The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love • Hacker News Board

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#41

Post by BadassFractal » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #39

BadassFractal wrote: post #6

Speaking of LTV, the power users in online dating can easily be worth several hundred a month. Super swipes and super likes are about $1 each these days and in crowded dating markets you have to rely on them heavily if you're hoping to cut through the noise of everybody else's profiles. I'm actually surprised Tinder and co haven't started selling an option to bid money to have your profile be seen first in your city.…

I do not understand the bit about the noise. It's like saying it's harder to find a partner in a bigger city, because there are so many other people? As long as the gender ratios remain similar, I don't understand how a higher amount of users results in worse dating odds. Are you referring to the paradox where the same ultra-hot 100 people get all the messages, were the site's population 100, 100k, or 100 million?

In a big city a good looking woman will accumulate 5 or maybe 10 thousand right swipes within a few weeks. How is she ever to get to your profile without you doing something to bump yourself to the top of the queue? There's physically no time in the day for her to even swipe that far.

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#42

Post by air7 » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 2:01 AM UTC

BadassFractal wrote: post #19

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

So, just to get an idea, i can buy 1million profiles including pictures for 130 Euros, which I should be able to match against stolen credit card lists (do those come with addresses?) and even old stolen passwords. I mean, yikes.

It's a gold mine for social engineering. Age, location, sexual orientation, relationship status, employment status, interests, aspirations, lots of information based on their Instagram feed about things like travel destinations, friends, parents, pets etc. I'm sure the conversations themselves include a lot of personal information that one wouldn't want floating around the web.

How would one go about monetizing this data?

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#43

Post by gumby » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 2:05 AM UTC

koolba wrote: post #36

gumby wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a vi problem; Emacs mainly uses escape for when your keyboard doesn’t have a meta key, which most did by the 1980s

I’m implying that it’s one more data point that you’re more likely to meet your soul mate if you use vi vs emacs.

Oh but only if there’s a crappy keyboard, like a contrived plot device in a rom-com.

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#44

Post by munk-a » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 2:09 AM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #35

cbhl wrote: post #2

This page reads normally on mobile, but on desktop it's eight columns wide, scrolls horizontally, with each column being 1/4th the screen width.

Check out the creator's main site: http://janavirgin.com/

I assume the CO2 emission primarily comes from the excessively large fonts used?

Just like printing in a smaller font to be environmentally friendly using a smaller display front is similarly advantageous - and don't even get me started on all-caps, you might as well be burning a mountain of coal if you type in all-caps.

/s

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#45

Post by eloff » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 2:13 AM UTC

drewg123 wrote: post #29

thanatropism wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met all my girlfriends including my wife in nightclubs. I didn't even like nightclubs but wanted to meet women. This probably sounds as quaint as arranged marriages nowadays.

I met my wife when she asked me how to get out of vi. She was a new PhD student, and I was the departmental sysadmin. To be fair to her, she knew vi just fine, but we had these messed up DEC keyboards with no ESC, where ESC was mapped to F11.

Best how we met story ever! Thanks for sharing.

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#46

Post by quickthrower2 » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 2:27 AM UTC

drewg123 wrote: post #29

thanatropism wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met all my girlfriends including my wife in nightclubs. I didn't even like nightclubs but wanted to meet women. This probably sounds as quaint as arranged marriages nowadays.

I met my wife when she asked me how to get out of vi. She was a new PhD student, and I was the departmental sysadmin. To be fair to her, she knew vi just fine, but we had these messed up DEC keyboards with no ESC, where ESC was mapped to F11.

Ah that old excuse! Maybe she just wanted to talk to you

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#47

Post by wwweston » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 2:33 AM UTC

BadassFractal wrote: post #12

thanatropism wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met all my girlfriends including my wife in nightclubs. I didn't even like nightclubs but wanted to meet women. This probably sounds as quaint as arranged marriages nowadays.

I've done the whole bars and night clubs thing pretty actively in my mid to late 20s. My issue has always been that your ability to be selective in that kind of environment only extends to the looks. Also I don't drink and have a very consistent sleeping schedule, so prowling bars for women until 3 in the morning has lost a lot of its appeal when I spend the rest of the weekend feeling like shit. Online you get to le…

> that your ability to be selective in that kind of environment only extends to the looks.

Which, as the non-photo portion of the prevailing Swipe-To-Date format shrinks, increasingly describes the problem with dating apps.

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#48

Post by ggm » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 2:53 AM UTC

Back before we thought intelligent machines were going to be a thing, (we're talking 1970s here) I discussed online dating with my brother, who proposed writing a simple DB to match random men with random women. Neither of us had considered the possibility. I think we'd got to the idea that if they both liked tennis, it was plausible to rank them higher. He got pretty quickly to "its unethical, but simple"

Now we have AI and intelligent machines. I'm sure onine dating does a better job matching people up. (/s for anyone who is humour impaired)

Actually, what works, is putting sweaty tee shirts in a bag, and letting women sniff. Turns out that how you smell is a pretty good indication of how likely it is, you can form an effective match.

So on that score, the first online love broker who manages to capture digital nose moments, probably wins.

Right now, I'd welcome good stats on how much better online relationship brokering does than other models. If you rank by income, you probably get more successful matches for rich people seeking partners for high value service, but there might be surprises: It wouldn't surprise me if down in the dollar-shop window, people do well, but better than random?

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#49

Post by leetcrew » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 3:39 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #40

BadassFractal wrote: post #6

Speaking of LTV, the power users in online dating can easily be worth several hundred a month. Super swipes and super likes are about $1 each these days and in crowded dating markets you have to rely on them heavily if you're hoping to cut through the noise of everybody else's profiles. I'm actually surprised Tinder and co haven't started selling an option to bid money to have your profile be seen first in your city.…

I suspect that a lot of people would stop using Tinder if they became aware it was possible to pay to boost your "position". People don't want to think that the person they matched with got there by paying lots of cash.

it's already a prominent option in the app. they just aren't very explicit about how it works.

Re: The Dating Brokers: An autopsy of online love

#50

Post by julienmarie » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 3:45 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #48

Back before we thought intelligent machines were going to be a thing, (we're talking 1970s here) I discussed online dating with my brother, who proposed writing a simple DB to match random men with random women. Neither of us had considered the possibility. I think we'd got to the idea that if they both liked tennis, it was plausible to rank them higher. He got pretty quickly to "its unethical, but simple" Now we hav…

I made that mistake when launching my first dating website By trying to be more efficient. Unfortunately, this market is not about dating, it's a dopamine delivery market. You want to keep people long, increase your LTV, show them an ever better possible "match" so you never settle. You don't want them to actually meet someone. Hence the crappy chat features ( while the rest of the tech stack is usually pretty solid ).