Katherine, the COO of Thread, left a comment (read that first) on yesterday’s post and my response starting getting long, so here it is as a post.
Katherine thanks for the heads up. You raise a number of points I wanted to address.
Thread camouflages people in groups, like OKCupid and a few other sites. Actually, I think you do it better than OKC. I feel slightly less neurotic using your system.
Any reliance on internal Facebook messaging systems concerns me. This is the first I’ve heard about FB doing LinkedIn-style “recommend/pass along messaging” stuff. Interesting. The email API could be incredibly powerful and potentially scary, given the propensity for app developers to abuse their privileges. But good for you nonetheless because that keeps investors happy and the site up and running.
Hopefully you will share how the introductions break out in terms of Off-Thread/email/FB. Please be open as possible with your stats.
Go talk to Engage/Kismeet/Spark Networks about the $6 million they went through trying to get on-site matchmaking to work out. Hopefully you will learn from this cautionary tale. I can see you’re doing things differently and in some ways smarter already, but the “hey we’ll crowdsource the matching†concept, well, we’ll just have to see. I was a huge fan of the concept back in the day, but no one has proven the model to be anything more than an uber-niche. Maybe call Crowdsifter? (partially joking.)
As for getting paid to be a matchmaker, I’m 41 and single, what do I know about matchmaking? ;-)
Your success could also be based on phenomenal viral marketing (beating the current ratio, which I hear seems to be going down, is *really* hard for even more enticing apps), you could Offerpal members to death (please for the love of God no), or focus on something as wacky as effectiveness. For that to happen, you need some sort of matching engine. Friends hooking up friends is a nice business, but to break into the big leagues you need to deliver results and The FB/Thread combo is still too immature in terms of trust, efficiency and feedback loops. Of course you will continue to improve this over time.
[Insert usual dating site inefficiency rant here.]
Wondering what your gender/income/member suitability metrics will be in coming months. Right now all I see are incredibly hot 25 year old women in SF or married women in Boston. Neither demographic works for me. I’m sure this will change when your marketing budget kicks in, but I am getting embarrassing emails from people saying their friends are all married (if I get branded as a pest I’m going to be upset!)
If you do everything right and the stars/luck/money/team/whimsy of Facebook aligns, you could change online dating, although you’re going to have to raise many millions more for marketing if you want to really move the dial.
Finally, thanks for the kind words. I am borrowing your kudos for my testimonial page. Keep us updated with your progress.
