It still baffles me when anyone would want to continue to dump personally-identifiable info into these services. Tying together all of this stuff into one dream is just a tsunami-sized data breach waiting to happen at best, and an open marketplace to lure unsuspecting rubes into divulging all of their info.
There is definitely a problem for dating profile services / apps, especially for men (although I can't imagine emotionally healthy women enjoy getting barraged by a wall of "hey gurl. sup?"). I don't think the solution to the problems involve more apps, but fewer.
Going out and being effective in the world is the best way to find a partner (for men or women, but especially for men). I have found all of my past / current partners this way, as honing some craft in a group setting or taking part in some group activity you actually care about (i.e. not showing up to salsa dancing because you're lonely even though you are quite sure you hate dancing) is not only enjoyable, but it gives you a chance to actually connect with people who don't have their guard up in a realm where sexual tension is a given. Best of all dates are usually just doing the same activity you were interested in in the first place; I have gone on about a dozen dates with women I've found at climbing gyms to go climbing only to realize we weren't right for each other, and we just became climbing buddies. Much better than worrying about posturing for some persona one is trying to present to the world online.
> just doing the same activity you were interested in in the first place
Some women don't like to be hit on social settings. For example, in tech conference, some women complained that men flirted with them.
So I'm thinking a way to separate women who are open to dating and not with SwanLove. Say, you are a yoga instructor. You create a group with SwanLove. Women who are open to dating can set the status to be available in this group. This way, men don't bother women who want to only focus on Yoga in your yoga class. Of course, to some extent, this can kill spontaneity.
> Privacy issue / Cambridge Analytica
I'm thinking of adding some encryption technology like zero-proof knowledge so even I as the owner of the website couldn't see the data. So I put some decentralized aspect onto it.
But fair enough. If this idea is proved to be so stupid, I guess I'll write a boring DeFi app. :)
> Some women don't like to be hit on social settings. For example, in tech conference, some women complained that men flirted with them.
In my own experience (as a guy), I have never met a woman who was emotionally healthy and would be okay advertising receptivity to advances from guys. The women who I have found in my own life who advertised "hey I want to be hit on" have usually been using attention from guys (usually the "wrong" kind of attention) to temporarily alleviate deeper emotional issues from their childhood. This is not to indict women, however; the aforementioned "men hitting on women at social settings where it is not so acceptable as a default" is definitely an issue, and likely resurfacing some thought patterns in those men who engage in that that they learned early on in their childhood (often due to their parents not teaching them empathy). Unfortunately there is less social stigma around brash pushy guys tryna hit on women at tech conferences than there ought to be, although thankfully this is changing in recent years.
Maybe an app can help with this in the short term, but I think that learning how to put one's own house in order mentally, socially, and career-wise is the best way to build a foundation upon which to seek out others to bring into one's life.
(note: I'm aware this overlaps with the Jordan Peterson "clean your room" thing; I agree with the sentiment, but only in its narrow sense of it as prescriptive advice, not in the broader social context of using it as an excuse for not pushing for societal change beyond oneself).
Basically, an app can't solve the problem of low EQ, for either / any gender.
> I'm thinking of adding some encryption technology like zero-proof knowledge so even I as the owner of the website couldn't see the data. So I put some decentralized aspect onto it.
Eventually the data will have to be ingested from these external things (e.g. Strava, linkedin, some crypto portfolio thing, etc). This data will have to be operated on in a way that at least both parties (e.g. a guy showing off his gym / crypto gains, and potential women who would request such data when building their matching profile) would have to agree to decrypt the data (operating on encrypted data is a very nascent part of research; most of it involves simple numerical operations, not complex queries).
That is, by design you cannot have discoverability and privacy at the same time. For example, Tinder would be a strange experience if you had to wait for someone to "approve" you checking out their profile (i.e. providing decrypted data).
Snarfing up tons of data is just a ticking time bomb waiting to happen. If the big social media companies cannot keep their systems safe despite employing tons of highly-paid, highly-knowledgable engineers, I don't think any startup can survive the onslaught of security threats that such an enticing PII honeypot would create.
> But fair enough. If this idea is proved to be so stupid, I guess I'll write a boring DeFi app. :)
It is admirable of you to address issues in the world of online dating. It is currently dominated by psychologically distressing players (e.g. Tinder and its ilk). If you think you can solve it through another app or site, you may very well be right.
But think about this: would you want to spend the rest of your life married to someone who considered things like your salary or your Strava data or other such superficial metrics as important markers of your value as a human being?
> would you want to spend the rest of your life married to someone who considered things like your salary or your Strava data or other such superficial metrics as important markers of your value as a human being?
Obviously most relationships will have discovery of this information at some point, very early on. It is hard to hide the beer gut, or the lack of a car/job/own apartment/other status marker. So being able to filter on it saves time for everyone - and arguably benefits the women who don't fall for the guy who fakes status but who they wouldn't want to spend time with otherwise. Basically what the job of the marriage match-maker was in old times.
(And of course the alternative might be no mate, or a mate found through a hook-up app with few common interests...)
> Snarfing up tons of data is just a ticking time bomb waiting to happen.
What about a decentralized dating app (it does not have to involve crypto)? So think it as WordPress but for dating. Say, you are a priest and you have a community where you want them to find mates. So you can download SwanLove.tar.gz and install it on your server. Then your community can use your app. So I don't own the data. Maybe you can pay me $10 per month for the license.
> But think about this: would you want to spend the rest of your life married to someone who considered things like your salary or your Strava data or other such superficial metrics as important markers of your value as a human being?
I mean, finding mates is technically superficial. Someone said, "men are pigs, women are gold diggers. But that doesn't mean true love cannot grow between them."
See it from women's perspective, "Do you want to marry a man who is sexually attracted to you?" By the very definition, the man is already superficial. But again, it's nature who forces men and women act this way.
"39 per cent of Singaporean women will go out with men who earn less" -> So 61% women go after richer men. By your definition, men should not marry them because they are superficial. But again, it's nature who makes them act this way. It is what it is. I don't blame them. If you want, you can blame nature.
However, I think just because a woman is attracted to a man with high-income, it doesn't mean that they cannot learn the true love. Men and women can learn to build a deep meaningful relationship. But in the beginning, we have to admit that we are attracted to superficial things.
It still baffles me when anyone would want to continue to dump personally-identifiable info into these services. Tying together all of this stuff into one dream is just a tsunami-sized data breach waiting to happen at best, and an open marketplace to lure unsuspecting rubes into divulging all of their info.
There is definitely a problem for dating profile services / apps, especially for men (although I can't imagine emotionally healthy women enjoy getting barraged by a wall of "hey gurl. sup?"). I don't think the solution to the problems involve more apps, but fewer.
Going out and being effective in the world is the best way to find a partner (for men or women, but especially for men). I have found all of my past / current partners this way, as honing some craft in a group setting or taking part in some group activity you actually care about (i.e. not showing up to salsa dancing because you're lonely even though you are quite sure you hate dancing) is not only enjoyable, but it gives you a chance to actually connect with people who don't have their guard up in a realm where sexual tension is a given. Best of all dates are usually just doing the same activity you were interested in in the first place; I have gone on about a dozen dates with women I've found at climbing gyms to go climbing only to realize we weren't right for each other, and we just became climbing buddies. Much better than worrying about posturing for some persona one is trying to present to the world online.