"a. there's a generation that has absolutely no patience for the interfaces you and I love."
It's been over half a year since I last visited IILWY... this time it almost gave me a seizure. I'm amazed that at age 23 I have already hit a complete generation gap.
IILWY is an interesting site but I almost never go to it because all that Flash means that my CPU is running at 100% at all time and fans get really loud (and I'm on a MBP which means my computer is silent almost all the time).
site breaks the back button and doesn't seem to really present any way of fighting the overwhelming network power of facebook/myspace.
in southern california, myspace is for the unwashed masses (who would have been using aol in 1998), facebook is for college kids, and everything else can go fly a kite.
flash interface makes me want to die. then again myspace makes me want to die, so what do I know?
There is no need for a site like this to be done in anything other than flash. It's meant to be a place to go to waste some time, nothing more, nothing less.
My first impression is that it is more like a virtual online space than a 'site'. A nightclub, instead of a Wally World. It doesn't feel as dirty as Myspace.
flash is great. they've built a great flex application and that is no small feat without hard work and talent, but it's the minor UI details that they chose that's irking me.
Dating sites have at least a 2:1 ratio males:females, while the advertising has a 1:10 ratio. Any innovation in that sector will have to do something about that problem, rather than the problem of images not weirdly flying around enough.
... and places like GaiaOnline seem to exist primarily as an international meat market for the underaged. There seems to be just as many females as there are males. (I made the mistake of going into the Towns once). It was not like this online back when I was a teenager.
The point being that social networking sites and MMOs seem to work better as mating grounds than supposed dating sites.
It's been over half a year since I last visited IILWY... this time it almost gave me a seizure. I'm amazed that at age 23 I have already hit a complete generation gap.