Crushmaven Overview

2013 CrushMaven.com Facebook Social Algorithm / Match-making Application

Development Site URL: http://crushmaven.herokuapp.com/

CrushMaven.com was a social algorithm / match-making experiment that explored romantic relationships a user might already have within their personal or professional networks.

It was launched in 2013 and was shut down in 2015 after failing to generate sufficient market traction.

CrushMaven, unlike traditional online dating sites, was geared towards people who already knew someone they were attracted to i.e. a crush. These users may have shared a friendship with their crush, were co-workers, or were already in another relationship. Irregardless, they were uncomfortable 'making a move' and revealing their intentions.

The Social Algorithm

The app's social algorithm presupposes the following:

1. people are more likely to act on an attraction if they know that attraction is mutual
2. people may realize they are attracted to someone -- who they previously were not attracted to -- if they know that person is attracted to them.

The Details

How It Worked

Crushmaven users identified the facebook profiles of users they were attracted to. They were asked to provide information that Crushmaven could use to help get those people signed up (e.g. email, phone number, twitter account, etc.)

Once signed up, the facebook data of the user, their crush, and the relationship between them was analyzed e.g. demographics like age, location, recent friendships, likes, etc.

The result of that facebook analsyis was a crush LINEUP: A lineup consists of 10 people that the crush would be asked to individually consider if were attracted to. Prior to, they were informed that at least one person in the lineup was already attracted to them.

They were notified if any of their marked attractions was mutually attracted to them. And they could send messages to one another within the site.

Note: Beginning in 2017, OkCupid has since implemented a similar line-up feature when a user receives a new like. The user is notified that one of a handful of users likes them. They are given the chance to select any that they find attractive, and they are notified if the feeling is mutual. It's currently known as "Double-take".

The Lineup & Social Algorithm

There were many considerations that were programmed into the creation of a line-up in order to protect the identity of the originator of the crush, in case the attraction wasn't mutual. In addition, lineup users were selected with the intent that new attractions would be discovered. (This was the key viral growth ingredient.)

Here are a few examples of the lineup algorithm:

If both the original user and their crush had a mutual attraction, then the timing of the notifications could be delayed in order to give the crush target the sense that they initiated the mutual attraction and were waiting to find out if the attraction was mutual. In reality, they were the target of the attraction and not the other way around.

The selection of users in the lineup was carefully crafted to also obfuscate the originater of the attraction. For example: if the crush was friends-of-friends but not a direct facebook friend of the user, then all of the lineup members would also have to be friends-of-friends. Two other connection based relationships were programmed for: direct friends and users who don't have any mutual friends between them.

TECHNOLOGY

Technology Overview

CrushMaven was built on the Django/Python framework.

It utilized a PostgreSQL database and Memcached caching on backend and Django templates with Jquery / Javscript on the front-end.

The social algorithms were implemented inside of Django views. Interactivity on the front-end were implemented with client side Jquery Javascript and Ajax calls embedded inside Django's templates.

3rd Party integrations included Facebook (GraphQL, Facebook Oath2 User Authentication) and PayPal for payments.

Hosting was set up on Heroku.

Python multi-threading was utilized for the Facebook hack:

The Facebook Hack

CrushMaven relied on a Facebook hack in order to build the lineups of users who were friends-of-friends with their crush. At the time, Facebook limited what friendship data could be obtained through its Graph API (most likely for privacy reasons). It also prohibited data scraping of public data by detecting and blocking parsing agents. The Crushmaven facebook hack overcame this hurdle.

CrushMaven was able to effectively parse the paginated pages of the public friends lists for most users. The key was going through a backdoor and utilizing an unpublished REST API endpoint that exposed this data. (This API endpoint was used as part of ajax calls to dynamically load friends into mobile facebook pages while a user scrolled through a friends list.) This required python multi-threading in order to efficiently run. And in order to call this endpoint as many times as I needed to (and not get blocked), I had to utilize a cookie that I programatically refreshed by using an in-memory browser agent. Essentially I was mocking as a new, different browser user on a frequent basis.  

Note, this functionality has most likely been prohibited and sealed off by Facebook in recent years. But it worked great when it did :-)

Code Architecture and Implementation Flaws:

There were many. The entire application was built in a hurried MVP approach with the intent of being completely re-built if the business took off. Here is just a sampling of the problems with this site:

1. The Jquery javascript front end code is a complete mess. If this were re-written in 2018, a front-end framework like React would be used.

Note: all of the javscript functionality was written before I understood how to program in a functional programming language and how to utilize the related features of Javascript, in particular how functions act as first class citizens.

2. The single responsibility principle was abused all over the place. Functions are unnecessarily long and contain too many unrlelated purposes.

3. There are zero unit tests. Again, this goes back to the hurried MVP approach. But if I had to built this in 2018, particularly with a front-end framework like React, I would have included unit tests built on a simple testing framework like Jest/Enzyme.

4. The CSS stylesheet is a complete mess with an over-abundance of !important declarations and selector specificity. It is also not-responsive. If re-written today, I would utilize SASS, a class-naming structure like BEM, responsive CSS techniques like built-in CSS display properties e.g. flexbox and grid. And if using React perhaps mix in CSS modules and various CSS-in-JS styling techniques.

Luckily, the django framework and it's separated organization of code by concern e.g. views vs models, helped organize much of the back-end code.