On second thought:
4. I would go for specific leading topics for a person and leave clustering for the rest. Clustering removes the fine granularity you spend so much time voting on in the beginning. The cards also rely on gut instinct plus fat fingers - i found myself mis-swiping on several and didn’t really care to go back and fix them. Instead, you should allow statements of explanation behind the most pertinent topics or highlighting the most relevant topics after one is done swiping and then prioritize matching on those, with the rest lumped into clusters.
5. The topics do conflate two different mental systems and they clash badly: Interests are things you want to pursue more of together. Politics are divisive topics. You and I share an interest in building products that help people with niche interests find each other, we should be able to find each other with your product. Instead, we found each other with the HN discussion. That’s because depth and insights surfaces with content generated by the person, while swiping is low threshold but also too low signal and the gut instinct of one strongly opposing swipe would be to “skip” that person. If you want connection, let users focus on a few key topics to them and let them pick a few they definitely want to avoid in another person, then let people reach out based on your statements of purpose on a topic. If you want to dig into these problems over chat, call, or email, feel free to reach out to me at hnusername at dreamlist dot com.
5 The down side with people matching is the reason why there are no people marching IPOs out there. Once you are successful, you have to leave. The dating sites have all aggregated into one big company which is a cash cow. Don’t converge towards dating unless you want acquired and users churning massively. The interest matching is slightly different, in that a good match doesn’t preclude you from staying on the platform. The politics ones always turn into a dumpster fire, as political preferences can be fleeting based on your in-group. I would stick to interests for things you want to do together.
5. The topics do conflate two different mental systems and they clash badly: Interests are things you want to pursue more of together. Politics are divisive topics. You and I share an interest in building products that help people with niche interests find each other, we should be able to find each other with your product. Instead, we found each other with the HN discussion. That’s because depth and insights surfaces with content generated by the person, while swiping is low threshold but also too low signal and the gut instinct of one strongly opposing swipe would be to “skip” that person. If you want connection, let users focus on a few key topics to them and let them pick a few they definitely want to avoid in another person, then let people reach out based on your statements of purpose on a topic. If you want to dig into these problems over chat, call, or email, feel free to reach out to me at hnusername at dreamlist dot com.
5 The down side with people matching is the reason why there are no people marching IPOs out there. Once you are successful, you have to leave. The dating sites have all aggregated into one big company which is a cash cow. Don’t converge towards dating unless you want acquired and users churning massively. The interest matching is slightly different, in that a good match doesn’t preclude you from staying on the platform. The politics ones always turn into a dumpster fire, as political preferences can be fleeting based on your in-group. I would stick to interests for things you want to do together.