[Divorco]

PlentyofFish just created controversy by restricting age differences in messaging and eliminating the "Intimate Encounters" category. They are trying to reduce the spam of guys spamming women. For example, my 60-year-old acquaintance messaged 5,000 younger women without even getting a date! Yet my last online girlfriend was outside the new PlentyofFish age limit. Men will just lie about age now.

In my experience, PlentyofFish is too flaky. It is easy to make a profile, and women often leave them blank, correspond and then delete profiles, etc. Dumb men compensate by messaging more women, and the whole thing degenerates. OKCupid requires answering more questions. Eharmony requires completing a several-hour questionaire!

Remember, there are more men than women on these sites. So women are the scarce resource. They need hot women and alpha men. I think you want to penalize men for spamming, and penalize women for being attention whores and flakes. For example, you could charge per message or limit messages. OKCupid lets you know peoples' response rates.

[Blaster]

Generally, I'd want to design a site around DHVing men and forcing women to limit their options and make commitments to individual men.

1. I would prevent men from sending customized initial messages. Across the board. NO woman would get to judge a man's creativity by his opening salvo.
2. Most male profile information would be hidden at the start. The site would market the men to the women using teasers, and then women would have to engage with the men to unlock the additional pictures and personal information in the profile.
3. Men would still be tacitly expected to take the initiative with regards to arranging dates.
4. Ages would be hidden at all times. Age requirements could be specified and there would be some sort of system for dating photos.
5. There would be some sort of online forum or arena for men to do things where women could observe but not participate.
6. Women would be limited in the number of full male profiles they would be able to view at one time.

With all the restrictions on women, the only way this would work is if the site had good men on it and the site really sold them. Men would be marketed to the women but the women would NOT be marketed to the men. There would be no attempts to push older/uglier women on beta men who don't want them anyway.

Basically, apart from optional participation in forums/arenas and filling out profile information, men would not be expected to do anything proactive until a woman took interest in him. In fact he'd be prevented from doing so. Again this has the double benefit of keeping down spam to attractive women and helping men not shoot themselves in the foot with lame openers. This also levels the playing field a bit, which currently favors men who are really good at writing bullshit online profiles. The site would take care of the initial bullshitting.

[Caligula]

A well-functioning dating site is simply an extreme reflection of sexual marketplace dynamics.

Women choose just as they do offline. However, they can be more discerning because of the large pool of men. You'd get the same result if you put a woman in a giant speed-dating event with an unlimited cock supply. You get some of the same effect at clubs with bad ratios. So women become pickier and their egos are inflated. The reason it's easier to punch above your weight in a club that has three girls to each guy is that it's an inefficient marketplace.

OKC is a well-functioning site. It doesn't try to tell you how the sexual marketplace should work. It works with reality not against it; the site doesn't go against the grain.

OKC is an extreme reflection of underlying dynamics. Most dating sites fail because they have unrealistic ideas about how the marketplace SHOULD work. Sure you can make tweaks around the edges, but sites that try to change things drastically fail because they go against the fundamental laws of the sexual marketplace. Girls want to attention whore, be flaky and shop around and guys want to send out hundreds of messages. Those are pretty rational strategies. Sperm is cheap, eggs are valuable, etc.

Blaster says:

Quote:

There would be no attempts to push older/uglier women on beta men who don't want them anyway.

This isn't true. Even the most troglodyte looking butch feminist has a ton of men hitting her up online. Sad, but that's the way it goes. That's reality in the US, not how things should work in a healthy society.

Blaster says:

Quote:

apart from optional participation in forums/arenas and filling out profile information, men would not be expected to do anything proactive until a woman took interest in him.

This is like saying we should have nightclubs with ten women for every guy and the women should approach the guys. Hey, sounds great. Maybe Ali-B can pull it off with his slow-motion game, but it's like saying we should have airplanes that all have extra legroom and 32 inch screens for every passenger, but still cost the same to fly.

OKC is like an airplane in that it has a lot of moving parts and each is thoroughly thought out in their contribution to a viable business model. You can't change one factor and still expect the whole to work well. That OKC enables attention whoring is probably a good thing. It makes the site more sticky and means girls spend more time on it, talk about it to their friends, which creates more liquidity. Its mechanisms also mean that there's plausible deniability so girls will keep their profiles active even when in relationships. Sometimes they might even meet up with a player and get banged out while in a relationship. Again, that's good for market liquidity.

The more restrictions you introduce the higher the 'friction' of using the site and the less sticky it becomes. I signed up to Ashley Madison and was fed up by the constant limitations and how the site kept trying to nickle and dime me at every turn. They have to charge a lot because it costs them a lot to acquire users. The more restrictions you have the more expensive it becomes to acquire new users. One of the hardest things for dating sites is keeping user churn rates low. Look at conversations you had with girls on OKC a month ago and chances are 15-30% of them have deleted their profiles. And that's pretty good for dating sites in general. If you're paying to acquire users that eats your margins. So sites need to spread cheaply and virally. OKC uses tests and other entertainment for this.

Online dating is imperfect because offline dating is imperfect. It's hard to build a large, persistent audience on the cheap. Restrictions work against building an audience.

Trying to manipulate hardwired dynamics scares away the cat.

Every time a geek goes against the grain and tries to launch a dating site that ignores reality he gets burned. He may say "the POF interface is shit, and I'm constantly being rejected by disgusting fat girls who are below me on the dating totem pole, I can build something more efficient than that". The problem is the more efficient the marketplace, the worse the problems become. The more efficient the site the more girls love it and the harder it gets for all but the top 5% of men.

POF works because it allows the rules of the sexual marketplace to run their course. If you try to alter these dynamics you create a less efficient marketplace making it harder to build a viable business model around it. It works for niche sites like Ashley Madison or Boy Toy Warehouse or Adopt un mec but these will always be niche businesses.

It ain't pretty but it works. The people behind OKC are not idiots. The site may not work for our purposes but keep in mind players are a small (if active) subset of dating site users. You're never going to build a profitable dating site off the back of guys like us, so it doesn't make sense to cater specifically to our needs if you're after a viable business model.

[Divorco]

(05-21-2013 09:35 AM)Blaster Wrote:  

1. I would prevent men from sending customized initial messages. Across the board. NO woman would get to judge a man's creativity by his opening salvo.
4. some sort of system for dating photos.
6. Women would be limited in the number of full male profiles they would be able to view at one time.

1) Women will not take initiative. The silly site Herway.com allowed only women to initiate contact, and it didn't work. I write well and prefer to use my skill.

4) I think SugarDaddy tries to verify wealth/income. It would be great to verify height and weight as a reality check for delusional women.

6) EHarmony does not permit you to search profiles. They send you matches, and you must accept or reject. My ex-girlfriend complained that the cute guys do not accept her matches. I may eventually try it, because this must cut down on the hypergamy games. I'm better than 95% of the competition, but the easy access and "shopping" experience makes flaky women reject 99%. Ultimate they will score only 50%, so this helps them too.

[Fredster]

Just my thoughts:
1. Make sure the ratio of men to women is 1:1, so make a program that monitors the number of males in relation to females allowed to join.
Also monitor the ration of the intimate encounters section of the site.
2. Make the site centered around women, like publish some BS cosmos style articles( I don't know what women like, CBF about their likes and dislikes) to draw the women in to joining, this should increase the female users and allow them to join. And where the women join, the betas follow and the alphas swoop.
3. Only three initiation message allowed per day. Matches will be sent like e-harmony and you are to accept three matches a day to be allowed to send a second initiation message to another person.This should keep a lid on the beta-male thirstiness.
4. All users must have atleast 2 pictures of themselves.
5. If a user does not have activity for more than 1 week, then the profile is automatically deleted. Users have the option of deactivating should they be busy. This should make sure that the females are preselected.So only the ones that want to find a LTR/SNL/FB can message.

[Timoteo]

(05-21-2013 08:55 AM)Divorco Wrote:  

In my experience, PlentyofFish is too flaky. It is easy to make a profile, and women often leave them blank, correspond and then delete profiles, etc. Dumb men compensate by messaging more women, and the whole thing degenerates. OKCupid requires answering more questions. Eharmony requires completing a several-hour questionaire!

This is the first thing I'd try to change. I'd set each individual section of the profile so that you had to type a certain amount of characters. You'd HAVE to take the time to write something. The same with pics - there would have to be a minimum amount, and NOT the same pic several times. I understand that these sites want to run cheaply, so they can't have tons of employees policing the sites for certain things like spamming/fake profiles, etc., but I'd try hard to at least control this aspect.

[Timoteo]

(05-21-2013 11:32 AM)Timoteo Wrote:  

(05-21-2013 08:55 AM)Divorco Wrote:  

In my experience, PlentyofFish is too flaky. It is easy to make a profile, and women often leave them blank, correspond and then delete profiles, etc. Dumb men compensate by messaging more women, and the whole thing degenerates. OKCupid requires answering more questions. Eharmony requires completing a several-hour questionaire!

This is the first thing I'd try to change. I'd set each individual section of the profile so that you had to type a certain amount of characters. You'd HAVE to take the time to write something. The same with pics - there would have to be a minimum amount, and NOT the same pic several times. Women definitely don't like to initiate, but they can't have it both ways. If they're going to sit back and be selective, they have to give men some info to be able to make a better decision about who to message. I understand that these sites want to run cheaply, so they can't have tons of employees policing the sites for certain things like spamming/fake profiles, etc., but I'd try hard to at least control this aspect.

[Caligula]

(05-21-2013 11:32 AM)Timoteo Wrote:  

(05-21-2013 08:55 AM)Divorco Wrote:  

In my experience, PlentyofFish is too flaky. It is easy to make a profile, and women often leave them blank, correspond and then delete profiles, etc. Dumb men compensate by messaging more women, and the whole thing degenerates. OKCupid requires answering more questions. Eharmony requires completing a several-hour questionaire!

This is the first thing I'd try to change. I'd set each individual section of the profile so that you had to type a certain amount of characters. You'd HAVE to take the time to write something. The same with pics - there would have to be a minimum amount, and NOT the same pic several times. I understand that these sites want to run cheaply, so they can't have tons of employees policing the sites for certain things like spamming/fake profiles, etc., but I'd try hard to at least control this aspect.

I agree it would make for better quality, but the problem is it introduces 'friction' in that it scares away some users and reduces your conversion rate. That's fewer girls on the site, lost ad revenue and the potential loss of a paying user.

They've probably tested it and decided that the net positives outweigh the negatives.

[Blaster]

The site I described isn't intended to beat OKC at its own game. What you (Caligula) describe as its advantages are mostly true.

Quote:

It doesn't try to tell you how the sexual marketplace should work. It works with reality not against it; the site doesn't go against the grain.

This is true. But that makes it the one thing that they can't reasonably change. If I started a site with strong opinions about gender differences and built the site from the ground up without any pretense of equality, that's not something okcupid/match.com could respond to easily without building a whole new site and brand.

Quote:

The more restrictions you introduce the higher the 'friction' of using the site and the less sticky it becomes.

This is interesting but it kind of depends on what you mean by friction. I'd focus on adding friction to certain aspects of the pairing process, while eliminating friction in other parts of the process. The weakness (not flaw) of OKC is that there is so little friction in the messaging phase that men waste too much time writing messages and women waste too much time basking in all that attention without responding to any of it.

Quote:

Look at conversations you had with girls on OKC a month ago and chances are 15-30% of them have deleted their profiles.

Many of them will be back in 2 months though.

Quote:

If you're paying to acquire users that eats your margins. So sites need to spread cheaply and virally. OKC uses tests and other entertainment for this.

This is true and not necessarily easy but I don't see how the site I describe could not rely on these techniques.

Divorco Wrote:

1) Women will not take initiative. The silly site Herway.com allowed only women to initiate contact, and it didn't work.

Just because one site has failed to make it work doesn't mean the concept is flawed. There are lots of reasons why a start-ups might fail. For herway.com in particular I can think of any number of problems just based on the first page.

First, they're selling "men in general" to women. They need to sell men specifically to women specifically.

Second, they're trying to appeal to women's desire to take the lead which is something women say they want but not what they really want. If it was they'd just do that on okcupid and PoF. They should instead try appealing to female voyeurism and sell the opportunity to look at all the hot men and oh by the way maybe try to catch the attention of a few...

Third, it's way too much blues and pastels and safe women-oriented platitudes. What you want is a site that appears masculine and intimidating, but with just enough hooks and (honest) promises of discretion to make a curious girl want to venture inside to see what's there.

But then, herway.com only just launched a few months ago, it's really too soon to judge yet. Given that it's the same company who founded onlinebootycall, they may know something I don't as far as the pastels and such.

Divorco Wrote:

I write well and prefer to use my skill.

So use okcupid. Match.com. Plentyoffish. Start a blog. There are already a million options for someone like you that's why I wouldn't bother trying to build a site for you.

[Blaster]

(05-21-2013 11:02 AM)Divorco Wrote:  

6) EHarmony does not permit you to search profiles. They send you matches, and you must accept or reject. My ex-girlfriend complained that the cute guys do not accept her matches. I may eventually try it, because this must cut down on the hypergamy games. I'm better than 95% of the competition, but the easy access and "shopping" experience makes flaky women reject 99%. Ultimate they will score only 50%, so this helps them too.

Yes, that eHarmony did this was probably the single biggest reason it broke away from the pack back in the early 2000s before "online dating" was even a thing. The only other options at the time were sites like yahoo personals which were nothing but a gigantic waste of time. Any legitimately dateable women who tried to join would get loser omega messages, meanwhile all the dateable men couldn't find that one dataeable woman because they were sorting through hundreds of fakes and desperate overweight women. Okc and company have much improved anti-spam and search features.

The other thing eHarmony had was a "guided communication" process. The first thing you did was exchange a list of 5 multiple-choice questions. Sending the list was the equivalent of "hey I want to chat with you". After that you exchanged a list of pre-set "must haves" and "can't stands" that you could compare. The third phase was another set of question exchanges but this time they are more long-answer questions. Then you got this message from the CEO and could begin open communication. You could choose to reveal your picture at any stage of the communication process.

[cardguy]

One of the most famous behavioural economists in the world gave an interesting talk discussing what is wrong with online dating:

http://bigthink.com/videos/why-online-da...satisfying

Persoanlly - I think there is still alot of room for innovation in this field.

Also - does anyone know if those Grindr apps (for gay men looking for sex locally and straight away) have ever translated well into the hetrosexual market place? I am guessing it won't work - but I would be interested to know more.

I acan't remember if Dan Ariely mentions the following in the video above (since I think it is his idea)? But an idea I like is that you would have bubbles bouncing around a page. The pink ones would be women. And the blue ones would be men.

You then talk randomly to any bubbles you happen to be near. And if the conversation goes well - you then have the option of sharing photos and profiles.

It seems like a good way of people interacting in a relaxed environment - without prejudging who they are talking to. Also - the element of randomness makes it seem more 'romantic' (since chicks dig shit like fate).

And by not making the marketplace 'hyper-efficient' (ie the best-looking people simply pairing off with each other) it makes it more appealing for the regular person. Since an element of luck can help them get with people they would not otherwise end up with.

I keep meaning to try and address the pitfalls of Online Dating myself (since it is an interesting business challenge to ponder). But the above concept is the best I have come across for now.

Lastly - I have never used Online Dating. But - I have heard it is not possible to 'cut and paste' messages on Plenty Of Fish. This is to stop spamming of messages to lots of people. Well - I am just curious. I am guessing lots of spamming still goes on. Does that mean there is a way round the 'cut and paste' rule? Or are people just doing it the long way?

Also - if you could message thousands of women at the same time. I wonder if a clever variation of the following scam would be a neat way to apparently form a bond with them and make them think you have alot in common?

http://scams.wikispaces.com/Stockmarket+Tips

I haven't worked out the details yet. But there could be something in it. Maybe you could email bunches of women and say you were staring at her photo when you bet on a particular horse (and you would name it before the race started).

The you would keep winnowing it down to the 200 women or so - who (they think) has helped inspire you to win 5 races in a row. You would then say to them that the Gods have shown she is your lucky girl and you should meet up with her and celebrate by spending some of your (ficitious) winnings.

Seems a clever way to get a girl interested. The above is a classic scam - and the principle seems ideal for an online dating situation where you can email thousands of women at once.

PLEASE NOTE THE ABOVE IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY! :-)

Cardguy

PS Another great idea for an online dating site was the one for beautiful people only. You have to send in a few pictures of yourself (including one full-body shot) and the rest of the members vote on you. If you get a 7 (or is it an 8?) or above on average - you are allowed to join the dating site.

Brilliant idea - and I am surprised it is not more successful. I would be interested to know if others have used such sites?

[Blaster]

Quote:

PS Another great idea for an online dating site was the one for beautiful people only. You have to send in a few pictures of yourself (including one full-body shot) and the rest of the members vote on you. If you get a 7 (or is it an 8?) or above on average - you are allowed to join the dating site.

Brilliant idea - and I am surprised it is not more successful. I would be interested to know if others have used such sites?

I remember at least one like this, hotenough.org. My guess is that they didn't get the exclusivity vs network effects quite right and it imploded while sites like OKCupid have "soft" hot-or-not style ratings that let you tailor searches for people with high attractiveness ratings (if you pay). Not to mention that average girls HATE blatantly exclusive groups like this and will apply shaming tactics to prevent other women from joining them. Hotenough.org probably failed to offer enough hamster pellets to assuage the guilt of the would-be hot female members.

[Samseau]

(05-21-2013 12:44 PM)cardguy Wrote:  

PS Another great idea for an online dating site was the one for beautiful people only. You have to send in a few pictures of yourself (including one full-body shot) and the rest of the members vote on you. If you get a 7 (or is it an 8?) or above on average - you are allowed to join the dating site.

Brilliant idea - and I am surprised it is not more successful. I would be interested to know if others have used such sites?

beutifulpeople.com

[Caligula]

(05-21-2013 12:44 PM)cardguy Wrote:  

Also - does anyone know if those Grindr apps (for gay men looking for sex locally and straight away) have ever translated well into the hetrosexual market place? I am guessing it won't work - but I would be interested to know more.

Tinder is apparently doing well. I know more than one girl who has been on Tinder dates.

[Divorco]

(05-21-2013 11:25 AM)Fredster Wrote:  

1. Make sure the ratio of men to women is 1:1.
Also monitor the ration of the intimate encounters section of the site.
2. Make the site centered around women,
3. Only three initiation message allowed per day. Matches will be sent like e-harmony and you are to accept three matches a day to be allowed to send a second initiation message to another person.This should keep a lid on the beta-male thirstiness.
4. All users must have atleast 2 pictures of themselves.
5. If a user does not have activity ... the profile is automatically deleted.

Good ideas. Like a ladies night, maybe they should charge for men. Unfortunately that puts a beta stigma on all the men. They could try to limit the men in other ways, by verifying height, income, looks, or status. Basically you want women to know that men are preselected for quality.

You don't need an intimate encounter section. You could just use (paid) links to other sites.

You could make it easy to join for a probationary period. But then require nontrivial effort on the profile to stay active.

(05-21-2013 11:32 AM)Timoteo Wrote:  

I'd set each individual section of the profile so that you had to type a certain amount of characters. ... I understand that these sites want to run cheaply, so they can't have tons of employees policing the sites

PlentyofFish requires a minimum length, but women literally write "blah blah ... blah" and use crummy cell phone pics. You could outsource labor to the internet community. For example, users of PlentyofFish can flag inappropriate pictures.

[Jazzman92]

Id make an interracial marriage site in India. Thirsty IRTs will rejoice and ill make billions.

[SpiderKing]

The questionnare would have very stringent queries.

Quote:

Please describe your body type:


[x] Fat
[ ] Not Fat

No more gradated choices for fatties to hide behind.

[Timoteo]

(05-21-2013 04:23 PM)SpiderKing Wrote:  

The questionnare would have very stringent queries.

Quote:

Please describe your body type:


[x] Fat
[ ] Not Fat

No more gradated choices for fatties to hide behind.

I've found that more and more women admit on their profiles to being a BBW, but of course it's with attitude. "I'm a BBW, and if you don't like that pass by my profile, blah, blah, blah."

[speakeasy]

One thing that would make for a good dating site is to treat it like a top-tier night club. Only decent looking people can get in, and they make sure the ratios aren't out of wack. Of course this wouldn't be good for business as you want more people signing up, but if the point is a dating site that's awesome then I would keep uggs and fatties from joining and I would make sure that no more than 50% of the site is guys. If a new guy wants to join, he has to wait until another has deleted his account. That would be the best site from a user perspective, though not from a shareholder perspective that just wants paying memberships.

[Parlay44]

I would do a Hot or Not kinda thing. Men would rate women 1-10 and vice versa. If your average rating by women is a 7 you know you'd have a good chance with a female 7 or below.

[speakeasy]

(05-21-2013 04:45 PM)Parlay44 Wrote:  

I would do a Hot or Not kinda thing. Men would rate women 1-10 and vice versa. If your average rating by women is a 7 you know you'd have a good chance with a female 7 or below.

Problem with these things is people choose only their most flattering photos and you can't be sure what they actually look like. I have photos where I look like complete shit because the photo was taken at a bad angle under harsh lighting, and then photos where I look great, and then a lot of average looking photos. Obviously I'm going to put the above-average shots up. How do you know what you're really getting with this hot or not stuff?

[cardguy]

Just remembered a thought I had about a year ago...

A problem with online dating, is that no matter how cool and good looking the guy is, a girl will have trouble falling in love with a guy she meets online. This is because there is something very 'beta' about having to use online dating to meet women. In the girl's mind - the type of guy she has always dreamed of meeting would have being in a 'real life' situation and not online.

I honestly feel this is a problem for these sites. Since by using them - your 'value' drops by a couple of points.

Don't take me the wrong way. I think it is cool for guys to use these sites to hit up pussy. But I am trying to get inside the head of women. And I sense that such an experience will never live up to the dreams that her hamster has fed her from birth. Of meeting a cool good-looking 'alpha' male in a bar or at a park or on a plane or at a party or through some friends or at work or at school or at Uni or whilst travelling or whilst on holiday and so on...

As such - what she might perceive as being an '8' in real life. May only come across as a '6' online since she will worry that the guy doesn't have 'the moves' to know how to get laid 'in the real world'. And that is a skill which absolutely critical for women (from the point of view of evolution).

With this in mind. I sense any relationship which started 'online' is facing an uphill struggle from the start. And that provides another obstacle to be overcome.

I have never used online dating. But I am familiar with the dreams and delusions that chicks have growing up. So - I am just trying to apply that here.

All of the above seems to fit my analysis that 'online dating' seems to be more successful as a tool for a quick fuck than it is for a long-term relationship. As such - the problems of women finding 'love' online may be insurmountable. As such - using a real life social network (like Facebook) might be a better tool for women. Since they can visualise the guys on their as being successful at dating and so on. And not associate the site with people who struggle to get dates in the real world.

It is all about how you package it. And for girls - the best way of packaging a dating site is to not call it a dating site. As such - I don't think any dating site will ever be more successful than Facebook at sparking successful long-term relationships.

[BortimusPrime]

You could tie the dating site into farmville or whatever the current social media game is and have the girl's crops die unless she fucks a different guy every hour.