Google Finally Getting Into Online Dating?

by David Evans on September 5, 2006 · 1 comment

in Dating Sites

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The CollaboraDate blog says it appears Google may be starting it’s push into the online dating market.

What I am concluding here is that Google may be playing a smart strategy. Start by stocking the service with personal members from other sites, and let word of the service spread. Down the road start replacing those results with those of Google only services (think gmail, and orkut). On the other hand Google could end up evening the playing field, and in turn let the user experience access to more sites, and then the most innovative sites will win out. It all remains to be seen…

No worries sports fans, that dog won’t hunt. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I am nowhere near convinced that Google will be able to put together an online dating strategy that works.

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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

JimmyNo Gravatar 09.12.06 at 10:16 am
One of the biggest problems plaguing online dating today is that most people lie about their true location.

I’ve operated http://www.oasisoflove.com for about a year now, and it’s astounding how much people lie about where they’re from, especially people from countries such as Senegal, Cote D’voire, Nigeria, etc.

People from these problem locations often claim to be from the USA, and they post thousands of fake profiles on dating sites daily. So if you hear dating sites bragging about how many millions of members they have, you have to wonder how many of the profiles are genuine.

In reality, most profiles online are fake. They’re posted by scammers. http://www.oasisoflove.com is currently the only dating site I know that actually verifies location and displays it next to each profile. The big guys such as Match, Yahoo, do not do this, even with all their revenues.

So, unless google is willing to include this feature, it’d be just another haven for scammers.

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