Thanks HN: We’ve launched (the dating site about books)

http://alikewise.com

by mwsherman • 16 years ago

77 60 16 years ago

alikewise.com

mwsherman12• 16 years ago

HN folks were kind enough to alpha test and offer feedback. Thanks! Feedback is still welcome, of course.

antidaily• 16 years ago

Just me or is the search kinda slow (or broken)?

mwsherman12• 16 years ago

Have a URL I can check out? Seems OK on this end. Thanks.

sutro• 16 years ago

Yes, search seems to be broken. My search for "hot young slutty babes seeking broke, alcoholic, out-of-shape, over-the-hill, married programmers" is turning up nothing. Must be a bug.

RevRal3• 16 years ago

>"hot young slutty babes seeking broke, alcoholic, out-of-shape, over-the-hill, married programmers"

And I was disappointed when I searched for GEB and nothing turned up.

rjett• 16 years ago

I think a widget compatible with amazon would be cool to attract people to your site. I.E. when someone reviews a book on amazon, they could click the alikewise widget that took them to your site and pulled their relevant amazon data to pre-populate a profile on your site. Of course you could then do the whole amazon affiliate link thing on your site to reciprocate people back there.

mwsherman12• 16 years ago

Smart! The are other sites with book info too. We should look at their APIs.

pmjoyce• 16 years ago

I've been toying with the idea of creating a basic API for my book site http://bookhu.com (book readership gender analysis). I'd be willing to prioritise it if you (or anyone else) were interested in integrating it.

RevRal3• 16 years ago

Hint to others: Nab the good usernames while they're still around.

I'll put up a profile and see what happens, as I'm not having much luck searching for people with my taste in books. I see great potential.

I'm debating putting my profile name into my HN profile. . . .

listic2• 16 years ago

Does your site intend to be US-only?

It wants me to enter 5-digit Zip code, insists on that even.

mwsherman12• 16 years ago

To start, we are US-only. We are running as fast as we can to go international. Mostly has to do with legal stuff.

listic2• 16 years ago

Ok, nice to know that you are aware that 5-digit Zip code doesn't cover all possible locations.

kksm198201173• 16 years ago

Could you elaborate on the legal issues you're facing en route to going worldwide?

lena• 16 years ago

It would be nice if you mentioned that somewhere on your "get started" form.

moultano• 16 years ago

Not a big fan of the graphic design on the front page. It's usable, and fairly attractive, but if I squint my eyes and don't read anything I could be looking at a middleware consulting company.

iamcalledrob• 16 years ago

It is not clear where to focus my attention. There is no "do this, now" on the homepage.

I'd make the focus right now on registering with the site, since your userbase is going to be really small at the start. A really simple registration form that stands out could do wonders for you.

I'm short of time, it helps when your site tells me what to do.

OKCupid is a great example of how to convert visitors into members.

proexploit2• 16 years ago

Agreed, a little too plain perhaps. Don't get me wrong, you've done a great job by not "going all web 2.0" or a number of other horrendous mistakes, but there's room for improvement. Try starting by giving the #main and #border sections the #FFF background color and the #content container a #EEE background just to set them apart a little (see it at http://imgur.com/pn0fR.jpg).

Little things like that will take you a long way.

mwsherman12• 16 years ago

Thanks proexploit, I'll play with that.

Qz• 16 years ago

I'd say the biggest issue is that the slogan is 'a dating site but with books', but nothing about the page signals dating or books. There needs to be something somewhere on the page that instantly tells me this is dating + books without requiring me to invest significant thinking.

dkarl2• 16 years ago

A sexy man/woman curled up in an armchair in front of a fireplace, wearing a robe/slip, with a glass of sherry and a copy of In Search of Lost Time?

joshsharp• 16 years ago

I have to agree, came here to comment because the look and feel of the site doesn't really scream "online dating". Not that cliches are necessarily a good thing, but I'm not sure dark grey and orange are right for the job.

anonjon2• 16 years ago

I'd like this better if it weren't a dating site.

Like, a place where you can find people who like the same books as you, and then talk about books.

mwsherman12• 16 years ago

Those do exist...check out goodreads.com and librarything.com.

We don't really think of them as competition to what we're doing, btw. Different goals.

anonjon2• 16 years ago

Thanks for the links, I will check them out.

It would be cool if you could integrate their APIs into what you are doing. (Create Alikewise account based off of already existing Goodreads or Librarything account).

I guess what I'm concerned about is that it becomes a very niche site without a community that is hanging out and talking about the books that they are reading.

Presumably if you go on, you find someone, and you leave, you don't have the 'all my friends are on it' factor. (It is also kind of limited group, a lot of people will not be looking for partners that read the same books as they do). It kind of appeals to people you might think of (or who might think of themselves) as intelligentsia.

But is a cool idea, and is definitely intriguing at very least in terms of social experiments, kind of figuring out if people are compatible because of similar intellectual interests. I hope it goes well for you!

blackswan• 16 years ago

You might want to check out http://alikewise.com/Profile/testingstagingagain !

Other than that I think the idea is excellent - if you manage to get enough people then the site will work really well. That's the problem though isn't it...

Best of luck.

mwsherman12• 16 years ago

Ha! Thanks. One of our testing accounts. :)

rokhayakebe2• 16 years ago

Very nice idea. Can I have dating based on my (safe) browser history?

SapphireSun• 16 years ago

Are you sure you wouldn't like your dating based on your unsafe browser history? ;-)

rokhayakebe2• 16 years ago

I think Adult Friend Finder fixed that issue already :) .

sinzone• 16 years ago

http://www.pickv.com has the same concept but with movie,tvshow,music and food as well

vtail2• 16 years ago

Cool idea, but bootstrapping this could be an issue. E.g. as of right now, if you do a simple search for "Man seeking women" or "Woman seeking women" you'll only get ~20 results (not to mention that search is broken).

vtail2• 16 years ago

Well, the search seems to be working now.

naturalethic• 16 years ago

This will never work. Women read trash.

axod3• 16 years ago

I don't know why you're being downmodded, I agree. I don't think 'books you like' is a good way at all to match people up. But then I hardly ever read any fiction.

mseebach2• 16 years ago

It's probably being downmodded because it's bigoted, but you're both missing the point. It's a niche-site for people who like reading fiction - for people for whom 'books you like' is a good way to be matched up.

Someone who thinks they like reading because they read the latest Dan Brown, or people who don't like reading, will be probably be disappointed, but they're not in the niche, so that's not really a problem.

rudyfink• 16 years ago

I'd love to be able to bring in my goodreads or librarything entries. The idea of sitting there and entering all that data in again just makes my laziness ascend.

djm• 16 years ago

ok, I searched for two books -founders at work and the little schemer.

Founders at work found me 'Kate' who is a total babe but sadly in America. The thing is, founders at work isn't actually in the list of books in her profile.

little schemer found me 'Polina' but she doesn't have it in her book list either.

I tried searching with and without quotes around the title.

Hope you fix that. I like the idea of the site itself though. Bookmarked for future use.

RevRal3• 16 years ago

I'm having trouble adding the books I want to my profile.

mwsherman12• 16 years ago

Thanks djm. We start with an exact search and (if we don't find anyone) then we bring in "related" books, using Amazon's recommendation engine.

Given the small # of people we are starting with, this progressive search is gonna "go broad" pretty often. So it's looking for all kinds of books relating to the words "founders" or "work".

Not satisfying in the short term, I realize. As we get more people, the "exact" part of the algorithm will give better results and the "broad" part will get less relevant.

And yeah, Kate is a babe.

jacoblyles3• 16 years ago

It seems that men and women read different books, so matching based on simple similarity is likely to be ineffective.

mquander• 16 years ago

I absolutely don't agree with that. I mean, I'm sure there are some books that bias to one sex or the other, but in my experience, most fiction is universal. I've met a number of women in my short life who matched very closely my personal taste.

Do you have any particular reason you suspect this is true?

kksm198201173• 16 years ago

Well, I for one haven't yet met a girl in my area who enjoyed sci-fi.

jacoblyles3• 16 years ago

If you are looking for a 20-something MALE who likes Atlas Shrugged, you are in luck.

I think there are only three females on the site at the moment, but it appears you would be better off there with Anna Karenina.

jrockway• 16 years ago

Pretty sure OkCupid is the dating site about books. Or at least every profile I've ever read there is.

jacoblyles3• 16 years ago

Your gender ratio seems to be biased in the wrong direction, probably an artifact of seeding it with Hacker News folks. In a community site, the quality of your community is a feature. Features aren't just things you can code.

kksm198201173• 16 years ago

Very nice. How about something that can be used worldwide (India, for instance)?

GeneralMaximus• 16 years ago

This. I'm tired of most websites assuming I'm an American.

derefr• 16 years ago

Especially if your service doesn't involve mailing me anything, and I live in an English-speaking country anyway. You don't have to do anything special for me; just let me in!

...just don't use ZIP codes for anything. That's braindead in this day and age, even if you do live in the US. Give the user Google Maps and a pin to drop—this lets people actually be exact with their location if they want to be, without giving you an address that could be used for spam mail.

aaronbrethorst• 16 years ago

The Seattle alt weekly newspaper, The Stranger, covered you on their blog today. Congrats again!

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/04/02/judging...

Thanks HN: We’ve launched (the dating site about books)

Related Stories