I think that the pre-qualification of being single and willing to pay to meet other who are single is an overlooked factor.

The grand daddy of commitment is the infamous personality profile with eHarmony. ( takes like 45 min to fill out)

However, when you take the time to really study eHarmony you find a lot of what the site is supposed to be about falls by the way side in the interest of marketing.

For Instance, the “Find More Matches” button is only an image (animated gif) and never really triggers a search script.

Its just a pacification button making us think the (computer) is really trying hard to find us more matches!

With my background as a webmaster I have found a few of these little flaws and this one makes sense. This way they can meter out the amount of matches over a longer period of time and you guessed it, charge us more monthly fees!

That being said while some men find eHarmony a pain in the butt due to all its hoops in guided communication, I actually like it and find it a must have for men dating online.

It’s actually more efficient due to the fact that you don’t have to be creative about your answers until long in to the communication process. How many different ways can you answer, “Your Idea of adventure is?”

Now if we could just see their picture before all that guided communication….

Whoops I can!

Another webmasters only trick!

Evan Chase
E/C

There’s definitely a change in the attitudes of people and it is now a mainstream thing. However its not yet comfy for everyone. Halle Berry admitted in a TV interview that she’d used a chat room but that she dropped out once she realized that she was using a fake name and identity – and so probably were many others… There’s room for serious credentialling and not only for “millionaires” but for anyone who wouldn’t talk to just anyone about sex – which is most people.

One major problem of the dedicated dating services is that as soon as anyone dates anyone else even remotely seriously, both will remove themselves (or just “hide” themselves) to “prove” to the other that they’re serious and not “still looking”. There’s no longitudinal upsell, you can’t retain that user unless you also run wedding planning and then maternity wear and then marriage counselling services (which is a good plan!).

So obviously to “give people an excuse to hang out OTHER than dating” is critical, even though some features might actually BE “dates”, e.g. watching a movie or listening to some new music together.

Facebook is “more about hanging out and being social” already so it may help to think in terms of features you’d add to it. It could have a longer “ladder of interactions” and definitely needs Q&A.

Emergent playfulness, like the giving of symbols as gifts, a “poke” or writing double entendre comments on “walls” (Facebook), helps, as does friend-of-a-friend features like introductions. Formal structure may be helpful, it certainly has a long history, but you may want to add matchmaker avatars to a conventional social networking service, which have a reputation for both discretion and brattiness, perhaps to break tensions or invite a bunch of folks “at random” to an event who have all expressed some interest in each other… but no one knows who! The role of randomness in SNS is still underappreciated.

Since so much of love is common goals, letting people casually form teams to play games that allow them to send mixed messages is helpful. Writing jokes or translating things or playing simple “favourite” games like swapping ten seconds of favourite music each other hasn’t heard are all good candidates for this.

“Ultimately, if you can get a gender balanced group of people who are all local to each other to talk and have fun, I think you’re going to find that a lot of them will automatically start dating.” True, and that’s why meetup.com, Facebook and even political forums all might count as dating services and all may soon have dating-specific add-ons. I suspect that there is strong growth in overall use of the Internet in dating and flirting, but it just isn’t going to the so-called “dating sites” and certainly not ones that are sharing traffic numbers (there’s been growth in very narrow segments like religious and lesbian etc.).

There is no scale in the “dating” business to compare with a generic social market so such stuff as Facebook has a big edge in sheer numbers. However dating support does seem to require some way to just say “I think you’re cute” or “I think we’ve got something in common” or even “I’ll spend resources on getting to know you”. On lavalife.com (which I designed for its initial launch in 1997-8 when it was “webpersonals”) we used “smiles” as a “currency”… if you got them you could give them. That disadvantaged some of the worst creeps… And women got more initial smiles so they had more control over this currency. You could buy smiles, which was a feature that frankly I had some problems with. I wanted them to cost more if you had to buy a lot of them, and for bought ones to be worth less…
still an unsolved problem. You somehow have to have well-liked people set the social tone.

“Where’s a good place to start fixing the problem?” First recognize that there are clear but different goals. The lavalife design relied on keeping long-term romance, short-term dating, and the overnight fetish encounter, entirely separated – under three brand names ideally, even if the engine is the same. Actually lavalife had nine since it had gay male and lesbian dating under different brand names – but the same three time frames/segments. Likewise segment the long-term market into many values communities (Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, socialist) and allow features to vary (Hindus do astrology while libertarians bid on each other in cash). The features could be added in on demand or as part of a temporary game situation, but you want the graphics and names of any “host” avatars etc. to reflect the unique character of the target segment. Any customization at all of how one is presented is helpful but it should be restricted to things most users can do – changing colours, any ring tones associated with messages, choosing favourite quotes to cycle through, picking from a few basic avatars. Yahoo 360 does some of these things right. Look also at SecondLife for the ultimate in customization, including women paying $6 each for designer avatar dresses!

Having more location and age specific groupings or random introductions helps – maybe cross linking with meetup.com events and such would help. But don’t make too many assumptions. For shorter-term time frames/segments, consider working with relocation and travel services. There are more people than you think looking to move or to meet someone from out of town who they won’t see again on the street. Allowing someone to specify a place they want to move to, without requiring them to make a fake identity that lives there already, is helpful. Dating sites know to ask “do you want kids” but not “where do you want to live”?

You must limit the role of paid parties, whether they’re in the sex trade or your own paid administrators. The “very attractive girls that want to chat, to then find all they want you to do is visit their site so you can pay them to strip” that’s a lucrative market for guys who don’t luck out, so figure a way to support this use while not letting it interfere with or impersonate a real date. Walk the fine line between amateur porn and pay for play, even allow these users to participate on equal ground with others if they are actually going on dates with someone once a month say, but don’t let them dilute the service to the point of discouragement. Bans don’t work, so regulate somehow. In the P2P age, we are all “trolls” to someone. Try to make sure that a few users don’t have the power to steer the culture too much, even if they’re the ones you’re paying.

For instance HeyLetsGo is a social event site aimed at 20-30 year olds who are largely single and looking for something to do with other people. It’s a dating site by another name and it seems to perfectly fit your model of “online dating 2.0″ (did I really just say that)

- n

Do you think SNS like MingleNow.com and HeyLetsGo.com serve as dating sites? They are highly local, and are event-centric.

Thanks,
David

It’s interesting. We recently created a game specifically to be played while on dates.

So… as a part of the promotion… a local coffee house decided to have a singles night specifically to play the game.

Well… we had fun and we had a good group of people. But… afterwards, the coffee shop owner thought that putting the “singles” label on the event changed the dynamic.

So… in the future she’s going to have community night… or friends night… So there’s no pressure for people to meet people.

My guess is that single people are still going to meet and get to know each other better… and then who knows after that. But… without the “dating” or the “singles” tag on the night… it should releive some of the pressure and let people just have fun connecting.

And… in some ways… that’s what you’re saying on-line dating sites should do.

Very interesting…

Good stuff.

Keep up the great work!