31–40 of 86 posts
Wait, since when did OKCupid start charging? They were free when I was on there (before the match.com takeover)
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Original comment doesn't state that online dating is used mainly by nerds, but that nerds mainly use online dating.
It's so pervasive now that you could make the statement true by replacing nerd with any other group of people. The only exception would be people in relationships or marriages. Unfortunately, even that is becoming questionable: look at Ashley Madison and its nearly 2 million uniques per month.
I'm pretty hopeful and positive about bitcoin but that's one of the things that makes me still very suspicious of it. Seems that the places adopting it are doing so for fun, ideological or theoretical reasons rather than to solve some problem they have.
I'm waiting to see online retailers requiring bitcoin payments for high risk transactions (eg sending mobile phones to nairobi). Something that demonstrates it solves a problem and (ideally) enables commerce where it wasn't possible before.
This seems like a great idea, since people who are into BitCoin are likely to use online dating services.
OkCupid is "special". It has an extremely geeky userbase compared to most dating services. Not necessarily overly technical, but certainly geeky. It might not get a massive amount of use, but it will get them some PR (well, it already has) within communities that are already more likely to sign up with them than the mainstream that are more appreciative in general of stuff like this even if they won't use it.
I really wish they would start OkTrends (http://blog.okcupid.com/) back up; it was really fascinating reading, the kind of analysis that's impossible to come by unless you have free-rein map-reduce access to some company's Big Data. Given their userbase I'm surprised they don't think it was a bigger PR source; I think every article from it has been hot on HN.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OkCupid is "special". It has an extremely geeky userbase compared to most dating services. Not necessarily overly technical, but certainly geeky. It might not get a massive amount of use, but it will get them some PR (well, it already has) within communities that are already more likely to sign up with them than the mainstream that are more appreciative in general of stuff like this even if they won't use it.
> It has an extremely geeky userbase compared to most dating services. Not necessarily overly technical, but certainly geeky. I really wish they would start OkTrends ( http://blog.okcupid.com/ ) back up; it was really fascinating reading, the kind of analysis that's impossible to come by unless you have free-rein map-reduce access to some company's Big Data. Given their userbase I'm surprised they don't think it was…
Is it any coincidence that the blog stopped around the same time they were acquired? It served its purpose and ran its course. They're done innovating in the space. We'll have to let startups lead the next wave of innovation in online dating.
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It's so pervasive now that you could make the statement true by replacing nerd with any other group of people. The only exception would be people in relationships or marriages. Unfortunately, even that is becoming questionable: look at Ashley Madison and its nearly 2 million uniques per month.
I wish there were a dating site mainly for nerds, really. I don't know how you could maintain that.
So you can search for keywords on OkCupid, such as "nerd" or "programmer." You won't find many results, but you can try. The other way to go about it is working exclusively with software companies, such as Google or Facebook (similar to how Facebook required an .edu address to join, you must check for a company e-mail to join). You still have a chicken and egg problem though, so you must solve that in order to make the niche nerd dating startup work.
This seems like a great idea, since people who are into BitCoin are likely to use online dating services.
I thought this was funny, but downvoted because it was also rude and unproductive. I wish we could talk about Bitcoin without saying either 1. that its expected value is negative infinity dollars and pyramid tulip 2. that its expected value is infinity dollars and oppression fiat. I think both sides are well aware of the counter arguments. But even though that will never happen, I think we can stop short of allowing…
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I think it's just a reflection of the underlying transaction facilitators (CC processors vs Bitcoin exchanges). The CC processors charge the % + fee, and the services that build on top of that tack on their cut. MtGox charges a % cut (I forget what it is, but it's below CC rates by a lot) and so you tack on your cut on top of it to end up with a lower cost than CC processors. I really do feel that MtGox will move to…
As bitcoin volume increase, miners will probably start charging transaction fees themselves. So that'll increase.
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I wish there were a dating site mainly for nerds, really. I don't know how you could maintain that.
It has the classic chicken and egg problem that you'll face when you start any type of online dating startup. Niche dating startups are even harder to start because you have an implicit filter to start off with, and the problem with all filters is they reduce the pool. If you have a small pool of users to choose from, you'll have an even smaller pool of users with other filters applied. So you can search for keywords…
e.g. for a dating site you'd have "less than 300 pounds", "graduated from Stanford", "not married", "hivfree"
for an HR site you'd have "not a CISSP", "graduated from Caltech in 2000 in CS", "US Citizen", "worked for Google 2000-2004", etc.
Individual tags would be searchable, high confidence, and ideally structured (so "College Graduate", "CS", "MIT", "MIT SB", "MIT 2000", "MIT SB 2000", "MIT SB 6 2000" would all be known.
(The stupid way LinkedIn does Endorsements isn't it, I think. What my friends click just to get a stupid box to go away isn't high assurance information. I'm not sure if crowdsourcing has any place, but the ideal is to get actual validation from the data owner.)
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> It has an extremely geeky userbase compared to most dating services. Not necessarily overly technical, but certainly geeky. I really wish they would start OkTrends ( http://blog.okcupid.com/ ) back up; it was really fascinating reading, the kind of analysis that's impossible to come by unless you have free-rein map-reduce access to some company's Big Data. Given their userbase I'm surprised they don't think it was…
Funny things happen when companies get acquired. They stop acting like a startup and they start acting like large, slow companies, which is unfortunate. That blog was single-handedly what drove their traffic more than anything. Everyone I talk to said they found out about OkCupid through that blog. OkCupid knows this. The founders said they almost quit and that blog was their saving grace. Is it any coincidence that…