This was in my mailbox this morning. They never promoted this service. I think I got one email about it. I posted my audio clip when they started the beta. I never receive a “hows it working out for you” type email which was a shame. Match spends all it’s resources attracting new customers meanwhile forgetting about existing members.
Think of their stale database. 20 million+ profiles, 6-8 million are current. What are they doing to convert stale profiles back into paying members? Anyway, thats for another post.
Dear Match.com member:
Since its launch on the Web in 1995, Match.com has led the industry in developing avenues for singles to connect with one another. Our goal is to maintain the highest quality experience for you, our members, and to provide the products and services that will help you find that special someone.
To that end, Match.com has offered a selection of products that complement our online dating resources through the years. Match.com is constantly evaluating these services and, as a result, has decided to discontinue the Match.com Voice service. As of May 31, 2005, the audio portion of your profile will no longer be accessible by other members. However, the rest of your profile will remain unchanged.
You are a valued Match.com customer, and we thank you for using the Match.com Voice service. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Thank you for choosing Match.com, and we wish you all the best in your search for your perfect match.
Sincerely,
Your friends at Match.com
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Voice profiles/audio clips were never as exciting as they seemed to be. They take much more investment of time and “emotional energy” to create than a written profile. And customers weren’t as bothered about listening to them as you might expect. Great idea on paper, the reality not so great.
I thought it would be interesting to look back and see how many features and co-branded arrangements are no longer available on Match. Here they are:
Match Travel
Match Events
Voicemail
Video
Personality Test
Physical Attraction Test ( I remember this was quite cool and probably was a major project)
Instant messaging
The only survivor is Match Mobile, a service they originally offered via ATT Mobile’s M Life (which is now part of Cingular). I imagine this will disappear soon too. I think the lesson is that most of these take lots of time and resources to set up and maintain and yet they yield little in the way of revenue or customer retention. Anybody beg to differ?
Match is focused on the money, and the money only. Barry Diller is probably upset that they have to spend so much on marketing to keep up with Yahoo! and Eharmony. Yahoo marketing costs are much lower than Match’s since they go after their own existing portal visitors. I spoke to someone very close to Match, expect more changes in the near future. A lot was supposed to happen Q1 that never launched.
Scott said “Physical Attraction Test ( I remember this was quite cool and probably was a major project)”
But why Physical Attraction Matching newer worked as it was expected?
Some reasons
-persons trends to overestimate, overvaluation of its qualities, they do not say the exact truth; e.g. all are beautiful, intelligent women, it is the equivalent to tell lies.
-small photos / small videos are always of low quality, taken using cheap cameras, photos are usually of the face, not of the body, they don’t include the body appearance.
-could be a man using a photograph of a woman.
-a woman 10 years ago / very old photo.
-an altered/manipulated/retouched photo. There are good tricks to retouch a photo.
-a woman with blue eyes appears to have grey/brown eyes if the photo is small.
-women are used to change their appearance several times during their life.
-physical appearance can change along the years.
-the people who give value to physical appearance cannot see the teeth of the others in the photo. A study in the Financial Times that appeared some months ago said that a person who has a good teeth can influence others, and a good teeth is one of the most valuable topics of physical appearance.
-a woman with brown eyes but if she uses blue contact lenses she will say that she has blue eyes, not blue contact lenses.
-a woman with brown hair but if she uses her hair red dyed she will say that she has red hair, not red dyed hair.
Fernando Ardenghi
ardenghifer@gmail.com
Yahoo has the WeAttract tests now and they are integrated into the search function which I really like. Fernando, I see you point but those tests don’t really have much to do with dyed hair or teeth. They provide additional dimensions to match on. Dr. Scott at WeAttract has done a great job with the tests and new ones that are less than “unaffordable” are coming soon. I hope more sites take advantage of these features. Search just has to get better and more evolved past weight, height and zip code.
Verified photos and reputation will become more readily available which should help raise the bar at the better sites. Free sites will always have the spam/russian brides cluttering up the higher-value members.
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