Ask HN: What's wrong with all those dating sites?

I used to work at OkCupid. I could talk to you at length about the ups and downs and ins and outs of online dating, but the moral of the story I gleaned from my time there can be summed up pretty easily:<p>People just want a <i>ton</i> of attractive/dateable people within a keyboard's reach, and if your site does any filtering on their behalf, people need to trust that it actually works.<p>Most of the variations in online dating sites focus on optimizing pieces of that. The big guys (Match.com, eHarmony) make sure they get huge user numbers by campaigning on national TV, and they apply some simple internal filters that are 'approved by a doctor.' Smaller sites can't compete with that, so concentrate more on making sure you only run into people you'd actually be attracted to (see JDate). OkCupid's on the smaller side, and focuses on community building (for numbers) and uses mathematically semi-sound calculation coupled with quiz questions to create a user-driven but rigorous-feeling people filter. Basically everyone that's successful fits somewhere in that model.<p>If I were you, I would focus less on specific features or trying to build a better datetrap. Instead, figure out what it'll take for you to get fifty thousand people signed up, approximately all at the same time, and then how you'll keep the site growing over time. If you get big numbers, the dating stuff will follow (MySpace...).

There's nothing wrong with the dating services. The people are broken.<p>People lie. Solve that one and you may have something. (True.com tried to do this.)<p>Also, most dating sites act as a sort of amplification for the user's dating filters and skill at attracting interest. However, I believe that most people are lonely because their dating filters are broken, and because they have trouble attracting interest. Dating sites only help these people fail faster and at greater scale.<p>(Exception: tall women. They are not necessarily damaged, they really do have a sort of search problem that is more solveable at scale.)<p>I have started to think that a really successful dating site would start from the premise that the user is broken and cannot be relied on to find or choose a partner. Maybe use social networks so that their friends help them find someone? Or even anonymous strangers, for karma points? Straight women do this sort of thing anyway (straight guys tend to use these sites alone) and if a woman gets all her female friends to come on board, that helps solve the female-male ratio.

The biggest problem is that the incentive of the dating site is to make money, not to help people get together. If your service is really good at getting people together, boom! There goes your userbase as they all hook up and log off.<p>Financially speaking it is better to give users the ILLUSION of someone out there being for you, while stringing them along and milking them for as much cash as possible.

I think the fundamental problem is that the reason people are on most of these dating sites is because they can't find a date elsewhere. Building a good dating site means solving that problem: making dating online more intuitive than flirting in real life. This is hard, because you've got however many billion/million years of evolution working against you.<p>On the other hand, there are some groups for whom physical flirting is already cumbersome. Busy professionals/entrepreneurs (arguably above-average dating material) don't necessarily have time to chat up people at coffee shops. People of a particular faith or with a particular medical condition may be genuinely afraid of simply meeting random people. There has been some success with this sort of 'longtail/niche' dating site.

how about the simple fact that it doesn't work?<p>1) In the real world, you compete for the woman's attention only with people she sees throughout her day. Out of which maybe 5 will initiate a conversation.<p>On the net, same woman, you are competing with every single guy within 50 miles. Out of which almost every single one will initiate a conversation.<p>2) In the real world, you see the woman as she is.<p>On the web, you see myspace angles, copy pastes of likes/dislikes. And lets not forget all those bots and guys pretending to be a girl .<p>3) You gotta remember that if a woman is good looking, there is ABSOLUTELY no reason for her to go on a crappy dating site. Its not like she doesn't get offered dates everywhere she goes.<p>Same goes for the guys really, you'll have much higher chances if you start asking women in the real world.

Semirecently got out of a long relationship. So long that I was basically a kid when it started and if there was such a thing as a dating site on the Internet at the time I knew nothing about it.<p>I've not tried any dating sites. Why?<p>1. The factors that attract me to a girl are difficult to quantify and encode digitally. But relatively easy to sense in a face-to-face interaction.<p>2. I trust my own senses and instincts more than second or third parties when it comes to gleaning truthful information about someone. I am confident in my ability to read people in face-to-face situations. Why put a computer in the middle given that it essentially hobbles that critical ability?<p>3. I believe seconds/minutes/hours spent messing around with dating websites would be better spent out in the wild meeting, hanging out with and getting to know girls in person.<p>4. I suspect "permanently single" people are disproportionately attracted to these various tools and I'm better off fishing from a random sample to find who I'm looking for rather than a negatively biased sample. Or, ideally, I'm better fishing from a better-than-random sample biased, for example, by people I know and trust in the real world and THEIR extended circles of friends.<p>5. I strongly suspect that the hypothetical girl I like is basically feeling the same way and taking the same approach that I am.<p>Perhaps I'm off-base. And perhaps I will modify my views with time but this is what keeps me away from such sites currently.

As my data structures professor would say: "Bipartite matching is a hard problem, specially when it involves women!"<p>Seriously, though...<p>IMHO the most successful dating site would probably start off as a Linked In like social network, where you could have matches based on the people you know. Matching algorithms of any sort (like Match.com Chemistry.com eHarmony.com, etc use) could be used to improve the matches, but I think that having a "recommendation" from people you already trust would be a very big plus. This is probably why pre-existing social newtworks like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, et al usually end up being used for such purposes.

Hmmm to be honest nothing screams "Plan B" more than a dating site. Honestly I have never used the service because most of the women I date are from referrals from friends and family. So there's that element of trust right there. Made me feel safer! Maybe if you could build dating site that applies that element of trust. Maybe you could have the said "dater" try to earn some sort of "trust" points. Make it so that the more trust points they have. The better partner they are. This is just off the top of my head though and it worth experimenting.

Here are my thoughts on the topic.First in the real world people don't go around with profile info printed on their shirts, and mathematically filtering people based on that information. People in the real world interact and exchange information differently from what most dating sites do. I have a few online female friends(no girlfriends yet though) and I've met6 them all in different online communities. Mostly music sites like last.fm or different internet forums specialized in my favorite music genres. Basically if you want to make a dating site, don't, instead make an online community where people can interact and communicate about a specific topic of interest. Sites that just offer communication(myspace) might have a lot of users, but the users have to search for people with the same interests and stuff. In a specialized community, that problem is solved, and people can just discus stuff they like. In Bulgaria most dating sites are filled with 14-15 year whores who just want some attention, i wouldn't date girls like that, even if they were my age, they are just to boring(boring girl:I like music, and parties, and chatting with friends; interesting girl:dating sites are boring.)

Channeling PG for a moment: Make something people want.<p>I think that on the whole, most dating sites are more concerned with figuring out how to make a buck off someone than what their users want.<p>If you use Wordtrackers keyword tool which people normally use for SEO purposes and type in "dating"... 4 out of the top 10 keyword are related to free dating sites, but how many dating sites can you name that are free?<p>I can only think of one off the top of my head (penty of fish) - and Markus is making a killing with his site. [edit: if you take the social networks like facebook and myspace into account, you have a couple more - but the traffic to those sites is less qualified, IE not people specifically looking for dates]<p>I think that if you can build a decent site (it really doesn't have to be that fancy) that you can run free - I think you would have a better chance at success than simply trying to build more complex functionality and charge people for it.<p>Make the site simple, make it user friendly.

I think the key to a successful dating site is both privacy and safety. Women want to know that they are not going to get raped or be caught off guard with someone who has obviously lied about themselves. If you could establish a method that would allow people to feel secure with the site, it could go miles.<p>The other issue is privacy. By joining these sites, you are opening yourself up to not only your personality and private information but revealing your real identity online. If people could trust that the information about themselves or the interactions they have with other members would never be made public, I think you would see a surge in rates.

simple: girl to guy ratio

A new niche play might be to figure out how to adapt the dating genre to the iPhone. Maybe a GPS-based play.<p>But I think the key continues to be -- find a good niche. But not so nichey that only 8 people are interested.

Here's an interesting idea for a (niche) dating site:<p>One for people who spend more time reading books than watching tv or movies.

dating sites are too complicating. Most of the dating sites which I have seen lately make me sick to be honest. How can I find a match in the middle of a smog? I want less complex and more fun. Illuminate the complexity and you'll reach your goal.

Dating sites are a stupid idea in the first place. Your system or algorithm cannot ever hope to compete with 30 seconds of face to face interaction, ideally with that first meeting occurring by way of mutual friends.<p>Sorry, but building a better dating web site is trying to drive a nail with a screw driver. People who need help dating need a larger and more active social circle. They don't need a dating website. Anyone trying to sell a dating site will inevitably discover they're hawking snake oil and surrender to that reality.

These websites exist to solve people's problems in dating, and dating problems are like depression in that there are so many causes that it's impossible to find a single cure.<p>The bureaucratic categories that people have to box themselves into for many of these websites are not very useful. For example, "Christian/Protestant" and "Atheist/Agnostic/Other" are enormous categories. Instead of equality-matching over these bureaucratic buckets, a better matching question might be something like "Do you meditate?".<p>Dating ultimately comes down to interpersonal chemistry, which is very subjective. By contrast, online dating often comes down to objective criteria like race, age, and religious affiliation, which simply aren't usually relevant in predicting whether a match is possible.<p>If I were to build a dating site, I would:<p>1. Unapologetically make it a niche site for intellectuals, targeting people from solid schools and graduate programs. This is a group of people who (1) tend to prefer each other, and would pay a premium for an elite dating site, and (2) tend to have difficulty in dating that is not due to personality problems.<p>2. Use Amazon book-recommendations style comparisons to define a metric for "similar tastes" in books, movies, and hobbies, then match people based on that. My site would be AI-driven, because while interpersonal chemistry is really difficult to nail down, one can probably get closer by using similar artistic inclinations than by assessing people according to bureaucratic categories.<p>3. Concentrate on building a real off-line community, with meetups and speed-date events, which the dating site would supplement. This would implicitly imply that the site would be focused on a few major cities, at least when it started.