one of my friends is really bored with the people he has searched for on one of the big websites... he really feels like he is seeing the same people over and over again.
and,
some of the big sites develop "characters" over time. for whatever reason. okcupid is too "goody goody, perfect people, over-educated" for him.
e.g. the user-generated questions- he interprets as social directives. He resents questions being painted into a corner. he resents their binary nature.
I agree with him mostly. It is clear that what sounded good "allow users to propose their own questions" has grown into a maze of people who claim they "like the taste of beer" or "don't". The result is the people who make it on that site are the ones who endure multiple-choice critiques and that just isn't everybody, man. People date differently.
perhaps even if you had no technical improvements, etc., but you could offer a fresh new user base of people, he would be interested. so if you try to invite people and promise them a fresh beginning - without the inertia of users of the first generation.
Also pay attention to BitCoin. it has two parallel users: miners and buyers n/ payers. Different groups take part in different ways.
I once read an interesting article on how OkCupid was doing question weighting wrong because people would mark matching on factual questions (like, "What is the largest of these? A. Elephant B. Whale C. The Moon") as being absolutely vital to get correct. People would then end up with like 90%+ matches with others they would not really get along with, just because of the ridiculous weighting on those questions–it became a matching system more like, "who has answered the same questions as I?"
and,
some of the big sites develop "characters" over time. for whatever reason. okcupid is too "goody goody, perfect people, over-educated" for him.
e.g. the user-generated questions- he interprets as social directives. He resents questions being painted into a corner. he resents their binary nature.
I agree with him mostly. It is clear that what sounded good "allow users to propose their own questions" has grown into a maze of people who claim they "like the taste of beer" or "don't". The result is the people who make it on that site are the ones who endure multiple-choice critiques and that just isn't everybody, man. People date differently.
perhaps even if you had no technical improvements, etc., but you could offer a fresh new user base of people, he would be interested. so if you try to invite people and promise them a fresh beginning - without the inertia of users of the first generation.
Also pay attention to BitCoin. it has two parallel users: miners and buyers n/ payers. Different groups take part in different ways.