Looks like someone's been taking some of Gabriel Weinberg's advice... (http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/02/if-i-were-starti...)
Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site
71–80 of 120 posts
Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site
#72I like this idea a lot, but you absolutely need to kill the logins and just use facebook connect. It solves so many problems with the service, and will help it go viral, AND will let people just point and click on their friend list. Nice viral app, though! I hope it goes well. I bet you more than double if you use facebook for connection and messaging.
If I were serious about sending something through this, I'd be worried that using FB connect would leak information. Besides, why would I want my friends to know that I'm not confident enough to approach someone I had a crush on? ;)
There's no reason Facebook Connect should leak any information more than anything else (like your Gmail inbox).
> Besides, why would I want my friends to know that I'm not confident enough to approach someone I had a crush on?
Using Facebook Connect does not automatically equals spamming user's activity stream. Besides, this wouldn't be the most embarrassing app on Facebook by a long stretch.
Actually, I'm not fan of Facebook myself (and I don't have an account), but I must admit Facebook Connect would be perfect for this webapp. As @vessenes mentioned this would solve quite a few potential problems, like matching (different email addresses, spelling errors; while with Facebook it's unique account id). But also seeing your crash's avatar could be much more engaging than just typing names. And since SecretPoke's business model seems to be paying for extra crushes, I'm going to bet users presented with their full & interactive contact list are more likely to make an emotional decision and take out their credit card or agree to spend their Facebook currency.
Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site
#73I like this idea a lot, but you absolutely need to kill the logins and just use facebook connect. It solves so many problems with the service, and will help it go viral, AND will let people just point and click on their friend list. Nice viral app, though! I hope it goes well. I bet you more than double if you use facebook for connection and messaging.
If I were serious about sending something through this, I'd be worried that using FB connect would leak information. Besides, why would I want my friends to know that I'm not confident enough to approach someone I had a crush on? ;)
This worry could be pretty easily assuaged with good copy.
"We never, ever tell anyone who crushed on them without seeing if there's a match"
and
"See what will be posted to your crush's walls:"
Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site
#74man some big money was made off this in 2003
2005? Man, I fell for this back in high school, sometime between 1996–2000. It was a site functionally identical to this one. I got an email about someone who had a crush on me, asked for either the email or the AIM screenname (I forget which) of people you had a crush on. I dutifully entered some girls at my high school and shortly thereafter I got a match: Julie. This was exciting, until she emailed me saying somet…
You can mitigate it by restricting how many people can be matched with a single email/SN. It's hard to try and out someone out of your whole class when you can only have 3 'crushes' to use; the odds are low unless you're pretty sure you know who likes you, at which point the service is a little redundant.
Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Avoiding information leakage, whether in terms of error cases (e.g. incorrect padding on crypto showing a different error, leading to a padding oracle attack) or in terms of user-facing content (e.g. exposing whether or not a username or email exists in the system) can be difficult. That said, you should always err on the side of showing a single message rather than multiple -- in this case, always show success. This…
Ew no, don't always show success, there surely has to be a more elegant solution. I have multiple email addresses and sometimes I'll use a different one for a different service, if I enter email@website.com when I used email@anotherwebsite.com and you show success when it's the wrong one, I'll be waiting for an email that will never appear... Maybe HN can work out a good solution collectively? I can only think of a s…
I think the solution is pretty simple... just be transparent and say for security reasons you can't reveal whether or not the user exists.
Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site
#76Right now I either get infinite redirection loops for the front page, or internal server errors. Seems somebody hasn't expected so much traffic...
Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site
#77Ok, let me see. Back in 2005 a friend sent me one of these crush anonymously. I didn't want to guess on the site who it was, but I wanted to know who it was. They had this feature where you enter your email if you forgot your password. So, I thought to myself, not many of my friends would know about this site and whoever it is was probably the only person of my friends to be on it. So, I enter the list of female frie…
Sooo, how'd the relationship turn out?
Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site
#78Hi fellow HNers, I wanted to show you our new project: SecretPoke.com . As big shy people ourselves and with Valentine's day coming up, we wanted an easy, anonymous and fun way to reach out to our crushes :) We would love your feedback as much on the concept than on the execution (name, copy, design,...). We built it in less than 10 days and we are ready to modify the website quickly to take your feedback into accoun…
Before using it I would want to be reassured on two points: 1. I wouldn't feel very optimistic using such a site because I assume the emails you send will seem like spam and will be deleted by the recipients without much thought. 2. Using this site makes one vulnerable to cruel trolling. Imagine three or four people getting together, "secret poking" people they know, and sharing the results for shits and giggles. If…
You seem to have a general mistrust of others. I've found life is a little better if you don't assume everyone's out to get you from the get-go.
Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site
#79The tone of the site is a little too business-ish. I can't pinpoint how, but (colors aside) it has the form of a business product like basecamp. Take a good look at http://www.hotornot.com/ . I don't have the design chops to explain why, but that site comes across as less serious. If you can find more fun consumer sites that have been successful you should be able to identify some common design techniques.
Thanks for the shout out!
If anyone is a ruby-ish person in Toronto, ON and they want to work on Hot Or Not and other similar sites, i'd encourage you to email me at jamie.wilson@avidlifemedia.com
Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site
#80man some big money was made off this in 2003
2005? Man, I fell for this back in high school, sometime between 1996–2000. It was a site functionally identical to this one. I got an email about someone who had a crush on me, asked for either the email or the AIM screenname (I forget which) of people you had a crush on. I dutifully entered some girls at my high school and shortly thereafter I got a match: Julie. This was exciting, until she emailed me saying somet…
Hi Perceval,
Sorry for Julie ;)
Seabee is right, the limit of 3 free crushes help to limitate that side effect.
We cant prevent 100% non-good-faith crushes but you could still have answered to Julie that you entered her email because it was obvious that she was in love in you ;)
SecretPoke only reveal identity if it's mutual so if somebody was joking you, you can always answer that it was the same for you. (I know that it's a little childish but it's "effective")
If you have any ideas to prevent Julies of the world to use SecretPoke to break our little hearts please share with me, we would love to implement some to see what is happening :)
Thank for your feedback