I don't think "online dating" will ever work. Sexual attraction isn't about the kind of rational things you can communicate over our current, low-bandwidth digital connections. It is well and good to describe your personality with words and pictures, but in most cases it isn't enough. It might even be counterproductive for people who are unable to look good in a photograph.<p>The things described in the linked post (commonalities) <i>are</i> important parts of dating and attraction, but initial attraction is much more about the subtle things: Body language, subtle personality cues like clothing and hair style, all sorts of instant non-verbal communication, social proof etc. So either you have to remove these factors from the equation entirely (I can't really see how to do this) or you have to make an arena where they can be properly expressed.<p>This would mean, essentially, arranging real-life encounters where everybody has a decent chance at relaxing and being themselves. The thing is, nightclubs do a pretty good job at this already. The biggest solvable problem of nightclubs is differentiation; if you go to a nightclub you invariably meet the outgoing, confident, secure club crowd. It's always a high-pressure arena. But actually, relaxing and being yourself around strangers is pretty damn difficult as it is.<p>This is just the basic human part of the problem. But there are much deeper issues to think about. Sexuality and relationships are a very sore and difficult part of human nature, and it is never rational. There are chaotic, unmapped social issues here as well; for example a lot of women are interested in sex just for the physical thrill but have a huge social barrier against casual relationships. On the casual dating scene, this manifests itself as a series of games of playing hard-to-get, blaming alcohol for a successful one-night-stand, etc. I don't think <i>anyone</i> has the vaguest idea of all the other similar, irrational cultural norms that will bite you in the ass if you try to tame this problem.<p>Online dating is difficult because<p>+It is hard to convey your personality over an internet connection<p>+No one is able to tell you what you're doing wrong, since the rational and quantifiable part of dating is so small<p>+There are a lot of unmapped social and human behaviors that will fuck things up<p>Basically, I'd just try to tackle some difficult technical field instead. Human sexuality is too chaotic and hard to quantify.<p>However, I <i>do</i> like your idea of using an existing social network to bootstrap the thing. It is the best solution of the chicken/egg-problem I have heard.
Your idea is pretty good. I signed up for OK Cupid a while back and repurposed the photos and certain other information from my FB profile. It would have been nice to just auto-import.<p>I would take a look at OK Cupid, if you haven't. The other dating sites like Match or eHarmony seem very "find your future husband or wife" oriented. The other end of the scale, AdultFriendFinder or even the Onion / Nerve personals are very ghetto/spammy and seem to be best suited for ugly people into weird sex stuff, or actual prostitutes.<p>OK Cupid has worked out very well for me in finding people who just want to go out on a few dates and have fun without the pretense of sizing me up for marriage or whether or not I'll fit into a harness in the dungeon.<p>If there was an iPhone app for OkCupid it would be nearly perfect. (for actual "dating.")
I am not sure if this is ok to post - I checked the guidelines but found nothing against this. If there is some kind of policy against for feedback like this, I will delete my post.
This is definitely not meant to be some kind of ad, just an honest wish for feedback on my conceptual idea. I hope that's ok?<p>I am new to HN, but Paul Graham had dating on his "ideas" list for startups he would like to fund, so I thought HN might be a good place to discuss it.
So I don't mean to spam this thread (I already posted as a response to another comment), but I do want to encourage people to check out our disruptive online dating startup: <a href="http://flowmingle.com" rel="nofollow">http://flowmingle.com</a><p>No profiles, no matchmaking tests. We built the site to be inherently social and group oriented. We make no claims about 'finding love' or 'finding a soulmate', our site is optimized to make introductions between like people, help them set up a meeting, and then get out of the way.<p>Basically, we create small local groups of similar people an d then lead them through a guided introduction process that lasts a week. At the end of the week we help people connect and plan a meeting. Check us out.
... The big thing the article seems to skip over is the fact that people on an online dating site are actually LOOKING to date someone. While people on your friends of friends social network may or may not be. And approaching someone online without that context established is considered creepy, and especially so considering you're putting your 1st degree friend in the middle of it.<p>Someone may argue that the search should be restricted to facebook ppl with "looking for guys/girls" checked in their profile, but in my experience almost noone checks those for fear of looking desperate to their other friends.
I always thought a good online dating site should have you _do_ stuff with somebody else. Like playing a game and chatting at the same time, or talking on a certain topic - stuff that would make initial interaction easier. I think this is more important then selecting your best partner, and then just giving you his/hers email address.
Well, there are plenty of social dating apps on Facebook at the moment. :) so I guess the model works.<p>Making one cross network might not work so well: I wouldnt really see it working for, say, linkedin (too business oriented), Twitter (lack of info), Myspace (too young a crowd). Facebook would probably tend to be the target for this model.
"How it certainly doesn’t work is by going into a predefined building - sometimes even with an access fee - and only finding potential partners in there."<p>Actually, certain kinds of dating work exactly like this, and translate well to the online model. It's just that most people don't want to live that way.
Yeah, funny, I was thinking of a similar principle. However, mine is slightly different. You match people using collaborative filtering techniques based on your social network profile (bayesian filtering, for example. . .). Then you via gps on your cell phone. IE, if two likely matches happen to be geographically close to each other, the cell phone tells both of you "hey, you guys would be a good match . . . would you like to hook up at a nearby coffee place?". If both say yes, the cell phone will allow you to meet at a local coffee place (or whatever).<p>The point is is to have a weird excuse to interact briefly. Just by a brief encounter one can know if that person is his/her type.
Take a look at Zoosk for an example of your idea in action. It may not be a one for one to what you envisioned but they are using social networking applications to add users to a central dating site and seems to work fairly well.
fta:<p>"How it[real life] certainly doesn’t work is by going into a predefined building - sometimes even with an access fee - and only finding potential partners in there."<p>Sounds like the writer has never gone clubbing before ...<p>In other news, the writer has never used MySpace either (before it got hijacked by spammers)