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Tomorrow, Wednesday December 20th, Yahoo Personals is launching a variety of enhancements to member profiles. New Sr. PR Manager Jason Khoury send me details on the upgrades, as well as an overview of the last six months of new features.
Among the enhancements to the Web site is a new capability called Quick View, which offers a new way for daters to efficiently browse profiles.
- Yahoo! Personals daters no longer have to scroll up and down to compare a profile owner’s information with what he or she desires in a match.
- Members can select from 15 different traits and characteristics to create their own personalized checklist of deal breakers – or in this case, date makers or breakers.
- No one else in the industry gives users the capability to personalize and customize their view of matching traits.
Quick View is a part of a visual refresh of the most viewed page on Yahoo! Personals – Profile Details. The redesign includes:
- Personalized view of profile data: The searcher can list the attributes that are most important to him/her at the top of the profile page for an easy, first glance at a profile.
- Side by side presentation of a person’s profile and his/her ideal match: No more scrolling up and down to compare. When viewing a profile, users can easily scan the profile owner’s information as well as what he or she desires in a match. A way to quickly identify if both people will find each other interesting.
- Clustered profile data: Profile data is divided into relevant categories – an easier and more intuitive way to scan for important information.
- Improved visual appeal: Visual refresh creates a more pleasant online dating experience.
The launch of Quick View is just one of many feature upgrades launched by Yahoo! Personals in the last six months:
- Virtual matchmaker - Mailbox Matching: The mailbox automatically sorts incoming communications by how well the sender matches the recipient’s preferences. It compares the information included in the sender’s profile with the things the receiver marks as “must havesâ€? for their potential match, like religion, ethnicity, etc. Ones that are a fit are placed in “Matchesâ€? folder, and messages from someone that isn’t an exact fit are sent to the “Maybe’sâ€? folder.
- Online bouncer - Email Masking: To protect its customers, the mailbox now masks email addresses included in communications to non-subscribers. This feature protects users’ anonymity.
- Who’s Viewed Me: Yahoo! Personals provides the online dating community with the broadest and most empowering feature for making a connection. Offered to both posters and subscribers, “Who’s Viewed Me� fosters additional communication and user activity by allowing customers to see who has viewed their profile.
While I’m glad to see Yahoo adding features, much lot of what Yahoo Personals is rolling out are things that should have been taken care of two years ago. The email masking was particularly problematic, glad that’s fixed. Interesting they didn’t mention the new page about safety.
Yahoo is showing their commitment to improve the service, which should help drive signups and make the service easier to use.
Blog reactions
10 responses so far ↓
1
Andrew Arnott (Check me out!)
// Dec 19, 2006 at 6:55 pm
About time! Like you said Dave, these kinds of things should have been done years ago. I guess they decided they couldn’t neglect their members any longer.
The problem with Goliath, is there is always a faster, more agile David (how apropos) waiting just around the corner… rock in hand ;) Although, it’s taking longer to deliver the rock as quickly as planned. :D
2
Julia Dorofeeva (Check me out!)
// Dec 20, 2006 at 3:26 am
Yes, it’s time to use the features listed at Yahoo Personals! May be they were planning to do that but technical side took considerable time.
Site users should enjoy a more friendly interface and search options.
3
guy (Check me out!)
// Dec 20, 2006 at 11:30 am
Ah… good imporvements.
But it’s hard not to feel someone has been looking at my still empty site.
Actually, yes, there is one site that already does something similar but because it has no members, noone knows. My site offers advanced search capabilities through attributes which differ if the target is a male or a female. An algorythm is responsible for determining each profile’s specificities. In addition, my site tells each user how many times personal profiles have been flagged and by whom, so users can know ‘who’s viewed me’.
Isn’t it a pain when smaller webmasters have good ideas that can’t be properly marketed it and then those same ideas end up on the sites of the big dogs?
Could anyone here offer any clues as to how best one can make a penetration into the online dating niche -even if by targeting a tiny corner of this universe? Someone offer me a bone please.
4
Andrew Arnott (Check me out!)
// Dec 20, 2006 at 11:47 am
No offense Guy, but your site is a copy of Plentyoffish. When people come out with these new dating sites they are just copying the guy that is being successful. No one innovates, people just keep putting a different shade of lipstick on the same pig every time. INNOVATE! Do something completely different.
5
guy (Check me out!)
// Dec 20, 2006 at 11:54 am
Yes, it looks similar but if I change the colors and the formats you would not have said that. I actually do feel offended by the fact that we worked hard with my programmer trying to come up with features that are seldom used and pof defintely didn’t have any of this at the time. Specially, the way we categorize profiles which tells me you just browse the site rapidly. Honestly, I haven’t looked at his site in at least a year so he may now offer new things I am not aware of.
6
guy (Check me out!)
// Dec 20, 2006 at 11:55 am
Oh, and does he have private rooms and do you know what that is? And how events or soon our video profiles?
7
Todd (Check me out!)
// Dec 20, 2006 at 1:30 pm
In case you’re interested, the link to the Yahoo! Personals safety section is here:
http://personals.yahoo.com/us/static/content_safety;_ylc=X3oDMTE5ODlpMWNjBF9HA3lwZXIEX1MDOTU5NTk1NjMEc2VjA2Zvb3RlcgRzbGsDc2FmZXR5
Happy holidays!
8 Yahoo Personals Customizable profile » Online Dating Insider // Dec 28, 2006 at 2:08 pm
[...] signups. Yahoo! Personals has a blog as well as gift certificates at $24.95 for a month. View blog reactions | Share This Category: Features , innovation , Promotions Tags: Features, innovation,Promotions, yahoo+personals [...]
9 Lovin.mobi » Yahoo Personals Customizable profile // Apr 29, 2007 at 5:38 am
[...] I previously mentioned, Yahoo Personals has rolled out a few enhancements to the service. Have you seen the overview of [...]
10
eMale (Check me out!)
// Jun 2, 2007 at 2:57 pm
At least Yahoo has enhanced their personals site, which I can’t say for other dating sites.
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