Great to see Match add a fundraiser link for the disaster in Japan. Any other sites doing this?
Lots of dating sites are experimenting with gamification (game play mechanics), including Are You Interested and CupidsPlay.
Gamification is not Game Design talks about good and bad gamification.
There is good gamification and bad gamification. Bad gamification is slapping extrinsic rewards (or a contrived story) on top of an interaction. Good gamification amplifies the intrinsic rewards of a particular behavior – to increase the feeling of fun, flow, or accomplishment of the player. Players know bad gamification when they see it, because it doesn’t take their interests into consideration. Good gamification aligns the needs of both designer and player.
Gamification needn’t look like a game. If your application domain is movies (Netflix), auctions (eBay), or social connections (Facebook, LinkedIn) – simply highlighting the right numeric counters and lists is sufficient. Gamifying acknowledges your user’s inner drives, their ability to learn, and increases their receptiveness to your application’s benefits.
What is more effective, niche sites or general date-warehouses? Small niche dating sites return relevant results because they are a smaller more focused demographic. Large dating sites return relevant results based on teams of psychologists, algorithms, behavioral modeling and other “black box” matching voodoo. What is more effective, niche sites or general date-warehouses? I have never seen any research on this.
General dating bios are set-it-and-forget-it affairs. Most singles create an account, spend a few minutes uploading photos and writing a few paragraphs (if that) and then forget about their profile. SocialBios and About Me are just some of the new services creating a single entry point into our digital lives. They pull in social networks, blogs and other lifestream elements to create real-time insight into who we are, where we are online, what we’re doing and what we’re interested in. Winning!
So much great stuff coming out of the SXSW conference. Robert Scoble like LocalMind. There are many location-based apps that dating sites should be getting inspired by.
Quora is *the* place to go to ask questions and get answers from the most amazing people. Here’s the Match thread, Online Dating Startups & Companies, and one called How would you technically implement a matching algorithm like OkCupid?
Pilot Group has updated their dating platform.
Dating Agencies, Smartphones Added to U.K. Inflation Basket – Bloomberg.
Are you mildly interested in dating?
Do you have no attention span? Likemedateme.com harnesses the power of Facebook (and its “Like” button), finding people in your extended network you may want to go out with, and letting you alert them to your interest by simply clicking the “Like” button on their profile, at which point it’s up to them to decide whether or not they want to get Poked.
