Thoughts for a rainy Sunday: What is more effective, guided communication such as eHarmony and Chemistry or email filters based on user criteria as seen on Plentyoffish and OKCupid?
People tend to complain about guided communication more than email filters, why is this?
Guided communication seems to be more popular on “serious” relationships as opposed to casual.
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In order to extract a higher monthly fee from users, eharmony and Chemistry endeavor to emulate matchmakers. There’s a lot of value in being ‘led by the hand’ to ones perfect partner . Thats why matchmakers are able to charge $5k a year through to $50k, in the case of Kelleher, Spindel and other matchmakers.
Guided communication (in sites with compatibility matching) is an appendix of their matching algorithm.
Those sites could reach “as low as” 3 or 4 persons high compatible per 1,000 persons, so in a 10,000,000 persons database, there are as many as 30,000 to 40,000 persons to contact/date, that means a whole precision less than anyone could achieve by searching on one’s own!
The guided communication process is designed to narrow even more the field of persons you give a better chance of getting along with, and also it is also useful for feedback purposes in order to try to improve their matching algorithm.
Nonetheless those compatibility matching methods (eHarmony, True, PerfectMatch, Chemistry, Yahoo!Personals -WeAttract-, PlentyOfFishChemistryPredictor, Be2, MeeticAffinity, Parship) are like piston engine airplanes
Online dating sites should have killed offline dating proposals (chains, professional matchmakers, etc) since some years ago, but offline proposals are still alive and with good health.
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“People tend to complain about guided communication more than email filters, why is this?”
Because they discover a whole precision less than anyone could achieve by searching on one’s own.
They discover the matching algorithm is not as powerful as it should be!
Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
Humans still beat robots at some stuff. True story.
Guided communication serves two purposes. The first is, it is a continuation of the matching process. With each step you make the decision yourself to continue communication (and not the matching algorithm). The second purpose is to help jump start the communication process.
The main problem with Guided Communication is some members are in a rush to write actual messages. Having to wait sometimes weeks to get to this point is bound to get on anyone’s nerves. It may take someone several days to get back to the dating site to continue the communication process for just one step. This is where mobile phones need to step in and help the process along faster.
Sometimes people just want the confidence of knowing they are dating on a site that offers serious daters and the comfort of having matches sent to them. When it comes to communicating, a lot of people rely on their own words and want to cut to the chase, rather than jump through hoops.