An additional small update

1. I checked in with participants. For two matches people went on one date, so things are progressing.

2. I didn't mention this explicitly, but we recorded the entire two hours of the show. We will be releasing only a bunch of short snippets, but we have a lot of content to pick from. View counts from our previous show can be used to estimate future view counts — check out my previous update for the numbers.
   

Testimonials

What progress have you made since your last update?

The second show on Feb 10 ended up being a success!

Some stats

1. ≈63 people showed up, roughly 2/3 of all registrations — pretty standard turnout for my events.

2. ≈57 people in the audience, 6 participants (3 men, 3 women)

3. 3 matches between participants (two men matched with the same woman, two women matched together — link to our main market with 39 bettors). Prediction markets were displaying reasonable probabilities during the show with one potential match heavily favoured over others (and these people matched in the end). Also, link to the secondary market for the number of matches — quite uncertain, pretty wide distribution of potential matches — also seems very reasonable.

4. 2 hours total show time, longer than planned (70 minutes) — intentional choice on our parts given that the audience was clearly enjoying the show and getting to know the participoants

What went well
We kept the bulk of the original show format but significantly improved the initial 30 minutes by adding extra structure:

1a. Intros. Started by getting participants to say a few words about themselves
1b. 2 truths 1 lie. We asked participants to prepare 2 truths and 1 lie about themselves in advance. Then the audience and other participants got a chance to do a bit of 'investigative journalism' by asking questions about each of the statements. Finally, someone (usually another participant, sometimes a member of the audience) took a guess which one is the lie.
1c. "Where would you take each of other participants on the first date?" . Then each of participants would answer which idea they would like the most. This added interactivity and participant-participant interaction

2. We then alternated between hosts (Rachel and I), the audience and the participants themselves asking the participants questions. The fact that we did a bunch of interactive stuff already (in particular the 2 truth and 1 lie) seemed to make participants more comfortable with answering questions (comparing with the first show here).

3. As mentioned above, prediction markets were reasonable and tracked something tangible. Also, 39 (out of ≈57) people betted on the main market.

4. This time we recorded the entire show — though we are planning to publish only snippets, this means we'd be able to pick from more material and potentially more clips

5. 3 matches — we weren't optimizing for matches specifically, but it's great to have them

6. 20 more people joined London manifold.love whatsapp group for future events announcements, now we have 56 people in there.

What could be improved
1. More alcoholic drinks! Sadly I ended up not having enough time to do a quick run to a nearby grocery store.
2. Music during the show to signify transitions between different parts, e.g. dramatic music while revealing matches
3. Prediction markets during the "2 truth and 1 lie" round — this would introduce people to betting and let them make a bunch of bets quickly with rapid feedback. This requires some organisational thinking and participants providing 2 truth and 1 lie in advance, so we opted out for not doing this. We'll probably have prediction markets if we run another show.
4. Manifold stability while creating markets. I ended up with a bunch of "fetch errors" and accidental duplicate markets right before the show.


We published several short video snippets from the FIRST show (not the one the update above is about):

1. "How do you feel about being objectified" & naked calendar story, 2500 views + 1100 views + 450 views

2. "Nathan, what's your relationship like with your mother", 2400 views + 500 views

3. Nathan freestyle rapping about Manifold and prediction markets, 1000 views + 480 views

4. "The craziest thing you've done for love", 362 views

5. Nathan manipulating the market, 250 views
   

What are your next steps?

1. Video editing and getting approval from participants for releasing the videos

2. Maybe: writing a post about dating shows as marketing materials for manifold
   

Is there anything others could help you with?

1. I forgot to estimate how many new people signed up to manifold.love — Manifold team, could you please check how many registrations did you get on Feb 10..11 in London (though, it might be hard to separate the effect of the official show from our unofficial London one)

2. Manifold team: how much value would you get from me writing a post about running dating shows?
   

One other piece of update: we have a WhatsApp group for future announcements and manifold.love discussions that currently has 37 people. If the Manifold Team is interested, we can use it to reach out to people in some way for announcements, feedback, etc.

What progress have you made since your last update?

We ran the show & it was a blast: 50 people showed. More details in my other comment that I left before I realized there is a "Post Update" button — I don't want to duplicate information here!

What are your next steps?

1. Run another show on the 10th of February.

2. Agree with the Manifold Team which snippets from the show we'll put online

Is there anything others could help you with?

Manifold team could help me by providing me with the information on their social media strategy and how they would like to use the videos. I then will do the basic editing for the videos.

The dating show ended up a blast. The next one is happening on the 10th of February.

— ≈50 people showed up in total: 5 participants on stage, ≈40-45 in the audience. That’s 1.5× more than we expected

— Got 11 people on manifold.love: 3 women while talking about the show, 7 men signed up after the show + I myself signed up before the show

— Lots of positive feedback from participants and attendees: people want more!

— No matches between people on stage, but one of the participants ended up getting a date with someone from the audience.

I had participants permission to take photos and record video and publicly share (with the right to vet what’s getting shared). I recorded ≈30 minutes of the video with some interesting moments, such as:

— Nathan freestyle rapping about prediction markets

— A fun unhinged answer to the question “What’s the craziest thing you did for love”

— Various prediction markets discussions and dynamics, like Nathan intentionally betting up a probability of a match with Mel, a woman participating in the show. 

— People talking about manifold.love as the product and endorsing it while also mentioning “it’s not quite there yet”


Because of the holiday season and waiting Manifold to respond about the recorded video I have yet to post on it anywhere. I'll be doing so in the next couple of weeks.