Ask HN: new dating site, where do the initial members come from?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2351702

by metaprinter • 15 years ago

2 4 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

wmf• 15 years ago

Fake profiles, essentially sock puppets of the founders.

uptown• 15 years ago

Some sites seed their userbase with fake profiles. Today you're probably better off trying to convince people to fill out profiles as part of a pre-launch viral campaign. People seem willing to provide pretty detailed info as part of the "securing your username" come-on these days.

Now, when you do actually launch, you're sure to lose a large percentage of those that signed up. Please make sure to provide a mechanism for easy account cancellation, and I wouldn't recommend activating every sign-up without another click of approval from those that did sign-up during the pre-launch phase. The last thing a happily married person wants is for their profile to pop up on a dating site because they didn't know they were signing up for a dating site. But I'm sure you'll get some level of users that convert to active users of the site once you're live if for no other reason than the fact that their info is already in there ... they're single ... and they're curious.

There's really a lot of ways you can go about it though. Maybe a Mechanical Turk task. Or maybe rewards for referrals that actually convert. Just be creative and think of what might convince you to sign up for your own site.

minalecs• 15 years ago

what is your site

metaprinter• 15 years ago

I don't have a dating site, it just seems like they are cropping up left and right and it vexed me as to how their database is initially populated.

Ask HN: new dating site, where do the initial members come from?

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