Match Making Automated Matches

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Today I see a “Is It Fate” link on my Match page. The feature is smack in the middle between Chemistry and Match.com. Why in the world are they giving people a reason to stick around at Match when they are trying to move people over the Chemistry.com?

My match is liberal and a health-conscious eater, but she is too old and too short. I have no idea what criteria they are using and to boot I am drinking orange Gatorade and eating Ho-Ho’s right now which is ironic, although it is understandable that their search algorithm isn’t omnipotent.

The interstitial page says “You’ve only got 23h:59m left to contact her!” What does this mean? Is she a 3-day trial user, is her subscription almost up or is this a pressure tactic? Right above the countdown timer there is a link called “what is this?” I want to know what this damn countdown timer is so I click the link, and of course it says nothing about the timer.

Sometimes I just have to laugh at these UI gaffs, they are never going to be fixed, what’s the use of mentioning them. I will say that at least Match has made a few changes to the profile page. I wouldn’t exactly call all of them improvements but at least they are not stuck with a dated broken design that they can never ever change like eBay because users would revolt in the streets.

A reader mentioned that the chat feature at Match is gone as well. I’ve had a pop-up blocker running for about 8 years now, I think I saw that chat window once on someone else’s machine. Silly to launch a major communications option in a window that can be blocked so easily.

In typical Match fashion, they have launched a few new feature and haven’t bothered to tell anyone about it. Part of me wonders if this is because an email blast to 25 million profiles might cause a few problems. Then again, removing stale email addresses and profiles would probably be better for the service overall but that is for a different day.

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