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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

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.
  - untog 14y ago
    Well it's crowd-sourcing using a specific crowd. And I think that a group of people getting together to judge the personality and looks of two mutual friends would be really quite socially awkward.
    - run4yourlives 14y ago
      People do this all the time! If someone says "A would be good with B" and the other person doesn't think B is attractive, they say "No, I don't think A would like B".
- rooker 14y ago
  You'd be surprised. In the course of 4 years at university, I somehow never once crossed paths with my roommate, despite the fact that I knew all of her friends and our school is incredibly small.
dan1234 14y ago
why not just develop a site that lets your friends (your real friends) pick your perspective blind date? In the UK there is a site[1] which does something similar. There was quite a bit of buzz to start with but I wasn't sure it was even still going until I searched for it. [1]http://www.mysinglefriend.com http://www.mysinglefriend.com
jules 14y ago
OkCupid probably has a very good idea of how attractive a person is based on how many profile views and messages they get. I'd be very surprised if they aren't using that data to match roughly equally attractive people. Perhaps they are even taking personal preferences into account with probabilistic matrix factorization that is often used for recommendation systems. Basically if person X shows interest in A, and person Y shows interest in A and in B, then this makes it more likely that person X will like B as well. Whether A and B are movies, products on Amazon or people on OkCupid, PMF can exploit this kind of data to match people to products or to other people. The biggest problem with algorithmic blind dating is probably not actual average quality of dates, but rather (perceived) risk of going on a bad date. People trust their friends a lot more than an algorithm.
- shardling 14y ago
  They definitely sort people into attractiveness tiers of some sort. You'll get a message mentioning that you're in the top half the first time their metrics indicate so, and it claims that this affects what members are presented/suggested to you. I'm not sure if this is based solely on the star ratings members can assign, or if they take other interactions into account. I wouldn't be surprised if they do more subtle things with the same data as well.
- macchina 14y ago
  >I'd be very surprised if they aren't using that data to match roughly equally attractive people. I can confirm this is true. Last year, as an experiment, I made a dummy account with a picture of former NFL quarterback Kyle Boller but the same profile/personality as me. His matches are significantly more attractive than mine. He also received this email a few weeks after registration: We just detected that you're now among the most attractive people on OkCupid. We learned this from clicks to your profile and reactions to you in Quickmatch and Quiver. Did you get a new haircut or something? Well, it's working! To celebrate, we've adjusted your OkCupid experience: You'll see more attractive people in your match results. This won't affect your match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match's answers. But we'll recommend more attractive people to you. You'll also appear more often to other attractive people. Sign in to see your newly-shuffled matches. Have fun, and don't let this go to your head
codva 14y ago
I hate to say this, but Facebook already has all the data they need to do this. And now that you've mentioned it, it seems like a no-brainier for them to implement.
- fossuser 14y ago
  At the startup talk this year Mark mentioned that he thinks there's still a huge space available for services based on meeting new people rather than connecting friends and it's a space they're not interested in. Of course that tune could change if something started to take off.
- jonknee 14y ago
  How long before Facebook would start charging you to get more attractive "blind" dates?
cutetah 14y ago
totally agree, my best dates/relationships always came from meeting through friends. it takes the pressure off and you know they are not freaks/psychos, and you already have friends in common. hence, Link4Love! still new but check out the video, make sense right?
cutetah 14y ago
totally agree, my best dates/relationships always came from meeting through friends. it takes the pressure off and you know they are not freaks/psychos, and you already have friends in common. hence, Link4Love! still new but check out the video, make sense right?
tracker1 14y ago
I don'y know about that... the handful of blind dates I've been on setup by friends, the only thing I seem to have in common with the women in question is that we are both over-weight.
pault 14y ago
There's a Seattle startup doing this with your facebook graph: http://likebright.com/ http://likebright.com/
rooker 14y ago
That actually exists already. It's called LikeBright, and it hooks up to your Facebook, pulls mutual friends, and has you vet them for each person, basically asking "would you see these two people dating?" And if you have a mutual friend, and that friend has vetted you, you can just go ahead and message.

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.
- untog 14y ago
  Well it's crowd-sourcing using a specific crowd. And I think that a group of people getting together to judge the personality and looks of two mutual friends would be really quite socially awkward.
  - run4yourlives 14y ago
    People do this all the time! If someone says "A would be good with B" and the other person doesn't think B is attractive, they say "No, I don't think A would like B".
rooker 14y ago
You'd be surprised. In the course of 4 years at university, I somehow never once crossed paths with my roommate, despite the fact that I knew all of her friends and our school is incredibly small.

dan1234 14y ago

why not just develop a site that lets your friends (your real friends) pick your perspective blind date? In the UK there is a site[1] which does something similar. There was quite a bit of buzz to start with but I wasn't sure it was even still going until I searched for it. [1]http://www.mysinglefriend.com http://www.mysinglefriend.com

jules 14y ago

OkCupid probably has a very good idea of how attractive a person is based on how many profile views and messages they get. I'd be very surprised if they aren't using that data to match roughly equally attractive people. Perhaps they are even taking personal preferences into account with probabilistic matrix factorization that is often used for recommendation systems. Basically if person X shows interest in A, and person Y shows interest in A and in B, then this makes it more likely that person X will like B as well. Whether A and B are movies, products on Amazon or people on OkCupid, PMF can exploit this kind of data to match people to products or to other people. The biggest problem with algorithmic blind dating is probably not actual average quality of dates, but rather (perceived) risk of going on a bad date. People trust their friends a lot more than an algorithm.

shardling 14y ago
They definitely sort people into attractiveness tiers of some sort. You'll get a message mentioning that you're in the top half the first time their metrics indicate so, and it claims that this affects what members are presented/suggested to you. I'm not sure if this is based solely on the star ratings members can assign, or if they take other interactions into account. I wouldn't be surprised if they do more subtle things with the same data as well.
macchina 14y ago
>I'd be very surprised if they aren't using that data to match roughly equally attractive people. I can confirm this is true. Last year, as an experiment, I made a dummy account with a picture of former NFL quarterback Kyle Boller but the same profile/personality as me. His matches are significantly more attractive than mine. He also received this email a few weeks after registration: We just detected that you're now among the most attractive people on OkCupid. We learned this from clicks to your profile and reactions to you in Quickmatch and Quiver. Did you get a new haircut or something? Well, it's working! To celebrate, we've adjusted your OkCupid experience: You'll see more attractive people in your match results. This won't affect your match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match's answers. But we'll recommend more attractive people to you. You'll also appear more often to other attractive people. Sign in to see your newly-shuffled matches. Have fun, and don't let this go to your head

codva 14y ago

I hate to say this, but Facebook already has all the data they need to do this. And now that you've mentioned it, it seems like a no-brainier for them to implement.

fossuser 14y ago
At the startup talk this year Mark mentioned that he thinks there's still a huge space available for services based on meeting new people rather than connecting friends and it's a space they're not interested in. Of course that tune could change if something started to take off.
jonknee 14y ago
How long before Facebook would start charging you to get more attractive "blind" dates?

cutetah 14y ago

totally agree, my best dates/relationships always came from meeting through friends. it takes the pressure off and you know they are not freaks/psychos, and you already have friends in common. hence, Link4Love! still new but check out the video, make sense right?

cutetah 14y ago

tracker1 14y ago

I don'y know about that... the handful of blind dates I've been on setup by friends, the only thing I seem to have in common with the women in question is that we are both over-weight.

pault 14y ago

There's a Seattle startup doing this with your facebook graph: http://likebright.com/ http://likebright.com/

rooker 14y ago

That actually exists already. It's called LikeBright, and it hooks up to your Facebook, pulls mutual friends, and has you vet them for each person, basically asking "would you see these two people dating?" And if you have a mutual friend, and that friend has vetted you, you can just go ahead and message.