Online dating sites function as a destination. Visit site, browse/search/wink/email/connect, rinse, repeat. Emails sent from dating sites always link back to the site itself, because it’s all about visitors and pageviews.
Technologies like Adobe Air, Flex, Microsoft Silverlight and other frameworks are currently being built out in order to create richer internet applications and bring the internet closer to the desktop.
Where are the examples of bringing dating to the desktop? Userplane has a desktop feature, whereby you are immediately alerted when someone messages you from other websites which implement the Userplane chat client.
Who else? I’d love to see more examples.
I’ve been thinking about how dating sites could create widgets that can be embedded on web pages and blogs. The kicker is that the people who show up in the widget on a particular site would be related to the content of the site.
Think about targeted advertising. Car ads on automotive sites for example. If I say I love muscle cars in my profile, my dating site’s widget on Car and Driver’s website would display women who have expressed interest in 1960’s gas guzzlers. Job sites do this all the time, making it easy to tailor the content of a display widget for a specific demographic.
Dating sites would be smart to attach metadata to profiles to make this possible, but it is doable.
While not exactly the desktop, dating sites are beginning to leverage a presence on various social networks.
However, for serious daters, we have got to break away from the countless permutations of site-specific HotOrNot and move the industry towards a new paradigm for discovering and facilitating communication between people.
Zoosk and “Are YOU Interested” are the early leaders in Facebook dating applications, but they are hardly game-changing in their current formats. I use both services often, preferring the functionality of Are YOU Interested, although Zoosk has promised that big things are coming in the near future. Both applications have plateaued, with little growth over the last several months.
After experimenting with Match’s Little Black Book and other dating applications on Facebook, I came away decidedly underwhelmed. They’re not on the desktop, but at least they’re experimenting with having a presence on other sites.
Match has an Apple Widget for browsing, but it’s broken, as is Match. Does that site ever work for you? I get error messages almost every time I visit the site.
Twitter has several very cool desktop clients and multiple services which freely pull user data, do interesting things with it and regurgitate it back to users. Dating sites hold on to their database with a vicelike grip. This has got to stop. There is even a Twitter-based service called TalkAboutADate.
Lately I’ve been paying attention to the Data Portability group, who’s goal is to empower people to control and own their data, as opposed to corporations owning your lifestream data and keeping it in walled-off gardens. Several companies are doing deals with dating sites to gain access to their member profiles, enabling them to be searched on third-party websites.
It’s time to start treating dating sites for what they really are, databases of personal information limited in functionality to the capabilities and vision of dating site operators and technology providers.
It’s time to make dating more social, between users and dating and social networking sites. What do you think?
Related Posts
Where is Desktop Dating?Are Dating Site Instant Messaging and Chat About to End?
Update Your Dating Profile Via Facebook, Firefox And Twitter
Twitter’s Answer To Facebook Connect
Update Dating Profiles With Facebook Status Messages
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
EuropeanKiss.org has introduced two Windows Desktop features:
“Windows Vista” Gadgets and “Windows” Desktop Message Notifier (both features) a first in the online dating industry.
Gadgets are easy-to-use mini programs that give you information at a glance in real-time and Message Notifier is a Windows tool that sits in your system tray and notifies you when there are new mail messages.
EuropeanKiss currently provides two gadgets:
Quick Stats Gadget:
-Receive e-mail and interested member alerts
-See how many members have viewed your profile
-View your photo rating
-See how many local singles are currently logged
-See how many local new members
New Users Gadget:
-Randomly shows new users photos based on your gender preference
Check out http://www.europeankiss.org
You just touched down on one of my biggest peeves…. nothing bad that you wrote. Read below.
Firstly.. there are a couple of sites that have toolbar downloads which arn’t exactly desktop widgets but function in the same way. It alerts you if you have a message, smile etc. Date.ca and American singles both do this. Off the top of my head. I can’t remember other sites.
As for social networking and dating. UM YEA! The fact of the matter is that a lot of people meet singles through their friends or friends friends… now match.com has tried to touch down on this by coming out with “match my friends” instead…. what dating sites need to do is to integrate social networking features while remaining a dating site.
The people on the site would not only be searching for singles but also have a community to take part in. One step towards this is having features. Other features to move towards this logic is to easily see which of your hotlisted friends are online, more ways to communicate other then sending winks etc. More picture uploads, comments.
There is a wide variety of things that can be done without transforming into a social networking site completely. Anyways. Those are my inital thoughts.
People tend to go to one stop shop sites these days where they can do everything from one place.
Your exactly right!!!
EuropeanKiss.org is a social dating community with all the features you mentioned. above and much more.
1-on-1 flash based Instant Messenger with live audio, video and text chat, video profile recording, unlimited video uploads, post unlimited photos, community group features, including group chat rooms with group audio/video streaming or private, group photo galleries, group message/discussion boards, group polls, profile/photo rating, profile comments, photo contests, view local and global online members, home page show you if your hotlisted friends are online, RSS feeds for new users and news.
Hi Dave,
Long time reader as you know but rarely comment. Mainly because I agree with you (almost all of the time :)
I was looking at Flex from version 1 for a dating site a couple of years ago (that’s why I thought I would pipe up about this post) and I work in the space (head up interactive sitting between creative, technology and digital marketing delivering solutions & strategies for brands).
The thing is this – air and flex 3 are only just coming into their own, as much as I love them the bark is louder than the bite, kind of pains me to say but its fact. In over two years you can count the number of crash hot commercial flex apps that were not developed by adobe (or an adobe partner agency that is getting free kit) on 3 fingers.
They work for online catalogues because the content isn’t changing that often, regularly yes but every minute, no.
In addition the infrastructure driving those services is substantial, often in-house origin servers & oracle db.
New license fees on flash media server could start to change this.
Air is onto something and Flex is great for taking enterprise applications to the web, but pure online business, dating, travel… yeah some great user benefits and build time is good but if you really care about usability and design build in Ajax and incorporate flash.
I’m the first to agree that 99.9% of dating sites are crap (sorry guys they just are) but flex takes time to load (imagine the abandonment) or to download something to their desktop given current concerns of security and privacy in online dating.
Cheers Dave
Jas
p.s what’s the average UV to registering user in the space?
Thanks, Dave. You’re pushing the envelope.
I agree with Jas. Most legacy dating sites just don’t work anymore. After a couple of years separated, I joined one a few weeks ago and found it took a long time to communicate with anyone. Hence, TalkAboutADate, which is all about easy conversations.
Keep on writing.
Greg
Thanks David,
I think you’re absolutely right. I run Ignighter.com, where we are trying everyday to make dating a more social experience.
Data portability is definitely a huge next step, especially for next gen dating sites like our’s. We are always saying that sites like Match are “create your own blind date”, but that never really happens in the real world. In real life, you go out with your friends and meet new people in groups. I think it will only be a matter of time until more sites realize that there is a huge disconnect between the way we currently date online and how we meet people in real life.
I really like your point about the blog widgets, this is also something we’re working on because we too think it will be important.
Keep up the great work!
Adam
There are many companies trying to address the disconnect that people are talking about.
the problem is that starting a new dating site and getting traction is incredibly difficult and expensive.
I spend the majority of my time working with clients looking to get traction in the dating market, some are dating sites, some are companies looking to address the issue of the “cold start”, when a membership database begins at zero people.
It will be interesting to see if these new ideas grab the interest of the dating public.
Great post but I think we can’t forget physical geography. Whilst most online daters are happy to surf the net and chat to people worldwide when push comes to shove and they are looking for someone real to date they want someone in their general geographic location. Moving more to the social networking style of sites simply opens up the geography and may lessen peoples chances of finding a real relationship.