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The ability to know who has viewed your profile is a mixed blessing. On one hand, you may be exposed to people who are out of your normal search criteria. On the other, lack of people viewing your profile can be taken as a sign it’s time to revise your essay and photographs. Or that you will never get another date unless you get a haircut. There is room for some sort of peer review service in there somewhere.
One one hand, I want to know who and what type of women find me appealing. On the other, I don’t know anything more than that they have seen my profile and clicked on my photo. I want to know what their immediate reaction was. Mild butterflies or disgust? Were they reaching for the delete key or the Wink button?
Until dating sites provide (in a non-threatening comfortable way) greater transparency into the searcher-searchee process the majority of singles will continue to choose traditional matchmaking and social interaction over online dating sites (which are really introduction sites, as no one actually dates online.)
Greater transparency into the discovery process will enable online daters to harness and benefit from the collective dating pool in ways that we are now only getting a glimpse of with sites like Eharmony who do the matching for its members.
[tags: functionality]
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Why did 7000 men view my profile on Match.com — and yet I got so few actual dates from it? (I never actually dated anyone on Match…most of my successful dates are from Craislist or Fast Cupid, sites with an edgier, more intellectual clientelle.)
Actually, most of my successful dates are with men I meet IN THE REAL WORLD and not on the Internet. Oddly, every one of these men I met OUT THERE was also ON HERE. And over time, it seems that everyone I meet ON HERE, I eventually run into OUT THERE.
Sometimes it’s really embarassing when you run into your online dating prospects in reality — like Saturday when I was dancing and this man was staring at me, and finally he walks up to me and says: “Hey, are you Cinnamin Girl?
And I said, well, yes.
“You never replied to my email on Match.com.”
Well, it is so good to meet you now. This is a better way anyway, don’t you think? I said.
We danced for a while, and he was attractive, but it was clear to me after a few minutes that we had no spark — that Je Ne Sais Quois was just not there. I have to say, if I’d met him “Out There” I probably would have never danced at all. Now does that mean that Online Dating services help us connect with people we wouldn’t normally give a chance to? Or is it really just validation that computers still can’t replicate that Je Ne Sai Quoi that drives attraction and romance?
It would be helpful, though, to know why you’re getting passed up. Is it lack of compatibility? A bad photo? Typos in the profile? The potential for self improvement is interesting.
Diva Rebecca sent me a mailing about Matchinform.com, it is something everyone should be using. A simple rate your date website using user name searches.
It is anonymous and free. I am using it and i am rating dates i go on to help others.
More should be said about this valuable source of information.
I like the idea.
With E-bay, if the package arrives, late, the product is broken, the seller doesn’t communicate when the buyer asks a question, then you have a right to complain–but all of these are tangible, easily supported complaints. With dates, a negative rating could simply stem from a basic lack of compatibility (she’s ultra-liberal and offended by his fiercely conservative convictions; he’s shy and put off by her outspokenness, etc.) In cases like these, neither person has done anything wrong, but someone could conceivably get a negative rating from a date that went south due to disagreements or personality clashes, while for a different member, the same person might be perfect mate material.
Also, unlike sites such as E-bay, it’s tough to judge the validity of the ratings based on quantity, because personally, given the choice to date someone who had 5 very positive ratings or 100, the first one would seem much more appealing for a serious relationship.
J.C.
Intellect Connect
http://www.intellectconnect.com
Political differences are not part of the list of questions, nor are questions about religion. Smart on the part of matchinform, in my opinion.