World Dating Partners today announced that they have selected BuddyCheck to provide Age & ID Verification Services to its’ members.
The BuddyCheck Age & ID Verification solutions consists of providing a matching technology driven through match codes that will confirm or deny the potential member when signing up for the service behinds the scenes. Verification is provided in a real-time transactional environment often taking an average response time ranges from 2.5 to 2.8 seconds.
Notice how WDP is not offering background checks, just like eHarmony and RelyID. Dating sites are ok with offering age and identity verification but I’ve yet to see any sites offering full background checks integrated into the signup process.
That’s because the results of real-time background checks have not inspired enough confidence in dating sites and social networks to offset the negative connotations of being perceived as a dangerous-enough site that it requires background checks.
This won’t be an issue in a few years but for now it remains a stumbling block for background check providers.
All verification and background check companies get their data from the same places, with few exceptions. Building a system which is easy to integrate with many dating sites, intuitive for users and cost-effective is a difficult proposition for large players in the market, let alone startups.
I would skip the background check and offer simpler and consumer-friendly verification services. If you don’t offer services that are portable across the majority of major dating and social sites, don’t even bother.
What’s interesting to BuddyCheck is that they came out of nowhere in the past year or so. BuddyCheck is part of Telliss telcom. Telliss tried to enter the social dating market last year with MyCampusDates, which appears was shut down before it every got started.
I am curious how many other verification services WDP test-marketed before choosing BuddyCheck. the due diligence process for integrating these services is grueling to say the least.
Note to the BuddyCheck webmaster, stop posting news as PDF, annoying and I almost didn’t bother reading the release.
