures.

jbrukh 14y ago
http://decrazifier.appspot.com http://decrazifier.appspot.com. You can check out the source here: http://github.com/jbrukh/decrazifier http://github.com/jbrukh/decrazifier. :)

rdl 14y ago

I was really sad when they killed the original web-based Crazy Blind Date a few years ago -- I was single and in the Bay Area at the time, and it seemed just random enough to be awesome. Would strongly recommend this to anyone in the market. Although hopefully it gets promoted in places other than just hacker news, or there will be obvious issues. I know a surprisingly large number of tech people who have gotten long-term girlfriends or married via OkCupid. I only ever met actually crazy people (although interesting and fun for a few months), but somehow it seems to work for other people. I'm not sure how well it works outside the Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, and NYC, but in those markets, it's pretty good.

matthuggins 14y ago
Yeah, I read the title and thought "but Crazy Blind Date isn't new". I didn't realize they killed off the website. I wonder if they always planned on converting to mobile.
nmcfarl 14y ago
I met my wife via OkCupid, in Seattle. So it certainly worked for me (with more than a few of the standard dating misstarts).
- junto 14y ago
  I'm glad to hear you "met" a few Miss Tarts before you settled down. ;-) You need to get that sort of thing out of your system before you finally settle down.
  - rexreed 14y ago
    Maybe it was a joke, but you missed the implicit hyphen between mis and starts. So, not Miss Tarts, but rather Mis-starts. Maybe @nmcfarl meant to say near-misses? or rather, just misses. But not as in ladies, but as in horseshoes.
    - junto 14y ago

zopticity 14y ago

I threw a wish in the well, Don't ask me, I'll never tell I looked to you as it fell, And now you're in my way I'd trade my soul for a wish, Pennies and dimes for a kiss I wasn't looking for this, But now you're in my way Your stare was holdin', Ripped jeans, skin was showin' Hot night, wind was blowin' Where you think you're going, baby? Hey, I just met you, And this is crazy, But here's my number, So call me, maybe?

codva 14y ago
That is one of the first songs I learned on my new ukulele. Only 3 chords in the whole tune!

nickpersico 14y ago

As someone who is extremely indecisive and laid back on little decisions like "where do you want to eat" or "what do you want to do today", I love this idea. Just pick for me, and I'll go do it. It's fun!

codva 14y ago

I met my wife via a blind date set up by a friend. No dating algorithm would have ever put us together. However, I think people do get too wrapped up in superficial likes / dislikes as a filtering mechanism, when it's been my experience that those on the surface things really have little correlation with you who might end up with long term. So "forcing" people to get to know each other by actually meeting might have some value here.

rhizome 14y ago
However, I think people do get too wrapped up in superficial likes / dislikes as a filtering mechanism And the nature of dating sites is to foreground this method of "analyzing" potential dates, which I think has to be a huge weakness in the whole model. This is to say, it's the only thing people can do on these sites.

davidjgraph 14y ago

I predict - men will think it a good idea, women won't - idea will tank.

kzahel 14y ago
I agree with this assessment. Also, I am a man, and I think it's a bad idea, too. The whole point of online dating was to be able to judge beforehand how awkward the situation would be. It's very hard to duck out in the first few minutes ("Sorry, I'm not remotely attracted to you, but I'm sure you're a lovely person")
- wickedbass 14y ago
  Just order the lobster and steak and you'll be fine...
- jhenkens 14y ago
  I think it'd be quite easy actually. You have no mutual friends, and you are both going into it with the exact same feeling. If either person is disinterested, it should be expressed immediately, as both parties are better off.
  - Firehed 14y ago
    That works with a pair of highly-logical people, but for anyone else it would seem extremely offputting and awkward. Even when I go out of my way to not bullshit people, "sorry but I'm just not feeling this" without at least a reasonable conversation first (even just half an hour) would be tough. Having said that, I still signed up. What do I have to lose - an hour on HN, and three bucks on coffee? If it's awkward it's awkward; everyone could do with getting better at handling awkward situations.

untog 14y ago

Interesting, because in some ways it's the opposite of OK Cupid. As multiple (brilliant: http://blog.okcupid.com/ http://blog.okcupid.com/) blog posts attest, people do judge each other heavily on looks and their stated interests. I assume the app is still using OKC data, and just hiding it. I'm not sure that I would trust the OKC algorithm enough to rely on it, and the question is ever-present in my mind- if you're already on OK Cupid, why use Blind Date? Either you think it'll be a laugh (the best option, probably) or you haven't been at all successful at getting a date on the main site. Perhaps there is a reason for that.

potatolicious 14y ago
> "or you haven't been at all successful at getting a date on the main site" Which is to say, most of the userbase. Most people, of both genders, have trouble getting dates online - pretty much anyone not in the top quartile of attractiveness for their orientation, weighted by race, height, looks, etc. Getting a lot of messages != getting a lot of dates. Most of OKC, as it is with most dating sites, is copypasta spam. When there is no flow limit, it's individually optimal to spam as many people as possible, so that's what happens. People in the top quartile get their pick of the litter - everyone else gets either no messages, or an inbox full of "sup gurl". We've sort of kind of gotten past the stigma of online dating. We haven't really gotten past the stigma of failing at online dating. I mean think about it, how pathetic is that? You flunked dating in real life and now you can't even do well on a computer. We also know, as you pointed out, that people are highly judgmental online. I'd amend your comment and say that you've massively understated the level and scale of this judgment. Almost all messages are instigated based on looks alone, damn what you wrote in your profile. OKC's insistence on collecting your whole life story and having you answer hundreds of questions may help their matching algorithm, but it doesn't help you - as it gives opposing users irrational reasons to reject you "he doesn't like seafood? dealbreaker!" People are fucking nuts when online dating. They are more judgmental, more racist, more classist than they are in real life, and at every step of the way they will use all of the above to sabotage themselves from finding someone they might actually get along with. Blind date - properly implemented - will IMO achieve much better results for most of the dating population, but selling people on it is really the tough part. Online daters want absolute control and information, even if they will use this information to sabotage their own chances. [edit] I also happen to think that OKCupid users would get much better results if there was a substantial rate-limit on messaging. But once again, selling it to the userbase is the tough part. People want utter freedom on your system, and any restriction - even ones that will help them - is seen as draconian.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Hmm, not too hopeful about this. The idea of a "blind date" is scary enough when it's been set up by someone you trust. I could certainly see creepy or slightly unhinged types making use of this and it getting a lot of bad press very fast amongst women. I can also see it being popular amongst certain classes of gay and bisexual men who will try and use it to hook up with straight guys.

wickedbass 14y ago
Wow, I don't know how I'd react if I was led on by some gay guy and thought I was meeting a woman... Not because I'm homophobic but because I know that these types of people exist. When I was in college I used craigslist one drunken night and something similar happened and it creeped me out hardcore...
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Oh, it happens. The worst story was a friend of mine who travelled over an hour on the premise of having a threesome with a swinging couple who he had met on a "casual dating" website. He was given a home address but when he turned up he found a typical messy bachelor pad and a middle aged man waiting. He was told that the wife wouldn't be turning up for a while but to "make himself comfortable". Naturally he got the hell out of there. It was a few years later before he actually told me the story, after I had finished laughing I asked why he had believed the guy. Turns out the guy had been copying photos from amateur porn sites and sending those as his "wife". Naturally it should be pointed out that I'm sure the majority of gay people do not behave in such a way.
  - ikarous 14y ago
    "Naturally it should be pointed out that I'm sure the majority of gay people do not behave in such a way." They most assuredly do not. I am a gay engineer. I've never known anyone so blatantly deceptive, but if any of my acquaintances even thought about doing something like that, I would give them a dressing down that would make a drill sergeant cry. Gay people are like any population sample. 95% of them are normal, decent human beings; 5% are wackos.

kylelibra 14y ago

I always enjoy the blog posts they do analyzing big chunks of data. Hopefully they will do one regarding this.

prsutherland 14y ago

Launches? I used it in Boston ~4-5 years ago.

ebbv 14y ago

Based on my experience with OKC I am doubtful this will be successful. I went on a lot of first dates w/girls from OKC and most of the time ones that were supposedly 90% matches were the worst dates. I met my girlfriend on there too, and we were only supposedly 70% matches according to OKC but she's my perfect partner. In other words, the algorithm is kinda off. At least in my case.

drharris 14y ago

My prediction: burner phones or Google Voice leads to some very bad scenarios. Stick with blind dates from friends.

stevenp 14y ago

The concept is interesting, although OkCupid actually launched this service in 2007 and it never really caught on. I'm guessing that they're betting mobile will change things significantly. What I really don't understand is why the design is so bad. OkCupid has always looked reasonably impressive (at least in my opinion), and this new site feels flat and amateurish. The mobile apps don't look good either. It almost feels like they've fallen for the new "me-too" trend of exceptionally flat design, inspired by Metro, but the execution here is just not good. The typography is particularly bad. Maybe it's just me, but I think it could really use some additional polish.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Firehed 14y ago
Seems like they're trying to keep an extremely casual image, although perhaps they went a bit too far. I did find myself basically squinting at things. What I'm really confused about is the mechanics. Does someone have to select me, or is this some algorithmic match-up? It gives the impression that a computer will say "hey, you both said Thursday night and look reasonably compatible, you two kids have fun" but then also gives you the option to browse and select dates as well.

tomjen3 14y ago

And those who use this will no doubt be the ones who can't get a date on the regular site (like, hm, me). Which means your potential pool is limited to those who can't get a date in real life (which may be because they have just moved, are atheists in South Texas, etc) and who can't get a date on the site. So I doubt this will be effective, but hey it is a nice try.

siwei 14y ago

I had the exact same idea, right down to using ratings to improve the random match, so this is pretty awesome in that I get to see how this will play out for free. The main idea here is that it's a behaviorial approach to optimizing mate-matching. The way it works now (e.g., on okcupid) is that you fill out a profile and answer some questions. You expose some signals in your profile which you think are correlated with what makes you a good mate (interests, income, etc.), and go about finding such signals in other people's profiles. The match % is also such a signal. However, 1. People lie, or at least exaggerate the truth/selectively filter 2. They might not lie but simply be wrong: they think they want x but actually want y 3. The match % is a completely made up algorithm. I mean, it kind of makes sense that people who agree on things they care the most about would make good couples, but unless you measure this in a scientific way (i.e., controlled experiments), you have no idea. 4. Even assuming that you can actually get a good signal from the profile, it is drowned out by the noise. Suppose that some girl and dude are perfect for each other. What are the chances that he will find her profile and that she will read his message? The solution to 1-3 is to measure the thing you want to optimize, instead of optimizing based on intuition. The solution to 4 is to set people using the thing that you measured. So, after each blind date, you ask the participants, "would you go on a date with this person again?" Imagine being okcupid and being able to say, here is a person I think you'd be interested in dating, and I can say with 95% confidence that you will have a good time. If they can get to that stage, they'd be able to make good money. There are some issues with this, of course. You could argue that the thing they should measure is whether the date leads to a happy long-term relationship, but that's pretty much infeasible for various reasons. Also, as a dating website, they'd be perversely incentivized to keep you single forever. Anyway, I am super interested to see how this does.

cwb71 14y ago
> So, after each blind date, you ask the participants, "would you go on a date with this person again?" Does anyone know if Crazy Blind Date actually does this? One of the great mysteries of OkCupid to me is that they do not attempt to collect this information. There is no "I met this person" button which then asks how it went and whether the match represented themselves accurately. It seems like this would be an extremely valuable data point. There must be some reason that the feature doesn't exist, but I don't see what it is...

mikikian 14y ago

Or an alternative could be a blind date game show if an in person meeting with a stranger is a bit much. We just launched a dating game show that solves many of the shortfalls of online dating. HN thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5060477 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5060477 (disclaimer, co-founder)

alexfringes 14y ago

There is a value in social services "smoothing out the details" for a user. Naturally, this step requires the user to feel comfortable about entrusting those decisions to an app and it remains to be seen if people want to do this with dates. The horror stories (which are always smirkingly relayed - nothing tragic) I hear from girls about OKC messages don't exactly give me confidence in this part of the company's hypothesis. I would be happy to be proven wrong, however. In the end, even ChatRouelette attracted a wide variety of people (for a very short time). Maybe there is an opportunity to use a Chat Roulette/Airtime interaction as the precursor to a (not-so-blind) date.

monksy 14y ago
The horror stories aren't exactly a raw result of what happened. Many of the stories may be inflated or have biases that you don't know about. So many of the profiles on OkCupid are: 1. Fake [a girl is testing the waters to see whos on there, or it could be a guy seeing his competition] 2. The girl is using it to boost her self esteem [lots of messages about guys complementing her are going on] Also, online dating [in her mind] may be "below" her. 3. Theres a low noise to signal rate. Guys learn very quickly that girls are very selective, and sometimes random about the messages they reply to. [There are a few possiblities for this] 4. Also there are girls who troll OkCupid. [They have no interest in dating or they're wayyyy over protective (practically requiring a background check before meeting in a very public place)] So when you hear "stories" you have to be a little bit weary of the storyteller. [Even if you believe that the story teller is honest and good.]
- mediacrisis 14y ago
  You would be surprised. As a female who occasionally uses OKC to meet people, I've had the joy of being offered a price. Straight up. And yes, it was too low. When you see "replies selectively", go for it. We're not the trolls. We're the eyerollers waiting for an actual conversation starter.
  - monksy 14y ago
    My style is that I want to start a conversation rather than trying to be extremely direct. [From my experience starting direct is a horrible idea] When I see "replies selectively" the first thing that comes to my mind is that you're picking messages randomly. EDIT: Even when being indirect on the first message you're still put in the same categories as all the other guys, its a random chance at best... screw that. If I'm not mistaken, good on you for having a sense of humour. The girls I've met on OKC haven't had such of a thing. A lot of them mention they have a sense of humor in their profile, but completely lack it in the message.

graeme 14y ago

They would need one HELL of an algorithm to pull this off. I tried OKC. A few good dates, but also several women who were 20-30 pounds heavier than their profile pictures. I've talked to women who use OKC. In the first week, any reasonably attractive woman gets 30-150 message, 95% of them creepy/lame/from old men. You can still find good things on OKC, but you need to learn how to filter. Women set up harsh filters against the flood of spam, and men have to learn i. How to get past those filters ii. How to tell if a woman is really herself Women face more risks than men. Most men aren't crazy. But all it takes is one crazy man to really mess up your life. And crazy men are more likely to use something that lets them bypass traditional filters. Meanwhile, this lets women that won't get hit on in real life bypass the filter of physical appearance. If this could be made to work, it would be incredibly popular. But it has a ton of hurdles. You'd have to evaluate safety and attractiveness algorithmically, or you'd end up with a ton of lame/scary dates.

potatolicious 14y ago
> "You'd have to evaluate safety and attractiveness algorithmically" OKCupid already does this (the attractiveness part), and I have to say, they do it startlingly well. Attractiveness is crowdsourced, and this is present even in the default (non-blind) experience. Ever wonder what that "Special Blend" default search results sort option is all about? It's actually weighted by the user and your own attractiveness.
- gwillen 14y ago
  That's very interesting. I had been wondering whether they were hiding matches from me for the 'attractiveness' matching; empirically it seemed unlikely. Are you saying that, if I never use 'Special Blend', I am unaffected by the attractiveness-matching system?
- drpgq 14y ago
  So I guess you could boost your attractiveness by making profiles of the opposite sex and interacting with yours?
  - 14y ago

ameister14 14y ago

Personally, I think Grouper's model is more likely to be successful. They take a group of three friends and pair them up on a blind group date with another group of three friends. The safety in numbers aspect is, I think, a smart addition.

ndonnellan 14y ago
Issues I have with Grouper (having not gone on any "groupers" yet): * You must have 2 single friends in the vicinity willing to join you in paying $20 apiece for a single drink on relatively short notice * The photos they showcase on the site make it look like, as a friend put it, "a six-way sexcapade" As a startup founder who recently moved to a smaller town, I have vanishingly few friends who are both single, male and fun enough to tag a long to something like that.
- bfung 14y ago
  And from anecdotal evidence, I've heard of single people bringing non-single friends (from both male and female sides) on Grouper. Those aren't so fun when the match-ups don't go in your own favor.
engtech 14y ago
That actually sounds like a really fun time and that some good friendships could come out of it.

thirtyseven 14y ago

This is great if you have a smartphone and only want to date people that have smartphones.

stevoski 14y ago

And...it doesn't accept my Australian mobile phone number, nor does it accept my Spanish mobile phone number. :(

VikingCoder 14y ago

Prediction: Good evening. In tragic news today, a woman was killed by her "Crazy Blind Date."

cwb71 14y ago
If that happens, their choice of names sure is going to seem regrettable.

durpleDrank 14y ago

A word of caution about OK cupid. The emails they send out for your QUIVER MATCHES actually have your login credentials embedded in the URL. Meaning, if you right click, copy link address, and send the url to your friend, THEY ARE NOW LOGGED INTO YOUR ACCOUNT. I learned the hardway, I pasted one of these links into an 80+ chat room full of 4chan rejects on IRC.

Leon 14y ago
Login credentials or an authentication token? It's pretty standard to use an auth token in situations such as emails to protected content, considering that users profiles are blocked to non-members. To allow you to do a follow through from an email link it is necessary to introduce a way to automatically log yourself in through a click. You'll see the same email behavior from most websites you have an account for and you've allowed to send you emails. The trust chain that this is generally considered OK is that the email has gone through a two way verification for that account you've signed up for, so a uniquely generated auth token emailed is akin to a forget password at that point. The security failure was mostly on your part, but also on the sites for not conveying a notice that email links that automatically authenticate you are in emails. Sharing any directly copied link information from an email to a set of anonymous users, especially as unreputable as you have stated, is unadvised.
- ios84dev 14y ago
  Assuming they haven't updated it since I was there, its an auth token that expires after a specific amount of time (I want to say 2 weeks but its been a long time)

eyeareque 14y ago

I think they mean re-launch, because this is something they had done a long time ago. With the same name even.

jcarpio 14y ago

From this Forbes piece: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/01/15/would-you-go-on-a-crazy-blind-date-ok-cupid-thinks-so/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/01/15/would-y... """ In truth, the most radical part of Crazy Blind Date (whose name and basic concept OK Cupid toyed with in an earlier form more than five years ago) may be the way users are asked to express their satisfaction or lack thereof. After a date’s conclusion, the participants are invited to rate each other by purchasing “kudos.” Spending a few dollars implies that a date was enjoyable... Why pay good money to improve the dating prospects of someone you might never see again? Because there’s more than generosity at play here. The user who never buys kudos for his or her dates will find himself increasingly shut out by the algorithm in the same way that your own friends would eventually stop setting you up if you rejected enough of their suggestions. “It’s a soft payment for access,” says Yagan. “How much you donate determines your product experience along the way.” """ Who will become successful at getting dates then? Those with the most kudos purchased? And, what does that do to the quality of dates one might expect to have?

RyanZAG 14y ago

There must be something off about the Android version. I've never seen that high a proportion of 1-star ratings. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.okcupid.cbd https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.okcupid.cb...

PeterBB 14y ago
It seems like about half the people are getting an "internet connection not found" error, and the other half are furious at the idea of a blind dating app.
ConstantineXVI 14y ago
Our now-dead app got absolutely slaughtered in the ratings (IMHO rightly) simply over our use of Facebook auth. Took forever for our ratings to rebound to this[0] [0] http://monosnap.com/image/ULCknIobEcO6KarrfxwmHdHJC http://monosnap.com/image/ULCknIobEcO6KarrfxwmHdHJC
- RyanZAG 14y ago
  Makes sense, I would probably rate an app 1-star also if I had to use Facebook auth to use it - as I don't even have a Facebook account. I've noticed apps that require a Google login seem to do fine on Android though, probably because you need to have a Google account to use Android (or close to). Did you re-launch the app under a new name to get new ratings after removing Facebook auth? Seems like the sensible thing to do... I put up a small visual traceroute app up on Google Play recently - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rc.vtrace2 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rc.vtrace2 - and it was selling decently (7 sales within the first few hours), but then someone put a 2 star rating and, of course, nobody has touched it since. It's pretty interesting how much impact the first few reviews actually have on an app.
  - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
    I lost that argument; we ended up killing the app entirely (and the company itself eventually went south)

creativityland 14y ago

I'm surprised no one mentioned coffeemeetsbagel.com yet.

engtech 14y ago

I'd actually trust the OK Cupid guys to do an interesting take on this. Their blog has been a fantastic source of interesting articles of the things they have discovered with their unique dataset. http://blog.okcupid.com/ http://blog.okcupid.com/

jessriedel 14y ago
Well, it was certainly interesting, but it was only about a dozen blog posts and it stopped in April 2011.

greghinch 14y ago

I actually used CBD in it's first iteration briefly several years ago. I only went on one date but it actually ended up being one of the best internet dating experiences I've ever had. Didn't work out in the long run with the girl, but we did date for a little while. The idea of actually creating a "profile" for dating I think ends up resulting in a good amount of disparity between the curated persona you offer to the digital world and who you really are, no matter what you do. Wish these guys the best of luck with it. And if you are curious about the service, recommend giving it a shot!

huherto 14y ago

After reading some of the comments. What do you think about this approach? 1) Woman sets up the date. Place and time. 2) The system sends an invitation to several men until it gets 3-5 positive responses. 3) The woman chooses one of the candidates. The advantages for the woman is that she controls the terms of the date. She doesn't have to sort thru tons of messages. The advantages for the man, is that you don't have to spend a lot of time sending invitations to many women. Invitations that are basically ignored

bti 14y ago
Sounds like an online version of the TV dating game shows. Would this only apply to the heterosexual crowd?
- huherto 14y ago
  I don't know how it would work for non-heterosexuals. But I guess they don't have the same problems than heterosexuals. From what I have seen, online dating sucks for men because it is very hard to get noticed. It sucks for women because they get too many choices.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
GVRV 14y ago
One of my mates is actually working on something similar, check out 7pmanywhere.com
- huherto 14y ago
  Nice!Consider it a validation that it may not be a bad idea. And it is seen from the woman's perspective. good! I feel the question phase may slow things because you need another round. Also the fact that she can select another set to choose, may cause her to keep going and not actually make a decision. As far as monetization, I (a man) would definitely pay for each time I am in a selection set. But I need to know that she is going to select one of us.

auston 14y ago

A friend of mine actually started something like this, it's called meetcute.org

gkoberger 14y ago

Technically, this is a relaunch: it used to exist a few years ago. I'd assume the relaunch is an answer to Grouper?

ElissaShevinsky 14y ago

Tested CrazyBlindDate last night. Recognized a friend from okcupid labs (despite the surrealist facial shuffling) and clicked to set up a date. It gave me two options to meet him at Philz in SF - 3:14am or 3:44am. So clearly there are still some bugs to work out. That said, the mobile app for CBD feels much more modern than anything I've seen okc release recently.