Date Jonny

I had a pretty funny conversation with one of my colleagues today. I was lamenting the story state of my love life, and in so doing commented that I don't like Tinder, as it didn't play to my strengths (ie I'm more funny and smart than I am hot). Jokingly, he suggested I redirect potential suitresses to a webpage I specifically set up as my dating profile, instead of an account on some online service (which, incidentally, all harvest and sell your data with complete abandon). I added that perhaps I could make it like the The Bachelor, and girls could 'apply' to date me - in jest, of course.

But then I got to thinking that it might not be a bad idea after all.

Obviously not the application bit - that's creepy and narcissistic. But a self-hosted, custom built online dating profile might have legs. It has a lot of pros: it would show off some level of technical ability, it would show my personality and interests better than some awful Bumble bio, it would be stand me out from the crowd, it would likely only attract people with an interest in technology, so we'd have a baked in shared interest. I could customise it however I wanted, run a/b tests, and maybe get the opportunity to talk to some interesting people, not just from my hometown! I initially thought it was a bit cringe/desperate, but then I remembered that pretty much everyone dates solely online these days, and have profiles with multiple services - I am simply streamlining the process.

There are some pretty major hurdles I'm going to have to overcome though. Firstly there are a handful of technical questions, such as:

• Server or static?
• CMS or custom?
• PHP, Python, node, none of the above?
• React, Angular, vanilla JS?
• What functionality do I want the site to have?

This is on top of the usual UX and design decisions that will be challenging as well. Then there will be the question of what actually makes a 'good' online dating profile - one that will hopefully generate interest from people I might be compatible with romantically. What pictures am I going to use? What information am I going to include, or not include, about myself? If I end up writing pages and pages about my interests, achievements, and how great I am, am I just going to come across like a self-absorbed wanker instead of an attractive young professional?

There is one problem significantly larger than all of these though - how am I going to get people to actually look at the site? The neat thing about dating apps is that your target audience comes with the app, but I won't have that, I'll have to actively try to acquire 'users'. The first task will be defining my target audience, which will mean deciding what answers to the infamous question of 'asl?' (age, sex, location) I will be accepting. On one hand, girls, 18-28, Guernsey seems obvious, and would probably be my setting on Tinder, but that is severely limiting my potential userbase. What if I said, girls and boys, 18-40, UK... and somehow managed to market the site so that a meaningful number of people saw it. I might get to talk to or meet (or sleep with) people I never would have in other circumstances.

As for actually marketing it, the obvious choice is word of mouth. I send it to all my friends and say 'hey, do you have any single friends you think might be interested in me? Send them this site!', and then perhaps that gets the first few hits. I then need to find a way to incentivize those people, to also share it with their friends who might be single and looking, assuming they aren't interested. There's no obvious way to do this, so I am going to brainstorm it during initial development, and I'm very open to suggestions.

I think the project has a relatively low chance of finding me love, but my current strategy of doing nothing has a 0% chance. Even if it is an ultimate fruitless endeavour in the sense of romance, it will be fun(ny) and perhaps I will learn something. It'll be open source, so maybe I can create a template or something for other single developers out there.

I just bought the domain datejonny.com - add it to your bookmarks!