Online Dating Insider

Online Dating Industry News & Commentary

Dating Sites Embrace Super Crunching

September 17th, 2007 · 8 Comments

Welcome!
Online Dating Insider delivers cutting-edge insight and commentary on all aspects of the online dating industry. Topics include industry news, site reviews, emerging trends, analysis of dating site features, discussion about safety safety, finance and other issues important to the online dating market. Don't miss our Tools & Services directory, useful to anyone running dating or social networking sites. Subscribe to the RSS feed (you can subscribe via email as well). Your comments and suggestions for stories are welcomed.

Happy National Singles Week. Did you know that Operation Match, the first example computer matchmaking, took place in 1965?

Behold, a fascinating article in the The New York Times by Ian Ayres about Super Crunchers, which focuses on the matching systems that power eHarmony, PerfectMatch, True and Yahoo! Personals.

This is the best overview of how dating sites match members that I’ve ever read in the MSM (mainstream media). Learn about wisdom of crowds, regression and Myers-Briggs testing. See how dating sites hide the details of their matching systems as closely as the Coke recipe.

Eharmony comes under a fairly strenuous attack towards the end of the piece, which is taken from a book by the same name. Steven Levitt, the co-author of Freakonomics, praises the book, which means I’m buying Super Crunchers right after I hit the publish button.

The article quotes True.com’s chief psychologist James Houran, but James hasn’t worked at True in several years. I noticed several other inconsistencies but thats what happens when you kill trees and put ink on them. I wonder if Super Crunchers has an errata website?

Category:Personality Testing Tags: - - - -
Blog reactions

Related Posts

8 responses so far ↓

  • 1 myWattle Dating » Blog Archive » Dating Sites Embrace Super Crunching // Sep 17, 2007 at 4:56 pm

    [...] Source: Google Blog Search: online dating [...]

  • 2 myWattle Dating » Blog Archive » Comment on Dating Sites Embrace Super Crunching by myWattle Dating … // Sep 17, 2007 at 5:56 pm

    [...] Source: Google Blog Search: online dating [...]

  • 3 no imageFernando Ardenghi (Check me out!) // Sep 17, 2007 at 8:39 pm

    “eHarmony’s approach relies on the mother of Super Crunching techniques: the regression”

    I suspect most Online Dating Sites offering compatibility_matching_methods like
    eHarmony
    True
    PerfectMatch
    Chemistry
    YahooPersonals (WeAttract’s tests)
    CyberSuitors
    Ulteem
    Parship
    Plentyoffish Compatibility Predictor
    MatchWise
    and others
    are using self_adjustment multiple/simple linear/nonlinear regression_equations to predict compatibility between prospective mates.

    BUT

    There are more than 900 “Online Dating & Social Networking Sites” at the United States and Canada, and top 10 Online Dating sites have 80%/85% of actual market.
    If you add net paid subscribers of all U.S. dating sites, perhaps the total is less than 5 million persons!!!

    What dating sites are doing / will do to court the other U.S. 87 million singles not seriously dating online? They need to offer GREAT INNOVATIONS, but …. they will definitively come from new discoveries on Theories of Romantic Relationships Development with:

    * 16PF5 NORMATIVE test as main personality test (available in different languages)
    * powerful math equations (not more regression equations!!!!)
    specifying:
    - Ensemble: the whole set of different valid possibilities.
    - Precision: like 0.00000001%
    - Main Matching Equation: like an adapted quantum mechanic equation.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braket
    - How the compatibility predictor is expresed: like Client#X to Client#Y == 92.55033557%
    - Average number of “compatible real persons” for one person over the entire database: like the 3 most compatible in 100,000 persons database or the 12 most compatible in 1,000,000.

    Regards,

    Fernando Ardenghi.
    Buenos Aires.
    Argentina.
    ardenghifer@gmail.com

    Rate this:
    3.2
  • 4 Great Expectations Dating » Dating Sites Embrace Super Crunching // Sep 18, 2007 at 1:31 pm

    [...] Share This [...]

  • 5 myWattle Dating » Blog Archive » Comment on Dating Sites Embrace Super Crunching by Great … // Sep 18, 2007 at 4:56 pm

    [...] Source: Google Blog Search: online dating [...]

  • 6 Great Expectations Dating » Blog Archive » Dating Sites Embrace Super Crunching // Sep 18, 2007 at 8:24 pm

    [...] Original post by dave@digicraft.com [...]

  • 7 Matchmaking » Dating Sites Embrace Super Crunching // Sep 25, 2007 at 6:15 am

    [...] Matchmaking Service wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptDid you know that Operation Match, the first example computer matchmaking, took place in 1965? Behold, a fascinating article in the The New York Times by Ian Ayres about Super Crunchers, which focuses on the matching systems that power … [...]

  • 8 no imageWolfy (Check me out!) // Oct 1, 2007 at 1:29 pm

    In 1969 in Tampa, FL, while I was attending USF, I met my future wife during the Operation Match program. We married that year have been together ever since. I wonder how many marriages resulted from that innovative program?

    Rate this:
    2.4

Leave a Comment