This isn't really an answer to the question of influence, but it gives you a start on the question. There's the list of the top 100 people ranked by karma - that doesn't mean they're influential, of course.
Aight: How about "The capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of [the collective mind of the people who read HN] ...something like that.
Check PG's profile - he has 124701 (at the time of writing) and would be significantly off the top. He has deliberately removed himself from the listing.
@brianchu: I agree. I'm largely at fault. And I'm probably going to take down the post. I was just pissed off at Allan's attitude (especially the condescension), and thought I'd try to get a little revenge. But that's no way to behave. I do apologize. Also, I'm going to stop using the word "So" as often. Also, I'm going to start proofreading my blog posts before I put them live. It's just that it's never really mattered, because nobody has ever read it!
Right. Apologizing is not strictly necessary. But relationships matter; in the long run someone who is able to apologize and keep calm despite others' rude statements is going to be better off.
Would it be more effective to build "online matchmaking" features/services around activities that people are naturally engaging in online (like playing Wow), rather than to having dedicated "online dating" sites like Match or OKC? Is that the future of online matchmaking?
The most interesting part of this post is the guy who wanted to build a service that reviews you online dating profile. That seems like something that has real potential.
In my experience, one of the most frustrating things about being on an online dating site is that it's really hard to get feedback from women about how your profile is perceived by them.
You send messages to a bunch of women and 90%+ never respond, but you have no idea why. I would pay $$$ to find out why they don't respond, and I'm sure that a lot of other people would as well (especially men).
Could this be built into a site like OKCupid? Perhaps some kind of revenue sharing arrangement (between reviewers and the dating site) where users pay to get feedback, and other users get paid to review the profiles of men or women who message them(or maybe even those who don't)...and it's anonymous feedback...or semi-anonymous.
I really like the idea as well! From what I know the site didn't go anywhere because the minimum advertising commitment for dating websites is in the thousands. So I think he dropped the idea.
But definitely it could work for someone with some marketing skills and/or cash to burn. It's something that can be built in a weekend as well. Feel free to reach out to me and I can try to help point you in the right direction if you're interested in pursuing it.
Yeah, I think it would be very difficult to make this work as a standalone service, but I think it could be potentially be very successful as an internal feature of OKC or a similar site. It would be valuable to me to find out what the women that I am interested in think of my profile, especially the ones that don't respond to me. I would pay to get some decent feedback on myself. One of the problems is that I see my own profile in complete isolation. Actually, what I should do is go look at the profiles of other men to find out what the competition is like, but I'm not going to do that. But there are probably lots of women who would give me feedback on my profile if I paid them even $1.
