This is just what my first impression of the idea is: A dating site where you hide the user's pictures sounds like a dating site for ugly people.

I think people care about how someone looks, whether they want to admit it or not. I think you're going to have a tough road to user acquisition if people invest their time trying to get to know someone online and then don't like the other user's appearance for one reason or another.

thanks. I'm not implementing this idea. Was more of an ouptut of a brainstorming session.

I think it's got some interesting aspects to it; but it's one of those types of ideas that would have to be executed perfectly and have a really good hook for getting users to join. Unfortunately, the answer to that usually including pictures.

i'm just kind of throwing this out there, since its similar. feel free to take any ideas and use them (just give me a high five if you use them):

i was mulling over the idea of a dating site that was more anonymous/private than the standard version. no searching allowed, no direct profile access allowed.

you're given a list of maybe 5 profiles that the site thinks you might like. you're required to interact directly (email style messages only) with at least one of them, and then give anonymous, private feedback on that person. the feedback is used to generate new, better matches, improve the algorithm, and weed out people who are spammers/jerks/etc.. you don't get new matches until you interact with people both ways, initiating with people on your list and responding to someone who has you on their list.

messages work somewhat like tokens. you get X number to start, they replenish over time, but sending a message costs you 1 token, and receiving a message gives you 1 token. this prevents spam, mass "lol ur hot" messages, encourages you to interact with people in a way that warrants them talking back to you, and encourages you to respond to people that you might not have been so hasty to respond to on other sites. but it still gives you the leeway to ignore people.

this is just a very brief bar napkin overview of something different from the standard way of doing things. thoughts?

I believe that a lot of the sites that put a lot of emphasis on matching algorithms and compatibility (e.g. eHarmony, Chemistry) already de-emphasize the picture aspect quite a bit.

I'll be honest, I have absolutely no interest in a site that eliminates physicality as an aspect I can use to determine the likelihood that someone may be a good match for me.

This is not exactly the same, but I remember seeing a service in the news a few years ago where they would match scholars and geeks (e.g. you could look specifically for ornithologists, if you're a bird geek). It's not exactly anonymous, but the main focus was on areas of (very specific) interest, rather than physical appearance.

I think the bigger question with dating sites is the chicken/egg question, as mentioned in the yc ideas post. How are you going to get people to that site in the first place.

I have a lot of ideas for innovative takes on dating sites, but I can't think of a good way to get people there besides making it a Facebook app.