We need a startup to fix online dating

But even though I received the highest response rate, I was still almost never able to get second or third replies. Once I got a response that I replied to, the exchange pretty much stopped dead in its tracks.

Women get tons of messages every day, as the article points out, and they don't bother to reply unless they're really interested. I got very few replies on dating sites when I used them, but almost every reply turned into a date. They had already made up their minds before they messaged me. Dating sites are not great and I would love to see something better, but the OP's experience suggests some failure of communication peculiar to his situation, not something from which to draw general lessons.

For what it's worth, in my experience, the women who wanted to meet me agreed after only one or two messages. They made up their minds before they messaged me. The women who wanted to chat back and forth were only there to chat; they weren't actually interested in me. Rich online interaction doesn't facilitate meeting in person. It competes with it. When it comes to efficiently deciding whether to invest time in getting to know somebody, meeting them for coffee or a drink risks less than an hour of your time and yields much more useful information much more quickly than trying to get to know someone online. Women follow the same logic men do: if they just want to chat, they chat. If they actually think you have some potential, they want to meet you ASAP so they can find out what you're like in person.

If I were trying to make money from an online dating site, I could certainly convince people of the opposite. It's so dangerous to meet someone in person before you really know them... why go out and meet one guy who's probably a dud when you could be talking with a whole bunch of cool people from the convenience of your own apartment... and when you finally meet someone in person, they should be a real person you have a relationship with, not an anonymous profile. I'd do everything I could to keep them on the site, making me money, instead of out in the world meeting people. For myself, I want exactly the opposite. I think once I've skimmed an expressive profile and seen a few pictures, I've already learned 90% of what is possible to learn online, and I want to proceed as quickly as possible to an in-person meeting where I'll learn more in twenty minutes than I'd learn in a week of chatting.

I'm not sure how a site could do better at that than Match or OkCupid, but I can't wait to find out.

- Why the heck do folks use a service built by people who might not have been successful in love? Would I use an operating system programmed by doctors?

- How do dating sites overcome the personality shortcomings of having a hard enough time connecting in real life, let alone the computer. In the end the relationship is in real life.

- People are nickels trying to get dimes instead of improving themselves. (Analogy can be read here: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/why-wont-anyone-be...).

- How do you set the bar of the mindset you want to attract? Should dating sites be encouraging and attracting people, "Love me to validate myself and my worth of receiving love", or "I'm happy, work at being the best I can and would be even happier with someone"?

- People who come on a site, find love, and leave might not be profitable customers. It's like the startup stuff out there, does much of it keep you in a startup phase instead of moving into more?

- In some cases, the socially challenged geeks that build it who may have underdeveloped personalities themselves trying to help others connect. geeks compensate for in person skills by being behind a keyboard. ie., what does Facebook have that isn't transactional and is transformative, say, like a successful dating match might be?

As a society, too many folks don't work on connecting to ourselves, and through that to others. Too many don't know how to be a friend to ourselves, have a healthy inner dialogue, and instead want someone else to know them and love them more than they do themselves.

Maybe dating itself is the problem. Statistically fails 99% of the time. To some it's emotional baggage collection. Some people even display their emotional baggage in the large overpriced bags they carry. Not enough time spent on developing one's self into their best self.

Maybe dating sites should be about dating yourself to find and become your best self so you can connect with others doing the same and let the love happen as soon as you learn to remove the barriers to receiving and giving love yourself.

What do you think?

Single parent status is not baggage, it's a perk!

If you don't want to be involved in the responsibilities of raising children, make sure your filter has "no kids" set. If you can't set a filter because you are so desperate for any contact that you "cast your net wider", the problem is you.

Feature, not baggage. Unwanted feature? Filter out the undesirable profiles.