@bentossell@amelielamont - To add to what David has said, there are so many options for dating out there, but they all work along the same constructs. Based upon a very basic set of Facebook-generated profile details (apps like Tinder, Hinge, etc.), or based upon a large number of user-generated personality and interest traits (sites like Match.com, eHarmony, etc.), all users on all apps/sites choose virtually from the same pool of potential matches. On sites like Match, some of the work is done for you based upon the information you provide and algorithms they implement for trait-based matching, but, on most dating platforms, users all swipe left or right on the same population of potential matches as everyone else.
I know it is controversial and very liable to/for criticism to take an approach that might be less politically correct but that mirrors real-life dating and psychology mechanics, but that is what we are aiming to do with Provoq. As David mentioned, real life is much more blunt (like the night-clubbing example). If you examine couples in real life, most often the two members of the couple are at relatively equal levels of attractiveness and socio-economic status (including education, background, career, values, etc.). When you examine couples that have a "mismatch" in attractiveness and/or status, it often arises as a result of one person (most often the male) leveraging a higher level of wealth and/or personality traits to obtain higher-attractiveness female partners. Again, this is not necessarily politically correct to put "bluntly", but I would challenge anyone to deny that this is really how real life works. Now, Ben, you do have a good point that not everyone has the same standards for attractiveness, but, with Provoq, we are leveraging the power of big numbers to create a general set of "rankings" that are based on overall crowd-sourced opinions on desirability of each of our users.
So, in these senses, Provoq really does mirror real life. In real life, you have an inherent "ranking" of how desirable you are, you often end up with a match who has a similar ranking to yours, and if you get someone above that ranking, you often do so by using financial and/or other socio-economic advantages to match with that person.
Provoq does exactly this. Within the app, each person we show you as a potential match is at the same desirability "rank" as you. If you are dissatisfied with the perceived quality of the potential matches you are being shown (which is entirely up to your personal opinion), you can pay to "boost" your desirability ranking and be shown potential matches at that higher rank.
@bentossell, you make great points here. I am not sexist (nor are we trying to be here with Provoq), and I/we fully understand that this approach is controversial. Having said that, on many occasions in the "real world" of dating and coupling, this is quite simply the way things play out (politically correct to say, or not).
The point I'd really like to clarify is that the ranking is not one of "attractiveness"... It's one of "desirability", which is due to a large number of factors including attractiveness, overall likability, education level, career level, personal values, personality traits, interest of lifestyle, hobbies, etc. When we all will be making a decision of one potential match over another on Provoq, we will be evaluating those matches based upon all of the factors I mentioned and more - just like we do on current dating apps like Tinder. A person's judgment of your "attractiveness" will be based upon their assessment of all of your qualities seen in your Provoq profile. Having said that, on dating apps like Tinder (again, maybe not politically correct to call out bluntly, but true), people often swipe left or right simply based upon that first profile picture they see. It's harsh, and potentially unfair, but that is simply how the behavior has exhibited itself in this new online/in-app dating world (due to human nature).
Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder, and we are attempting to sort that out by leveraging the opinions of thousands (if not millions) of "beholders". The intent is not to build a "reputation" of desirability for each user that snowballs based upon the collective choices of the community. It is to attempt to use a brand new way of thinking that mirrors some real-life dating mechanics to provide you and the rest of our users with a selection of potential matches that might be right for you.
As a male or as a female, if you feel like you deserve "better/different" than what our system calculates, there is an easy way to gain access to a different pool of potential matches to see if you become more satisfied with your options.
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@provoqceo I agree with @bentossell on the eye of the beholder issue. However, with the right system, it can be mitigated with a simple ecommerce style personalization algorithm. Essentially this would create a second dimension to rank. I imagine the big dating apps are already doing this to some degree, but user pool limitations will become the bottleneck on a good matching experience.
@amelielamont@BenTossell - I'll start by answering it - but I'm sure my team will have some pieces to add here as well. First and foremost - we're not trying to shy away from the way that physical attraction works. We'll be the first application to acknowledge and be open and honest about human nature. Our application capitalizes on and mirrors human nature. We bank on the idea that physical attraction is a huge factor in dating and mating, and simulates that real-life experience for our users. I'm a firm proponent of the motto, "If it's not broken don't fix it, just improve upon it!" We've done just that with Provoq. We've implemented a rating system similar to what Hot or Not had done and similarly Mark Zuckerberg with his Facemash product. A user's rank is not determined by Provoq - but by the population of users that are choosing or not choosing you. The rank is the level of attractiveness that you have achieved based on whether or not people are choosing to want to match with you. There are some caveats to our application though - if a user is unhappy with their rank - we're giving them the ability to up their rank and get better matches in short. We're also allowing users to send unsolicited messages or Provoqs as we're calling them - to a user - to show them that they are interested - even before they've matched - or in many cases - never match.
@BenTossell - That's the problem with most of the other applications out there. We're not shying away from the criticism or pushback for this approach, because this is the way it happens in real life. Let's take a look at a real life scenario in the night-clubbing scene. As a man - you are either waiting in long line to get into the club, you are attractive enough to be let into the nightclub without a hassle, or you might be an individual ( that has money, power, etc. to purchase tables, bottle service, etc.) Our application mimics this - because this is the way it works. To shy away from real-life is preposterous in my opinion - and I think it's actually hurt some applications because of it. There is no need to sugar-coat the way attraction works on the most simplistic level.
We definitely do not see the metric as being unfair in that (users) are constantly choosing whether or not someone is physically attractive to them or not. Just because someone isn't attractive to you doesn't mean they aren't attractive to another group of people and vice-versa. What we're saying is that when you're choosing from the population of people in your area - the people you'll be choosing from are at or around your attractiveness rank (which is part of the premise of our app - choosing people that are at your level of attractiveness)
As far as unsolicited messages go - we've solved this. We have separate inboxes so to speak in the application where a user will view all the Provoq's (unsolicted messages) and they'll be sorted by that users attractiveness ranking and date of the Provoq. Additionally Provoq's expire after a period of time - so a user won't have a cluttered Provoq inbox. We want users to be able to spark the conversation - but accepting the provoq/message is in fact at the discretion of the user who is receiving the Provoq.
Hope this clarifies a bit more!
Now, @bentossell, to talk about unsolicited messages: on Provoq, you cannot message someone in an unsolicited fashion... so to speak... When you "Provoq" someone (which you can do up to 3 times a day unless you upgrade or pay for access to more Provoqs), it is essentially the same action as the "Facebook Poke". What it does is that it shows the person you've Provoqed that you've done so, which appears in a separate inbox as David explained. It is then up to the person who receives your Provoq to start the conversation and send the first message (much like Bumble).
We certainly do not want to create a system whereby users can blast unsolicited messages to other users they have not yet matched with. That would lead to a great deal of clutter and spam. The action of "Provoqing" someone just means that it shows that person that you've Provoqed them, which opens up the option for the Provoqed individual to send a message. Nothing more than that.
A final note on why we built this application - as has been repeated multiple times above, all current dating apps have become pretty cluttered as users all select from the same population of potential matches. Additionally, we believe that most dating apps don't really mirror real-life dating and psychology mechanics. That's where Provoq comes in. On other apps, swiping left or right on someone doesn't have any effect on the general community as a whole or on that user, but, in real life, all people constantly choose some potential matches over others, and this affects everyone around them in that population. Provoq makes every "choice" priceless and meaningful because when you choose one person over another, the person chosen gets a slight boost to their desirability ranking, and the person not chosen is moved slightly downward ranking-wise. It may be controversial to create a system that operates this way, but, just like most other dating apps, the "choosing" is done entirely anonymously. It allows the "crowd" (whole population of users) to choose how people "stack up", and it also generates a sorting system that mirrors how things sort out in real life.
Additionally, since we only show you matches at your ranking level (to mirror the real life dating mechanics of ending up with a match at the same level of desirability as you) we eliminate the "clutter" of potentially unwanted matches that users constantly face on most current dating apps.
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