Online Dating Insider » Features

OKCupid Ice Breakers in Beta

David Evans — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:03:19 +0000

Getting online daters to stray out of their comfort zones and search for new people has always been a problem for dating sites. Usually, search is a set it and forget it situation, where users set their initial search criteria and then leave it like that forever. You see the same people, over and over and over again, and it gets tiring.

Some sites put a gallery of members on the home page. These are often hand-picked beauties that you have no chance with, but they are effective at getting you to send them an email. Online daters, especially women, love getting hundreds of emails every day on dating sites. What else could they possible have to do besides respond to your tender missive?

A year ago Match implemented the Daily 5, which put 5 new people in front of members they might not have necessarily come in contact with. It drove up traffic to some extent

PlentyofFish has always done a pretty good job at putting new people in front of me, albeit in a gallery style view which just has you clicking on the hottest people and ignoring the rest.

OKCupid’s Daily Quiver is awesome, predating many popular copycat features like Daily5. I use it all the time. Simple, straightforward and it plain works.

Over the weekend I was clued into the new OKCupid Ice Breakers feature, currently in beta. I found out about it when a an email showed up from someone asking me about snowboarding. I wrote them back and realized this was something new, the email was about snowboarding. Nothing about “Great profile”, or “sexy eyes” or “I want to be of making your acquaintance in the time that is of near.” (not that OKC has a scammer problem, it’s probably the cleanest dating site I’ve been on.)

When I finally saw the Ice Breakers link in the navigation I clicked it and was greeted with the attached photo. I cycled through a bunch of people, I don’t really want to talk to women about poker but I will entertain a brief conversation about biking, politics or if left-handed people are better lovers. What’s kind of cool is that you don’t get to see the person’s profile or photo. Seems like OKCupid took this from their Crazy Blind Date, which never really did it for me but kudos for Sam and the gang for trying something new.

It will be interesting to see if Ice Breakers increase the amount of member communication and result in more relationships. Check it out for yourself.

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How Will Facebook Connect Affect Online Dating?

David Evans — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:50:15 +0000

Jessica Lee at Inside Facebook wrote How Will Facebook Connect Affect Online Dating, which dovetails nicely with my argument that Facebook could start a dating site that would kill off the majority of online dating sites overnight.

People are increasingly moving to applications that leverage the identity theyâ€™ve already created inside social networks like Facebook and MySpace – not to mention mobile.

…In 2009, technology has marched on to bring the social graph to dating sites. Weâ€™re looking forward to seeing how big of an impact these new services make.

Me too. The social graph is where it at, and the only ones talking about it at iDate were the social dating sites like Zoosk and Are You Interested.

MatchMatrix has a Facebook dating application that launched at iDate LA and there are a few others. I’m keeping an eye on their progress.

Update: I didn’t know that Chemistry uses Facebook Connect, when did that happen? As a member I never received notice that they offered the option.

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OKCupid Launches the A-List

David Evans — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:25:03 +0000

One of my favorite dating sites, OKCupid, has started offering premium services to certain members. Because I am incredibly wealthy and good looking, I received a free monthlong upgrade to the OKCupid A-List. Actually, I was invited because, among other reasons, the OKCupid Staff Robot likes me. A silicon-driven artificial intelligence deemed me worthy of being a VIP on a dating site. Pinch me.

Being A-listed lets you:

Browse without ads
Search for matches with new, advanced features
Attach private photos to messages
Give awards to other users
And about 12 other things.

The A-List is a great for OKCupid to test out new features and get feedback from a small group of members. After a few uses, the features are growing on me, although I haven’t given out any awards yet.

Awards are kind of funny, why would a woman I don’t even know take three minutes to write something nice about me and give me an award? Are awards given to you by people who think you deserve one but don’t want to date you?

To tell the truth I didn’t notice the lack of ads. I have ad blockers in Firefox and barely pay attention to them and it was a surprise to learn that ads were indeed non-existent.

The new search features are nothing special, just the usual additional search criteria, although I appreciate how the selectors are at the top of the page. there are some neat criteria though. The “Order results by” selector starts with “Grey Goo” and ends with “Totally Random.”

No doubt people are going to abuse the unfiltered photo sharing feature, but thats an easy way to catch the weirdos and kick them off the system. Plus, I like attaching a candid photo and attaching it to emails, bed head and all, it feels more immediate and real.

Several months ago, PlentyOfFish launched it’s Serious Member paid feature. Read PlentyOfFish Starts Charging Premium Membership Fees and How to Ask For An Upgrade for the details. There was lots of backlash/discussion about the offering in the POF forums.

Same goes for the A-List forum thread at OKCupid. A user makes a great point:

it’s not features that A-List members want to pay for in the first place. The currency of online dating sites is not the ability to do things like attach photos and so forth. The currency of online dating sites is visibility.

Spot on from the users perspective and has launched a spirited debate. I need to spend more time with the A-List features but for now I’m liking almost all of them. We’ll see if it actually affects member success rates and efficiency.

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How to Ask For An Upgrade

David Evans — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:35:44 +0000

I survived the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade and can only imagine how much fun people are having at SXSW in Austin right now.

Lots of discussion surrounding Plenty of Fish charging for special profile bling. There is even a video comment (more please). Much discussion surrounding the legality of PlentyofFish claiming to be free when in fact it may not be anymore based on the launch of a paid tier of service called Serious Member badges.

Flickr user kga245 has a a good example of how to ask for an upgrade. Where PlentyOfFish could have announced the Serious Member badges.

I see that there is a new badge titled VIP member. I have to agree with the commenters, using the phrase VIP is even more problematic, especially if there isn’t any additional features associated with the upgrade.

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PlentyofFish Launches Serious Member Badges

David Evans — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:48:38 +0000

After remaining free since it’s inception, PlentyofFish has officially launched the Serious Member feature. I was able to add my badge, which you can see in the screenshot below. It’s gigantic, like the sun.

I don’t hold open doors for women, I kick puppies and regularly taunt old ladies, but I’m a serious member now. How will this affect my interaction with women on PlentyofFish?

Here’s the pitch page, which can be difficult to locate.

Stand out in searches and when you send emails.

If you want others to know you are serious and you’ve put real effort into finding someone then you should get your serious member profile upgrade. Take a look at some of the screen shots below. Think about it, do you take people more seriously if they have paid for something? If you got 50 emails from random people and 2 of them were from serious members, which ones would you be more excited about? If you look at 20 people coming up in a search result and one of the profiles is in gold which profile would you look at first? This upgrade is about signaling intent and giving you the ability to stand out from 10’s of millions of other users. If you are serious about finding someone you can Become a Serious Member!

Men can expect women making first contact 9x more than before! (This one is shocking)

Women can expect a 40% increase in first contacts.

Most importantly people who message you, know that you are serious. You’ll get far higher quality emails.

Markus is coming around to what I’ve said all along. People who pay for online dating are generally considered more serious. This is not to say that trust and reputation tools can’t be integrated with free dating sites and social networks to create an authentic sense of “seriousness”, but it’s been the prevailing logic of paid dating for years. That and being able to offer real customer service.

Pricing:

1 year @ $5.95/month ($71.40)
6 months @ $7.80/month ($46.80)
3 months @ $9.80/month ($29.40)

$10/month seems too high, this will hurt adoption rates. It will be interesting to see which option most people purchase. Kudos to Markus for not doing auto re-billing, I didn’t expect that.

Here’s a thought, PlentyofFish wants to sell. Valuation on a free dating site is much more subjective than a paid dating site. PlentyofFish will have billing information on all serious members. This could drive up the valuation of the site.

Previously I wrote PlentyOfFish Starts Charging Premium Membership Fees. Paying for a badge next to your photo is not exactly a premium membership fee, consider it a sign of things to come.

Full details at the PlentyofFish Serious Member page.

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Plentyoffish Website Changes

David Evans — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:34:27 +0000

Dating site PlentyofFish has made some recent changes outlined in this blog post.

Spent some time this weekend and rewrote parts of the siteâ€¦

1. Ditched the paid virtual gifts on the weekend not really core to what we are doing.

2. Instead of allowing you to remove people from searches I added a new search that removes any profile you have ever viewed from the search..

3. Added a thumbnail cropping tool built in Ajaxâ€¦

4. Revamped the profile system forcing better quality profilesâ€¦

5. Semi new design and cleanup of a lot of pages..

5. A whole bunch of tiny changes all over the place.

With so many different free sites all over the world the only way forward is to offer better features than paid sites and more of them. But only if it actually helps users.

#1 I wonder what it means that “virtual goods are not core to our business?” Does that mean nobody was using them or they couldn’t get people to pay for them.

#2 doesn’t make sense unless I still have the option to see people I have searched for. Do I? It’s difficult to tell.

#3 I saw the photo-fixer link, but now it’s gone. Where did it go? Why promote a feature that isn’t there? You would think that I would see the option on the photo upload page.

I uploaded a somewhat risque photo, which was deleted and I received a warning email but it didn’t tell me that my image was removed. Plus, I had it set to private. Bizarre.

Deleting an image doesn’t have a confirmation alert, oops there goes my fantastic vacation photo.

When I click “edit image”, I’m asked to log in even though I’m already logged in.
#4 What does “Revamped the profile system” mean? How does it force better quality photos?
#5 I see a new header graphic, thats about it. What else changed?
#5 again: Ok, so what are they? Why announce changes and not explain them?
When you log out, there is no option to log back in.
This was not meant to be a site review, but I have spent an hour or two on PlentyofFish this week, in my ongoing attempt to understand the draw of the site besides being free.

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Match Goes Free, Launches Down To Earth Dating Site

David Evans — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:15:30 +0000

Match.com, the worldâ€™s largest online dating company, today announced the launch of DownToEarth, an innovative free online dating site. Last week I spoke with Jacob Solotaroff, the former Director of Product Management and Member Integrity at Match.com, who is tasked with running Down To Earth. Steve Hammer, who heads up marketing for Down To Earth, was on the call as well.

We’ve all been waiting for Match to launch a free dating service. In the past they have discussed acquiring free dating sites, and last summer decided to forge ahead and build their own. Match realized there is room for a new free dating site which is clean and simple, a clear and direct response to PlentyofFish and to some extent OKCupid. Down To Earth went live in December 2008, signing up 1,000 daily. Looks like around 20,000 people have joined the sites in the last few weeks, at least according to Compete, although you know how I feel about third-party analytics, the trends are usually spot on, the actual number, not so much. As a measure of success, Down To Earth is targeting 250k members by the end of 2009.

DownToEarth.comâ€™s cornerstone feature, RealRatingsâ„¢, encourages daters, after meeting in person, to rate the accuracy of the information provided in the other personâ€™s profile. The five-star rating system allows daters to score the other personâ€™s accuracy from â€˜Not Even Closeâ€™ (one star) to â€˜True to Lifeâ€™ (five stars). Through actively encouraging daters to participate, DownToEarth.com empowers its community to create the dating environment theyâ€™re seeking.

How RealRatings Works: After you’ve communicated with someone, you are asked if you’ve met face-to-face. If so, Down To Earth encourages you to rate them on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, where 1 star means “not even close” and 5 “true to life.” Real Ratings let’s you sort search results by reputation, login, newest users first.

Based on respectability and reliability, down To Earth believes that if people know they’ll be called out on outdated pictures and little white lies in their profiles, they’ll be less likely to post them. As part of the community you can help Down To Earth keep the site full of honest and respectful singles.

Down To Earth will have a lot of new features coming down the pike to prove our users are who they say they are. Finally, a dating site that is taking ratings and reputation seriously! I have been rated yet, will be interesting to see how that works. Update, I just got rated, by a female friend. Where’s the ability to add testimonials?

I asked Jacob about how Down To Earth fits in with Match corporate. Currently less than 10 people. Development was outsourced, running the same Microsoft system as Match. The company is located in the same building as Match and Chemistry to optimize workflow. They are getting lots of advice from Match, which has been around for 13 years.

When asked about profile approval and customer service, I was told that Down To Earth has no customer service, instead relying on community-based policing. Members can report each other via links on profiles and messaging threads. Married people get kicked. Not sure how they will accomplish this. Jacob says identity checking is “interesting”.

Who’s on First? Signups to day have seen a large number of 18 year-olds. The site is not specifically targeting a particular market segment at this time. The site is seeing strong numbers of signups from the south and southwest. Most of them women I’ve talked to are vocally Christian and divorced. See below for a possible explanation.
We talked about opening a bar and how some bars aim to be a neighborhood bar, only to turn gay after a few months. Or a gay bar that turns into an after work hangout or sports bar. My point is, you can only do so much to guarantee the demographics your want on your site are actually the ones that show up.

Down To Earth used a 30 year-old woman as guide. A single mother goes to church every week. Composite. Funny that I personally know 5 of the women on the site in my area.

The Down To Earth team pays close attention to YouTube, eBay and social networks for inspiration. Right now they are focused on building the community, not monetization. Notice the focus on community. I don’t see a single reference as being a dating site.

We spent a lot of time talking about how Down To Earth has the freedom to innovate. The philosophy guiding the team is highly experimental, test-and-measure. As a small, nimble group inside the Match empire, they pay close attention to customer feedback and are able to add new features quickly, avoiding much of the traditional big-company red tape that had traditionally hampered Match.

Down to Earth is being marketing using both traditional and untraditional means. The pay-per-post tactic that I previously blasted them for was a simple test. Money is being spent on search engine and word of mouth marketing.

I HATE ads like this, which look like features of the site you’re on, but are actually links to other dating sites. The Federal Trade Commission is all over this unsavory marketing practice.

I’ve been sending out lots of emails and winks, will report back with the results. One thing I don’t understand is why all my photos have a “Down To Earth” badge on them, and the majority of other people don’t.

Down To Earth has done a good job with the photo management page, very clean and simple to use and promoting a photo as the primary one is simple.

Markus at PlentyofFish talks about DownToEarth. He says the site looks really good. I disagree though that Match is abandoning paid dating. This is about going after another market sector. Ross Williams leaves a great comment about PoF starting a paid dating site and it’s reliance on other paid dating sites for revenue.

I like to see that Steve has a public blog, it’s full of interesting information. Did you know that Down To Earth was called free-singles.com during the initial testing phase? Initial testing was done with churches. Interesting that links to Jacob and Steve’s blogs from Markus’ blog redirect to DownToEarth (sigh).

The Little Black Book is basically the Match Connections page. Much less clutter.

The partner page at Down To Earth features 20+ competing dating sites, most of which contain affiliate links. Very nice job with the help section.

I worked with Dating Ad Network last summer. Many people said “oh, banner networks, how quaint”, but this is effectively how Down To Earth, PlentyOfFish and many other dating sites drive traffic. What’s old is new again.

I give Down To Earth a B+ for now. A very nice effort right out of the gate. Just wait until the marketing dollars start flowing, I’m sure things are going to evolve in coming months. We’ll see what the primary demographic of the service turns out to be, right now it’s feeling a bit too divorced hard-core Christian for me. Nothing wrong with that, it’s still early days and there’s always OKCupid, the “other” cleanly designed free dating site.

Go sign up and check out Down To Earth, I think you’ll like what you see. Regardless, I urge you to leave a comment about your experience signing up and your first impressions of the service and it’s members.

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Plentyoffish Offering Paid Virtual Goods

David Evans — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:29:22 +0000

Plentyoffish is now offering paid virtual goods. A lot of people seem to think that virtual goods/gifts on Facebook or HotOrNot aren’t a success. I’d say making over $250k a day selling icons of smiley faces is pretty good. Don’t get me started on the whole xbox/ps3 gaming world, where virtual goods and currency are a billion dollar industry.

People in the Plentyoffish forums think the gifts are too expensive or they argue that POF is not free anymore. Looks like in the last week POF deleted all except for 2,000 virtual gift points from members, nice move, people really appreciate that. I don’t see where to buy more points though. What happens when I use up my existing 2,000 points? Can I buy more or do I have to log in several times to get my 30 points a day? I hope Viximo is reading this.

At the top of the page, POF has the following statement:

Women make first contact 26% of the time, the bulk of that goes to men with a picture and over 640 letters/characters in their description section.

I find this type of transparency refreshing and useful. Give me all the stats you can throw at me. If I don’t care, I won’t pay attention, but anything I can do to tilt luck in my favor, I’m all ears. I really wish more dating sites made this information public, its good for the industry and dating site members. The downside is that maybe people will know that many dating sites are not what they seem?

Talk to the Facebook app developers, they can tell you things about how left-handed people in even-numbered zip codes invite more friends into their apps on Monday’s and Thursday’s. It’s that level of measurement that sets certain apps in a totally different league than most.

Online, you live and die by paying attention to your stats.

Markus’ POF blog is 1/2 Windows IT IT folks, 1/2 haters and 1/2 fan club. No other dating site’s blog comes close to being as transparent, and no other founder is as willing to withstand heat for their statements. I wish more dating site CEO’s would step up to the plate like Markus.

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Match.com Redesign and New Features and UK Personality Testing

David Evans — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:24:28 +0000

Match has gone through a pretty radical redesign. Nobody I’ve talked to is a big fan of what they did with the Connections page, but I like the new Daily 5 feature, which is similar to what OkCupid recently launched. I’ll dig into the new features and look later on this week. What do you think of the new layout?

Sending another email to people with their Daily Five brings people back to the site more to check on their potential matches. Increases logins and pageviews, which is good, but the matches are no different than a basic search, which I already get emails from.

The overall design refresh is ok, gone are the black headers which I don’t miss one bit. The site now looks like a bunch of modules displayed on the page, lacking a coherent design but seems to load much faster.

Match.com in the UK is featuring personality testing. According to a personality testing guru, it’s a rebranded version of the Chemistry.com matching system.

Back in the day, Match has personality tests powered by WeAttract. Match fell afoul of the WeAttract terms of service, because they were using, or going to use it, on their UK site. Match got rid of the matching system, which was picked up by Yahoo, which did a nice job integrating test results with searching and profiles.

I talked to WeAttract about this last year, they said they were in the middle of legal proceedings with Match and couldn’t talk much about the situation.

Search for WeAttract and you’ll find everything I’ve written about the company and it’s role with Match and Yahoo.

The 30-minute test will take users through 56 questions, some based on images, to help those searching for a partner. Early results show 88% of members were completing the test. (Via NewMediaAge magazine. and Online Personals Watch.)

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Are You Interested Starts Sharing

David Evans — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:13:57 +0000

Facebook dating application Are you Interested has implemented a sharing feature where you can share people with your friends. The icon is a copy of the ShareThis social sharing application you see on blogs these days. I’ve always wondered how many people use the “Send to a friend” feature on dating sites. What person would share the woman in this photo with anyone?

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