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Also, to clarify, while I did personally message a ton of people during our early days (CEO in her pajamas at 3am doing anything to get a site off the ground) -

Also, to clarify, while I did personally message a ton of people during our early days (CEO in her pajamas at 3am doing anything to get a site off the ground) - this is not at all what we do now. Our Premium Matchmakers will contact someone if they have someone they want to set them up on a date with. You're on OkCupid for dates, right? So we're trying to help :)

adamio 12y ago
"Our Premium Matchmakers will contact someone if they have someone they want to set them up on a date with." This is unsolicited spam. And likely against OkCupid's terms of use.
- zdean 12y ago
  There's an entire ecosystem (though possibly not very robust) around providing services to people on dating services like helping with writing their profile. I've heard from a few people that it would be awesome to have someone just manage their dating profile for them. This service seems in some ways to add to that ecosystem and fill the need. I would think that OKC, etc. would in the end benefit from their contribution.
  - railsdude 12y ago
    > I would think that OKC, etc. would in the end benefit from their contribution. That's BS and you know it. If that were the case, OP's startup should've bought ads on OKC and OKC would be glad to sell ad space. I really doubt that OKC or its parent company will sell ads to a competitor dating site.
    - jonathanjaeger 12y ago
      OkCupid does have big ads for PlentyOfFish on their logout screen. They do allow ads, but of course, PlentyOfFish is paying for that ad space. Many niche or competitor dating sites advertise on other dating sites, but since it's paid advertising, the benefits outweigh the possible loss of users (think of it as shared users?).
    - zdean 12y ago
      Ignoring the fact that you're calling me dishonest for a moment, here's how I see it: 1. OKC is a listing of profiles where the lister is expected to manage the transaction 2. The management of the transaction is a huge friction and pain point for a significant number of people (as is writing a profile, taking pics, etc...for which there are also people that help). 3. this service reduces/removes that friction/pain point for okc. 4. this service is NOT a listing of profiles (as far as I can tell) 5. this service does NOT discourage people from signing up for OKC, Match, POF, etc...in my view it encourages participation in those services (whether implicitly or explicitly). If I'm missing the mark on any of the above, feel free to correct me.
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        > 5. this service does NOT discourage people from signing up for OKC, Match, POF, etc...in my view it encourages participation in those services (whether implicitly or explicitly). As far as I understand it from the copy on Dating Ring's web page, their service is meant to replace all those dating sites. It's a fire-and-forget product that frees you from the need of maintaining an on-line profile and visiting a dating site - discouraging people from singing up for OKC is exactly what it is meant to do.
    - weixiyen 12y ago
      Paid advertising rarely works. I think the growth hack is pretty clever. Perhaps they should pay to be allowed to growth hack.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
        Did you seriously just say that "paid advertising rarely works?" Really? You believe that the entire 50 $billion Internet advertising industry is just wasting its money?
        TeMPOraL 12y ago
        I think that "paid advertising rarely works" is actually true and yes, the whole (Internet or not) advertising industry is really wasting tons of money - and more importantly, fuel and labor. The thing is, marketing is mostly zero-sum game; people are stuck in a negative feedback loop of throwing more and more money to one-up their competitors at attracting customers from the same limited pool. It's an unlimited resource sink, but it's a) what you have to do lest you get outcompeted by others, and b) profitable for those who facilitate advertising. Weixiyen is also right that this "growth hack" is effective, but remember that "growth hacking" is mostly a fancy term for spamming / abusing trust. Every new way to trick people into buying something will work for a while, until everyone else starts doing the same and the ROI drops to zero. Once upon a time, a pop-up banner was the clever growth hacking trick. As HN's idlewords tells the story, "One of the first banner ads had a click-through rate of 78%. That's mind-boggling. Do you know what two words were on that banner ad? "Shop Naked!" CLICK! But banner ads turned out to be like poison ivy. People clicked them once, and learned never to touch them again. The industry collapsed in a flurry of pop-overs, pop-unders, and shame." http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm
        weixiyen 12y ago
        I could have been more specific, but paying for advertising on OKCupid for this startup in particular is just not going to work. It's not cost effective and very few people will be clicking through on those ads. I guess the better way to put it is that if your startup has to resort to paid advertising as the main user acquisition funnel, you probably already lost unless you have ridiculous conversion and LTV on each user.
- Meekro 12y ago
  Spam is in the eye of the receiver. Someone with an empty OkCupid inbox would probably be glad to get a "I know someone you'd be perfect for!" message. Maybe that's still against OkCupid's ToS, I don't know, but if I was the recipient I wouldn't really care. If it was just generic "come sign up for our new dating service!" messages, I'd agree with you, but that's not what they were doing.
  - adamio 12y ago
    It would not be spam if this startup was only giving it's customers links to great matching OkCupid profiles
  - shostack 12y ago
    The problem with this is that every dating site out there looking to grow their user base might see that as a viable strategy. If it were to become more common (not sure how common it is actually...probably very), that could result in an overall poor experience for OKCupid users who would associate using the service with receiving spam that never netted out to anything. There is nothing wrong with OKCupid drawing the line on another service trying to get "free" marketing on its dime and at the expense of its user experience.
    - Meekro 12y ago
      I agree with your last paragraph. If I were OkCupid, I would try to prevent people from doing this. If I were Dating Ring, I would try to do this. And if I were an OkCupid user, I would feel gratitude towards anyone who arranged a date for me, Terms of Service be damned. That said, if it never amounted to anything -- as in, I got Dating Ring spam promising dates that never materialized, I would be pretty pissed.
      - shostack 12y ago
        If it did amount to something, sure, users would be happy. However my point was that it is not exclusively Dating Ring doing this. It is important to consider the overall signal to noise ratio when you factor in the messages from Dating Ring and any other company out there trying to use OKCupid's platform to promote themselves. OkCupid, barring the creation of a program/partnership specific to this case, has decided that overall, it is worth filtering out. If they thought it added value based on the data they had, they would try to partner with Dating Ring. Heck, it would likely have been fine if Dating Ring purchased ad inventory on their site. As it stands, it seems they view this approach as spam per the OP. If it is against their terms, Dating Ring doesn't have much leg to stand on as that would make it a pretty black and white situation. Part of me wonders if a Cease & Desist is en route to Dating Ring's office.
- downandout 12y ago
  Hmmm...that's a curious definition of both "unsolicited" and "spam". If you post a profile on a dating site, are you not soliciting responses? As for spam, if someone contacts me for the very purpose which I have solicited responses for (in this case, finding someone to date) I would hardly call that spam.
  - minimaxir 12y ago
    You're soliciting responses from OKCupid, not from a direct competitor.
    - downandout 12y ago
      You're soliciting responses for a date. If someone responds with "we have someone we want to set you up with"....that gets me to my goal of finding a date. I don't think real users looking for dates make the distinction that you are.
  - laurenkay 12y ago
    @Minimaxr - Calling us a direct competitor is a HUGE compliment. Thank you! I've talked to people at OkC and they could care less about us now. We're peanuts compared to them. Also, they have really good spam filters etc, so they can (and do) kick us off whenever they want.
    - prawn 12y ago
      Someone from OKC posted above and asked you to stop. Why make them do it with spam filters!? Just honour their request.
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        Exactly. Playing fair and showing friendliness can go a long way. Isn't that what YC teaches, by the way?
  - untog 12y ago
    are you not soliciting responses? Yeah, from a prospective date, not a matchmaker. A similar situation: posting a job ad and having a recruiter reply to it trying to sell you their services, rather than a prospective employee. If you've ever been in that situation you'd know that it isn't a comparable response, and is just irritating spam that results in an instant delete.
minimaxir 12y ago
That's not being altruistic, that's poaching.
prawn 12y ago
When I receive spam or people abuse services I run, I don't care what position they hold within a company or what time of morning it is. Play fair or don't play.
mikeash 12y ago
"You're on OkCupid for dates, right? So we're trying to help" I hope you realize that this is almost word-for-word what any telemarketer or spammer will say about what they do. They're just trying to help you! I've never used it, but I'm guessing that people don't sign up for OkCupid because they want messages from Premium Matchmakers. You're spamming them. It doesn't matter how much you think you're helping.
tempestn 12y ago
I think part of the problem here is that there isn't a lot of information on exactly what you're offering the people you contact. Given that goodside referred to it as spam, the default assumption is going to be ... it's spam. And indeed, asking for some "slack" isn't going to get you any sympathy on HN, nor should it honestly. However, what might help is to explain in more detail exactly what you're doing, and be open to suggestions on how to improve it, while hopefully still maintaining some marketing benefit. For example, if you contact someone with a message along the lines of, "Hi, we're _____, and we've got someone who's perfect for you. Just sign up for our service at _______ to get started!" that's definitely spam. No question about it. On the other hand, if the message is more like, "Hi, we're _____. We think one our clients, ________ would be a great match for you. You both enjoy _______, and in particular, he(she) like that you mentioned _________. Here's a link to his(her) profile. You can contact him(her) at _______." that doesn't look like spam to me at all. Effectively you're just acting as a proxy in that situation. The OKC user is indeed getting exactly what they're looking for. So I guess my point is, it all depends on the message. If you make them sign up for your service, spam. If your message is generic, spam. But if you give them information about a real person, and a way to contact them - ie exactly what they would expect to get in a message directly from another user - that seems fine from the user's perspective. Of course, OKC would likely still not appreciate your use of their service to facilitate competition. In that case, a better model might be to strictly act as the agent of your user; search OKC for them, and if you find a good match, help them create an account and message the user directly. Obviously this might require tweaking your model a bit.

adamio 12y ago

"Our Premium Matchmakers will contact someone if they have someone they want to set them up on a date with." This is unsolicited spam. And likely against OkCupid's terms of use.

zdean 12y ago
There's an entire ecosystem (though possibly not very robust) around providing services to people on dating services like helping with writing their profile. I've heard from a few people that it would be awesome to have someone just manage their dating profile for them. This service seems in some ways to add to that ecosystem and fill the need. I would think that OKC, etc. would in the end benefit from their contribution.
- railsdude 12y ago
  > I would think that OKC, etc. would in the end benefit from their contribution. That's BS and you know it. If that were the case, OP's startup should've bought ads on OKC and OKC would be glad to sell ad space. I really doubt that OKC or its parent company will sell ads to a competitor dating site.
  - jonathanjaeger 12y ago
    OkCupid does have big ads for PlentyOfFish on their logout screen. They do allow ads, but of course, PlentyOfFish is paying for that ad space. Many niche or competitor dating sites advertise on other dating sites, but since it's paid advertising, the benefits outweigh the possible loss of users (think of it as shared users?).
  - zdean 12y ago
    Ignoring the fact that you're calling me dishonest for a moment, here's how I see it: 1. OKC is a listing of profiles where the lister is expected to manage the transaction 2. The management of the transaction is a huge friction and pain point for a significant number of people (as is writing a profile, taking pics, etc...for which there are also people that help). 3. this service reduces/removes that friction/pain point for okc. 4. this service is NOT a listing of profiles (as far as I can tell) 5. this service does NOT discourage people from signing up for OKC, Match, POF, etc...in my view it encourages participation in those services (whether implicitly or explicitly). If I'm missing the mark on any of the above, feel free to correct me.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      > 5. this service does NOT discourage people from signing up for OKC, Match, POF, etc...in my view it encourages participation in those services (whether implicitly or explicitly). As far as I understand it from the copy on Dating Ring's web page, their service is meant to replace all those dating sites. It's a fire-and-forget product that frees you from the need of maintaining an on-line profile and visiting a dating site - discouraging people from singing up for OKC is exactly what it is meant to do.
  - weixiyen 12y ago
    Paid advertising rarely works. I think the growth hack is pretty clever. Perhaps they should pay to be allowed to growth hack.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
      Did you seriously just say that "paid advertising rarely works?" Really? You believe that the entire 50 $billion Internet advertising industry is just wasting its money?
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        I think that "paid advertising rarely works" is actually true and yes, the whole (Internet or not) advertising industry is really wasting tons of money - and more importantly, fuel and labor. The thing is, marketing is mostly zero-sum game; people are stuck in a negative feedback loop of throwing more and more money to one-up their competitors at attracting customers from the same limited pool. It's an unlimited resource sink, but it's a) what you have to do lest you get outcompeted by others, and b) profitable for those who facilitate advertising. Weixiyen is also right that this "growth hack" is effective, but remember that "growth hacking" is mostly a fancy term for spamming / abusing trust. Every new way to trick people into buying something will work for a while, until everyone else starts doing the same and the ROI drops to zero. Once upon a time, a pop-up banner was the clever growth hacking trick. As HN's idlewords tells the story, "One of the first banner ads had a click-through rate of 78%. That's mind-boggling. Do you know what two words were on that banner ad? "Shop Naked!" CLICK! But banner ads turned out to be like poison ivy. People clicked them once, and learned never to touch them again. The industry collapsed in a flurry of pop-overs, pop-unders, and shame." http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm
      - weixiyen 12y ago
        I could have been more specific, but paying for advertising on OKCupid for this startup in particular is just not going to work. It's not cost effective and very few people will be clicking through on those ads. I guess the better way to put it is that if your startup has to resort to paid advertising as the main user acquisition funnel, you probably already lost unless you have ridiculous conversion and LTV on each user.
Meekro 12y ago
Spam is in the eye of the receiver. Someone with an empty OkCupid inbox would probably be glad to get a "I know someone you'd be perfect for!" message. Maybe that's still against OkCupid's ToS, I don't know, but if I was the recipient I wouldn't really care. If it was just generic "come sign up for our new dating service!" messages, I'd agree with you, but that's not what they were doing.
- adamio 12y ago
  It would not be spam if this startup was only giving it's customers links to great matching OkCupid profiles
- shostack 12y ago
  The problem with this is that every dating site out there looking to grow their user base might see that as a viable strategy. If it were to become more common (not sure how common it is actually...probably very), that could result in an overall poor experience for OKCupid users who would associate using the service with receiving spam that never netted out to anything. There is nothing wrong with OKCupid drawing the line on another service trying to get "free" marketing on its dime and at the expense of its user experience.
  - Meekro 12y ago
    I agree with your last paragraph. If I were OkCupid, I would try to prevent people from doing this. If I were Dating Ring, I would try to do this. And if I were an OkCupid user, I would feel gratitude towards anyone who arranged a date for me, Terms of Service be damned. That said, if it never amounted to anything -- as in, I got Dating Ring spam promising dates that never materialized, I would be pretty pissed.
    - shostack 12y ago
      If it did amount to something, sure, users would be happy. However my point was that it is not exclusively Dating Ring doing this. It is important to consider the overall signal to noise ratio when you factor in the messages from Dating Ring and any other company out there trying to use OKCupid's platform to promote themselves. OkCupid, barring the creation of a program/partnership specific to this case, has decided that overall, it is worth filtering out. If they thought it added value based on the data they had, they would try to partner with Dating Ring. Heck, it would likely have been fine if Dating Ring purchased ad inventory on their site. As it stands, it seems they view this approach as spam per the OP. If it is against their terms, Dating Ring doesn't have much leg to stand on as that would make it a pretty black and white situation. Part of me wonders if a Cease & Desist is en route to Dating Ring's office.
downandout 12y ago
Hmmm...that's a curious definition of both "unsolicited" and "spam". If you post a profile on a dating site, are you not soliciting responses? As for spam, if someone contacts me for the very purpose which I have solicited responses for (in this case, finding someone to date) I would hardly call that spam.
- minimaxir 12y ago
  You're soliciting responses from OKCupid, not from a direct competitor.
  - downandout 12y ago
    You're soliciting responses for a date. If someone responds with "we have someone we want to set you up with"....that gets me to my goal of finding a date. I don't think real users looking for dates make the distinction that you are.
- laurenkay 12y ago
  @Minimaxr - Calling us a direct competitor is a HUGE compliment. Thank you! I've talked to people at OkC and they could care less about us now. We're peanuts compared to them. Also, they have really good spam filters etc, so they can (and do) kick us off whenever they want.
  - prawn 12y ago
    Someone from OKC posted above and asked you to stop. Why make them do it with spam filters!? Just honour their request.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Exactly. Playing fair and showing friendliness can go a long way. Isn't that what YC teaches, by the way?
- untog 12y ago
  are you not soliciting responses? Yeah, from a prospective date, not a matchmaker. A similar situation: posting a job ad and having a recruiter reply to it trying to sell you their services, rather than a prospective employee. If you've ever been in that situation you'd know that it isn't a comparable response, and is just irritating spam that results in an instant delete.

minimaxir 12y ago

That's not being altruistic, that's poaching.

prawn 12y ago

When I receive spam or people abuse services I run, I don't care what position they hold within a company or what time of morning it is. Play fair or don't play.

mikeash 12y ago

"You're on OkCupid for dates, right? So we're trying to help" I hope you realize that this is almost word-for-word what any telemarketer or spammer will say about what they do. They're just trying to help you! I've never used it, but I'm guessing that people don't sign up for OkCupid because they want messages from Premium Matchmakers. You're spamming them. It doesn't matter how much you think you're helping.

tempestn 12y ago

I think part of the problem here is that there isn't a lot of information on exactly what you're offering the people you contact. Given that goodside referred to it as spam, the default assumption is going to be ... it's spam. And indeed, asking for some "slack" isn't going to get you any sympathy on HN, nor should it honestly. However, what might help is to explain in more detail exactly what you're doing, and be open to suggestions on how to improve it, while hopefully still maintaining some marketing benefit. For example, if you contact someone with a message along the lines of, "Hi, we're _____, and we've got someone who's perfect for you. Just sign up for our service at _______ to get started!" that's definitely spam. No question about it. On the other hand, if the message is more like, "Hi, we're _____. We think one our clients, ________ would be a great match for you. You both enjoy _______, and in particular, he(she) like that you mentioned _________. Here's a link to his(her) profile. You can contact him(her) at _______." that doesn't look like spam to me at all. Effectively you're just acting as a proxy in that situation. The OKC user is indeed getting exactly what they're looking for. So I guess my point is, it all depends on the message. If you make them sign up for your service, spam. If your message is generic, spam. But if you give them information about a real person, and a way to contact them - ie exactly what they would expect to get in a message directly from another user - that seems fine from the user's perspective. Of course, OKC would likely still not appreciate your use of their service to facilitate competition. In that case, a better model might be to strictly act as the agent of your user; search OKC for them, and if you find a good match, help them create an account and message the user directly. Obviously this might require tweaking your model a bit.