Christian XO - A new, free Christian singles site

E-mail

Just wanted to post a site e-mail address too (although I think the few viewers of this page right now already have my e-mail ;-)).

I just created launch@christianxo.com for now. You can use that for any questions/comments, or if you wanted to kind of "preregister" (e.g. "Let me know when it's ready so I can join!").

Finally, if you're a designer, or know one, you can surely design a better look or logo for Christian XO than me, so let me know if you wanted to be involved with that – or any other aspect of the site you might have an idea about! :-)

Location, location... Relocation!

Before the site's ready (and later, after), I thought I'd write a news update/blog post of sorts to share a bit more about all things Christian XO! :-) Or at least some things. Such as my thoughts on features, or explaining something. So this is the first...

I never liked those "Willing to relocate?" type of questions on other sites' profiles. A real answer is definitely not as simple as the "Yes" or "No" (or "Maybe") choices they offer! If a person says "No," they surely don't mean they're going to stay at the same address forever, right? And if they say "Yes," they probably don't mean they'd go anywhere in the world; maybe not even across the country. So it's not very meaningful when you think about it, although it may be an important piece of information for some people.

An obvious part missing from Yes/No is something that says where or how far you're able or willing to relocate!

There was already going to be a location Preference to choose where you'd like matches to be from. But you can be open to meeting people from a much larger area, even if you personally want to stay in a relatively small area. So like any Preference setting, "location" applies to other people viewing your profile; whereas something "relocation" related applies to you.

I wasn't sure what to call this "relocate within..." thing so it wouldn't be confused with the similar-sounding "match location" Preference (although they would appear in separate parts of a profile).

That's when I thought of the obvious-in-hindsight "Relocation area," which hopefully conveys the meaning clearly! Maybe just being able to set a distance first (or "anywhere"), but ultimately the same possible choices as "match location," such as metro area, state, country, etc.

FYI: Having a relocation area set would allow some neat things to be done. For example, you could choose to only see people whose relocation area overlaps with yours. :-)

Another Christian singles site? (Another "dating" site of any kind?) WHY?

Because the Internet.
I don't like the sites we've been stuck with for a while, mainly referring to the "Big 3": Mingle, Cafe (only one I've actively used), and Christian Dating For Free (CDFF). I just think things can be done better, and that's exactly what I want to do with this site!

The goal is to take everyone from those sites – on the way to having every single, single Christian in the world... The more the "marry-er!"
I get to build something and play with stuff I enjoy like coding, servers, databases (datebases?), geography, math, etc... :^)

Will it be free? Why or why not?

Yep, because nobody wants to fall in love AND fall in debt. :-)

But yeah, always! Otherwise there's really no point. Pay-only sites just limit the possible matches for everyone, including paid members! Yet unfortunately people give money to these sites that have purposely reduced the number of people you could talk to. Everyone loses, except the site. (Even after driving away aquired users, which doesn't make much business sense...) I think it's especially bad for Christian sites to do that (I'm looking at you ChristianCafe).

OkCupid had a great blog article in 2010 entitled "Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating" (they're dumb non-Christians, but do lots of awesome statistical analysis [occasional content/language advisory]) – targeting Match.com and eHarmony, but same applies for Christian/niche sites. They removed it after Match bought them for $50 million (hello conflict of interest!). A cached copy is still available. Good stuff there about incentives/motivation, and how paying makes things worse for guys (wow!) and girls (LOL :-/). The best part is how they use their own data against them, like showing how much more likely you are to get married by NOT paying for a site, haha. Interesting...

"Costs" have never been a thought, despite what the Cafe says, as they're simply a non-factor... While I want to monetize the site other ways, I'd never want to hurt users and require payment after choosing to overspend on marketing, etc.

Christian Mingle is even worse, since it's NOT a Christian site, and just wants to take Christians' money by exploiting the "Christian" label. :-( And they have to keep getting enough new people to pay for over $2 million of advertising every month!

CDFF, while free, should generate enough revenue to pay a small staff and do some marketing (but they don't advertise that I'm aware of). But it's lacking features and has way too many obnoxious ads anyway...

My goal is first and foremost to help people! What could other sites do if they put as much effort into matching people as they do into getting money for themselves or shareholders...?

Some features...

As a code/database guy, I find it weird that other sites don't really do much to tap into the possibilities of what could actually be computed and the neat things that can be done... I had a large wishlist with the way I wanted things to work; and then figured out how to implement anything I thought of. Not just implemented, but in a good, logical, and usable way. :-) Hopefully I can do the same for any ideas you may have!

Extensive geographic features – Anything you can imagine, and then some, this stuff is one of the main features. It's probably harder to explain everything than simply seeing it. And we really need a lot of people to see the amazing difference it makes. These features, as a whole, are the single thing that kept me from creating a site years earlier – I needed a solid data source to do it right.

It'll be US-only at launch, but Canada and Australia will be added within a couple weeks. This is for strategic, not technical, reasons (instead of allowing all countries at once). Countries in different parts of the world will have their own, slightly localized, view of things; as will we, if viewing them from North America, etc.

You'll be able to set your displayed location how you want (no big deal there) and hide/obscure your exact location/distance... And you'll be able to set other location-related stuff like your "relocation area" or "match location" (both optional, of course) in any way you can imagine.

Multiple locations – If you're in different places for home/school/work/missions/etc. but still want cool location-specific stuff to work for each, just add them too! I probably won't expose this feature right away, but everything is being designed and ready for it behind-the-scenes. :^)

This should also apply for other location preferences, even if you don't live there, but might want to someday (whether another city or entire country).

"Creeper" block – As I've only told a couple people about, after hearing the problem girls have with much older guys contacting them (hopefully I'm not that old yet! :-O), this isn't just a preference or messaging requirement in your profile. No, you'll be able to set an "extreme" age limit and you won't even show up on the site to people above that age if you don't want to. Or let your profile be shown, but without photos, for example.
Pictures, pictures, pictures – More photos than other sites at hopefully the highest quality. Lets start with 12-16 first before raising the limit to 30, 40, 50, or more (not much reason to have any limit, but there's diminishing value at some "excessive" number).

The highest quality for different screen sizes/resolutions (desktop to mobile), by preserving any high-resolution and not degrading quality. But larger files might be too much for some to download. Instead of storing smaller versions of photos, I discovered a way to get a smaller file from a large photo fast (not reprocessed) that nobody has used before that I know of. I will modify the Web server software in order to implement this feature.

There may or may not be a strict no-selfie policy. :-)
And on the topic of pictures, you'll never see any "stock photos" like other sites. Ugh!

"Mutual" viewing permissions – For different things... This means you'll have the option to:

Only allow people to view your photo(s) if they also have a photo themselves.
Only let people see that you viewed them, if you can also see that they viewed you.
And so on, for anything... The ability to prevent "picture-less" people from seeing yours is the main one I wanted to mention, since I don't think I've seen that before.

Security – Got the secure version of the site so your account is always secure when browsing (mostly for public WiFi, etc.). Passwords stored in the right, secure way. Logins done in the right way. And I'll do everything I can in code to prevent bad passwords, or the site can create a good random password for you. :^) So many sites are doing this stuff wrong!

I can't do much for personal security (and I don't like when sites imply that they can), but things should be well-covered on the technical side.
Smilies – Including this funny one you probably wouldn't see on other Christian sites: (Hover for description.) No, I haven't seen the movie, but this makes me laugh. :-D

I can haz teh codes?

Umm, no. This isn't Cheezburger. ;-)