Subject: Planning a _good_ Dating Site

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 14:12:49 +0300

"I am a [male] seeking a [female] between [20]-[30]."

Super. But what if I have any hair colour preference? Or area of residence? Or 
wish to have some common interests? Or don't want her to like the Opera 
because I find it so boring? Come on. Even Paul Graham said the state of the 
art in dating services suck.

Here's my plan:

1. Each user edits his profile that contains any information he'd like to put 
there (relational). He will have a lot of aiding but optional JavaScript, to 
facilitate filling the form. (possibly while having a no-javascript version 
of the form for accessibility). Not AJAX mind you, just plain old HTML 
controls and buttons.

2. He can specify his or her:
- Hair colour
- Age
- Gender (dah!)
- Sorry but there would be a separate site for both genders' homosexual 
tendencies. I'm not outcasting anyone, I'm simplifying an already complex 
topic. Naturally, however, the user may serialize his information into an XML 
record, with a specified well-documented schema to transfer to other sites or 
store for prosperity.
- Area of Residence.
- Eye colour (more minor than hair but nonetheless).
- Areas of interest, hobbies, etc.
- You get the drift.
- Links to homepages. (as many as say 10)
- Links to weblogs. (as many as say 20)
- E-mail address.
- Disabilities, allergies, etc. [1]
- 

3. He can specify his preferences for his S.O. as:
- Preferred hair colours.
- Preferred age.
- No preferred gender - derives from sites' context.
- Other locations that are OK.
- You get the drift

4. He can maintain a blog about his romantic activities, thoughts and feelings 
(or anything else he find appropriate) with nested comments.

Now how will matches be found? It's simple and complicated at the same time: 
using a customizable weight function. There will be a default one and some 
pre-defined customary ones, and users can share their own customized searches 
(exported to text) on the Internet.

Here's a workplan for deployment:

1. Working prototype using Ruby-on-Rails and PostgreSQL or Firebird - 3 weeks.

2. Deployment of the working prototype in one's native country, and for a 
niche . (instanenous. Requires 

3. Re-implementing the code in Perl or Python and generalizing it (no, Chen, 
speed is not the issue here. Popularity, language sentiments and 
ubiquitousness are.). -  6 weeks.

4. Collecting the necessary data from Public Domain data (interests tree, 
possible job/position trees and areas, etc.) - 2 weeks. (a matter of a few 
Perl/etc. scripts at most part).
 
5. Deploying on a larger scale for an international audience - instaneous. 

Success percent: ?

So, what do you think. Got a match?

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

[1] Sorry Omer, but matching a deaf person with a blind one will not be very 
effective. So is matching a smoker with someone who is allergic to Nicotaine. 
This field is optional, of course.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      [email-masked]
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

Hacker sees bug. Hacker fixes bug.

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From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 20:26:38 +0300

> art in dating services suck.

[... snipped ...]

The important thing in planning a good dating site is not the
technicalities but the psychological/sociological issues.

People consider having to use the services of a dating site as admission
of failure or lower self-worth.  So they prefer to keep this secret.
This is probably in the spectrum as males going to prostitutes after not
scoring any female in a party or a pub; or women falsifying their age
downwards.

So the ideal dating site would allow visitors to come, browse, see the
"goodies" but without revealing themselves.  Of course, this conflicts
with the need of the dating site to get visitors to make themselves
available as "goodies".

Another considration is to reduce the chances of rejection midway by
allowing people to pre-filter the goodies before they invest time and
emotions in a new acquaintance.  Therefore a dating site should be
specific about the target population, such as "religious", "Jewish",
"having a disability", etc.

But there are already dating sites for those target populations.  Since
they are subject to the network effect, establishing a new dating Web
site is not a good idea.  But negotiating with the operators of an
existing dating site to add support for your pet target population
should be a good idea.
                                               --- Omer
-- 
Every good master plan involves building a time machine.  Moshe Zadka
My own blog is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tddpirate/

My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone.
They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which
I may be affiliated in any way.
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

---

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 20:33:58 +0300

As I reflect about the difficulties of single male geeks in finding
female mates, I have the following idea.

One of the organizations of geeks, of which I know, is the Hamakor
(http://www.hamakor.org.il/).  This organization seems to be typical in
having unbalanced male/female ratio.

I suggest that those single males who are members of this organization,
explore the possibility of organizing joint events with nonprofits
having the following characteristics:
1. Professionals (like teachers with at least B.A. or social workers).
2. unbalanced female/male ratio (having much more females than males).
3. Typical male geeks, who are married, would be married to females
having this kind of profession (like the old adage about Technion
engineers tending to marry teachers).

Such joint events would allow people to get acquainted with each other,
while neutralizing the "first impression effect".  They will be able to
gauge each other's real worth in terms of working and playing together
in events - rather than trying to impress each other in blind dates.

The events should involve large number of volunteer organizers from both
male-dominated and female-dominated organizations.
                                                        --- Omer
-- 
Every good master plan involves building a time machine.  Moshe Zadka
My own blog is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tddpirate/

---

From: cyphunk <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 19:16:48 +0300

I'm not quite sure I see how your dating site would differ from the others.

While on the topic, perhaps try making a dating site that connects 
people based on any of the following:
* Similarity in musical taste using audio scrobbler rss feeds:
   http://audioscrobbler.com/user/cyphunk
   rss feed: http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/rdf/history/cyphunk
* Similarity in general blog feeds.
   For this the user would export an OPML file from their favorite blog 
RSS reader.
* Similarity in bookmarked sites
   User would upload their bookmark or favorite files.
* Similarity in frequented sites
   For this you would need to write an extension for firefox and
   ie, which would monitor the url history record.
* With the information from the history (above) find people that have 
similar search terms

Of course, this assumes your preference is not such that you are looking 
for someone that doesn't even use a computer (yeah, wouldn't that be 
lovely... honestly).

Shlomi Fish wrote:

>Yahoo! Groups Links

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From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 11:22:28 +0300

> art in dating services suck.

Maybe Paul Graham, like you, never actually tried to look at those dating
sites? I suggest you do.

I know for a fact that there are a number of them that do provide every
one of the features you ask for, and more. They let you search for other
people that are "close" to you in their features, or even better: they let you
specify which features to look for, and how important each feature is
for you. So, regardless your own charactersitics, you might specify that
you're looking for someone who's a non-smoker (saying that it's non-
negotiable), tall (important), lives in your part of the country (important),
BA or up (minor importance), don't care about hair color, and so on.
But at the same time, the girls also have these search profiles set up,
so while a certain girl might fit your search, you don't fit hers (say,
because your hair is not blonde), so she doesn't come up in your search
results.

This is basically exactly what you asked for.

Just remember, don't just ask for "preferred hair colors" and stuff -
also give the option "I don't care about hair color". Some of us don't
think that love depends on trivialities like specific hair colors or
height.

> 5. Deploying on a larger scale for an international audience - instaneous. 

Forget about it. If you're interested in Israel, make sure everything on
your site is 100% Hebrew. And remember that Israelis will not want to date
people from Sweden - think local.

> Success percent: ?

Your biggest problem will be to start building the user base. Nobody
will like to add themselves to an empty database. To convince people
to enter, you'll need to ensure them privacy (which means the software
may be free, but you mustn't share the data unless under strict guidelines!),
and a very good interface.

A good selling point will also to ensure people that the site will remain
100% free forever. Many people feel "cheap" if they need to pay for finding
a date, but using a free service which you feel is only a search infrastructure
and you do the searching yourself, is in some ways less embarrasing.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |      Thursday, May 12 2005, 3 Iyyar 5765
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |We could wipe out world hunger if we knew
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |how to make AOL's Free CD's edible!

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From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 11:27:18 +0300

>    For this the user would export an OPML file from their favorite blog 

This is all really silly. How many married couples you know have very similar
musical tastes, or similar blog feeds? Heck, in most married couples I know,
only one of them is computer savvy, and the other would not have a blog at
all.

So this is a really bad way to match people up, unless you insist to be
matched up with only someone who's nearly identical to yourself... This
is perhaps a good way to find friends to talk computer programming with,
but probably not the best way to find a spouse.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |      Thursday, May 12 2005, 3 Iyyar 5765
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |A smart man always covers his ass. A wise
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |man just keeps his pants on.

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 11:44:38 +0300

On Thursday 12 May 2005 11:22, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> > Super. But what if I have any hair colour preference? Or area of
> > residence? Or wish to have some common interests? Or don't want her to
> > like the Opera because I find it so boring? Come on. Even Paul Graham
> > said the state of the art in dating services suck.
>
> people that are "close" to you in their features, or even better: they let
> you specify which features to look for, and how important each feature is
> negotiable), tall (important), lives in your part of the country
> (important), BA or up (minor importance), don't care about hair color, and
> so on. But at the same time, the girls also have these search profiles set
> up, so while a certain girl might fit your search, you don't fit hers (say,

Hmmm... this is good.

> think that love depends on trivialities like specific hair colors or

Right. You can always specify "I don't care." In any case, I should note that 
one site I encountered (actually for matching electronic pen-pals) was pretty 
bad. All it did was offer a long list of the people who registered, with no 
way to search on except for age or gender... %-) Now, naturally I'd like to 
correspond with someone who shares some of my common interests.

After putting myself there, I received exactly one E-mail from someone who 
wanted to correspond with it. I did not reply to it because I had suspicion 
for spam.

> people from Sweden - think local.

As I told a correspondant, you need to have a specific site for each country 
or region of countries. The differences in culture, tastes, and other facts, 
are too great to be able to create one site for each culture.

> may be free, but you mustn't share the data unless under strict
> guidelines!), and a very good interface.
>
> a date, but using a free service which you feel is only a search
> infrastructure and you do the searching yourself, is in some ways less
> embarrasing.

Well, I should note that this is just an idea I had, and have no intention of 
implementing it myself. Also note that a person may not necessarily have to 
search for people with interests similar to his or her own. He can search for 
anything he pleases.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish (who is now looking for a girlfriend).

Tcl is LISP on drugs. Using strings instead of S-expressions for closures
is Evil with one of those gigantic E's you can find at the beginning of 
paragraphs.

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From: cyphunk <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 00:11:58 +0300

I guess the MIT's project which connects people based on their common 
hang out spots and routines (using Serendipity http://www.mobule.com/) 
is also useless:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-03/ns-tdg031704.php

While you might be right that it wont make a happy match, it is 
generally what many people look for initially in whomever they meet or 
date (that is, similarities that they can relate to).  The first 
question I ask of any potential friend is what type of music they listen 
to.  I'm not saying I am the majority, but it *can* work, I would believe.

---

From: cyphunk <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 00:27:26 +0300

Also, the features I listed could be used for exclusion instead of 
inclusion.  For instance, I'd like to search for [inclusions criteria] 
but please exclude anyone from my list that frequents a7.org.il, listens 
to Britney spears, etc.

cyphunk wrote:

> question I ask of any potential friend is what type of music they 
> listen to.  I'm not saying I am the majority, but it *can* work, I 
> would believe.
>
> Nadav Har'El wrote:
>