Online Dating Insider » Personality Testing

IntroAnalytics Behavioral Recommendations Initial Results Analysis

David Evans — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:19:03 +0000

Gavin Potter at IntroAnalytics has written a white paper titled Making Behavioral Recommendations Pay, An Analysis of Returns Achieved. I am pleased to see some of the early results discussed publicly. While not exactly earth-shattering in terms of depth, I applaud Gavin for making the results available and urge him to continue to update. In fact, IntroAnalytics should follow OKCupid and blog when they have enough data to work with. That would be outstanding. A few tidbits of information below.

There has been a substantial increase in activity on all sites which have implemented the IntroAnalytics technology. Detailed analysis of site traffic indicates that the introduction of the IntroAnalytics product leads to an average 20% increase in site traffic.
Detailed analysis of site activity shows that most users prefer to view profiles based on the selections provided by the IntroAnalytics technology rather than the traditional search built into the sites.
One surprising result is that the technology has a greater impact on female activity – especially messaging activity than on male activity.

Those wishing to read the full paper should us the contact form or email info@introanalytics.com.

Sharing:

Basisnote Screenshots

David Evans — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:54:00 +0000

I’ve been checking out the Basisnote Chemistry Check system running on Swissfriends.ch. Here are some screenshots I took of the testing process.

Sharing:

At OKCupid, Openness is The Key to Success

David Evans — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:21:15 +0000

Great article about OKCupid in the New York Times, Looking for a Date? A Site Suggests You Check the Data.

In its fight against much bigger competitors like Match.com, PlentyOfFish and eHarmony, it has tried a number of marketing techniques, often with little success. But the blog, which OkCupid started in October, has helped get the company’s name out on other blogs and social networks. A post last month that set out to debunk conventional wisdom about profile pictures brought more than 750,000 visitors to the site and garnered 10,000 new member sign-ups, according to the company.

The research obviously took a lot of time and resources, but If this doesn’t once and for all show the dating industry that there is a huge upside to being more open and informative while helping members make the most out of the online dating experience, I don’t know what will. 750,000 visitors based on a blog post!

These days I am inundated with dating site social media spam clogging up Twitter with cloaked affiliate links and T&A photo enticements. This sort of lowest-common-denominator marketing will continue because it’s cheap traffic, but I like to think that sites taking more focused on branding and efficiently are the ones who will grow the most and succeed in the long run.

Someone should do a comparison between social media traffic results and generic dating site marketing like Adwords. It would be fascinating to see comparisons between cost and effectiveness.

The OKCupid article went viral primarily because it’s something people had never read about before. It was re-tweeted many times, and media attention begets more media attention. It wasn’t 101-level dating advice like “brush your teeth before a date” like so many dating site magazines publish (with a few exceptions, which I will be talking about in coming weeks.) The tone of the blog post was not that of an academic paper, which would never have gotten the same level of exposure.

Greg Waldorf, chief executive of eHarmony, which says it has more than 20 million registered users, was dismissive of the marketing power of OkCupid’s blog reports.

Of course he was. Waldorf’s quote is garden variety CEO-speak. I understand media quotes that position a brand against competitors, but that level of snarkiness in unnecessary. eHarmony clearly doesn’t understand the importance of great profile photos, which is inexplicable.

And what’s with the 20 million registered users comment? There are lawsuits brewing over statements like that. Shame on eHarmony and Match for using these irrelevant numbers in the media. They are both going to get spanked over these statements, just you wait and see. Monthly logins is a number I’d like to see used instead.

Eharmony doesn’t have to be concerned about OKCupid, but to be dismissive of the research is an indicator of just how out of touch eHarmony has become. The trend is toward openness and empowering singles, and that’s the polar opposite of how eHarmony works.

EHarmony doesn’t share anything. They are like the North Korea of the online dating industry. A big black box and a giant marketing machine. They have their top-5 position in the marketplace and will be there for many, many years to come. It’s imperative to understand how brilliantly eHarmony built the company, from the $100 million dollar early fundraising, to the commercials, and the fact that eHarmony is perfect for busy and lazy people who don’t feel like spending five hours a week on Match and need a lot of handholding.

Eharmony’s empire is built on a matching system that nobody really understands outside of the company. It’s probably the best black-box compatibility system available and there is nothing any competitors can do about it. Except Chemistry, which is spending tens of millions of dollars to take the edgy/urban/alternative people away from eHarmony, with varying degrees of success.

I wish someone could compare eHarmony to Chemistry.com and Perfectmatch. In the meantime, the Catalyst Group in New York has done an exhaustive comparison of Match and eHarmony, A Usability Study of Online Dating is the best review of two dating sites I’ve ever seen. Every dating industry executive should read the entire report.

Read a Usability Study of Online Dating

While I’m at it, I would also like to see IAC break out Match and Chemistry financials and to report each PeopleMedia property on it’s own. Hey, we can dream.

PlentyOfFish thinks I’ve got a crush on OKCupid, and it’s true. I will not hide the fact that I believe that OKCupid is hands-down the best introduction site for urban, sex-positive, educated, liberated and worldly singles. No other site even comes close.

In fact, I unsubscribed from PlentyOfFish today. Longtime readers know that I subscribe and unsubscribe from dating sites all the time, and this time it’s POF. I’ve been on numerous great OKCupid dates recently and for me, personally, POF just isn’t delivering. And it’s not like PlentyOfFish is going to change anytime soon, at least from the member perspective. So I’m out, at least for a while. I’m going to replace POF with Match.

Maybe I’ll re-join eHarmony, but I’ve been on that ride before, not expecting a different experience, but it’s good to go through the signup process every once in a while to see what’s changed.

Note: not belonging to a dating site doesn’t mean I ignore it. I have logins all over the place, and my favorite market research has always been pulling out the laptop with friends and having them log into their favorite sites and search and emailing people together.

One final bit about PlentyofFish before I sign off. I’m sure that people in the dating industry have discussed these topics ad nausea, but I ran into POF execs at iDate and wanted to clarify my thoughts.

For a handful of people up in Canada running an international site nearing 100 million monthly logins, their stratospheric grow is unprecedented and worthy of a business school case study someday.

As a business, POF is trying to break through to the next level. The company is doing everything it can to monetize the stupefying number of logins it receives each month. Word on the street is that in Canada POF is landing higher-class advertisers, which I don’t see when I log in here in Boston. Anything they can do to lessen the number of slutty ads will be a bonus for all users and raise revenue accordingly.

Problem is, the company is too small, not to mention the fact that reliance on advertising is never going to get them to that magical $30-$50 million in revenue. What was once a bragging right has become a hindrance. To begin with, they need to broaden the team. Five people can’t possibly build out the strategy and execution plan that gets a free dating site from $15 million to $30 million. Not being critical of management, just realistic of the efforts involved and how revenue growth tends to swell the ranks.

While I’m certainly an avid OKCupid fan, PlentyofFish has a much larger opportunity to grow, especially internationally. Markus and the team need to focus on evolving the definition of the company from “we’re popular” to “we’re successful,” and that is no small feat.

Sharing:

IntroAnalytics Offering Free Trials

David Evans — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:57:04 +0000

IntroAnalytics has developed a unique recommendation engine for identifying compatible dates on online dating sites without the use of questionnaires or user profiling. Their algorithms are based on a combination of mathematics and psychology and substantially increase user satisfaction and profitability by providing tailored recommendations that can be used in a variety of ways on your website.

To see examples of implementation click here.

Sharing:

Match.com Launches My Match to Complement Search Capabilities

David Evans — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:23:19 +0000

During the last year, Match.com has refined and upgraded its daily personalized matching program, The Daily 5. Match.com has introduced several additional matching programs to provide a variety of choices for members and centralized them in one place in the ‘My Match’ area of the site for ease of use.

My Match offers the following programs:
– Daily 5 – Daily introductions to people based on how likely you are to
strike up a conversation together.
– Mutual Match – Daily introductions to a handful of people based on
your stated preferences and their stated preferences.
– Singled Out – Introductions we only make when we believe there is an
especially high likelihood that you will hit it off with the person.
– Like At First Sight – Introductions to people who we think you’ll find
immediately appealing based on your responses to a fun online quiz
regarding first impressions.

I haven’t been a paying member of Match since April of last year, I check in on a friend’s account regularly, plus it’s more interesting to see how other people use Match and I ask a lot of questions about what they think of the service (most of my friends use Match exclusively). It’s time to re-subscribe and check out the new Match features.

Sharing:

Is Your Credit Card Company the Next eHarmony?

David Evans — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:11:13 +0000

As online dating continues to evolve in the direction of enhanced personality matching systems, including visual profile bulders and DNA tests, let us not forget the question, What Does Your Credit-Card Company Know About You?

Takeaway quote: â€œIf you show us what you buy, we can tell you who you are, maybe even better than you know yourself.â€ Think of the implications of adding credit card data to your dating profile.

Martin could often see precisely what cardholders were purchasing, and he discovered that the brands we buy are the windows into our souls — or at least into our willingness to make good on our debts. His data indicated, for instance, that people who bought cheap, generic automotive oil were much more likely to miss a credit-card payment than someone who got the expensive, name-brand stuff. People who bought carbon-monoxide monitors for their homes or those little felt pads that stop chair legs from scratching the floor almost never missed payments. Anyone who purchased a chrome-skull car accessory or a “Mega Thruster Exhaust System” was pretty likely to miss paying his bill eventually…

IDC says that an individualâ€™s â€œdigital shadowâ€ of information created about them such as surveillance photos, health records and credit reports is larger than the digital persona they create about themselves composed of things like blogs, YouTube videos and MySpace profiles. Via WSJ.

Suppose, during a date, you casually say, â€œThe sugar maples in Harvard Yard were so beautiful every fall term.â€ Hereâ€™s what youâ€™re signaling, as translated by Dr. Miller:

â€œMy S.A.T. scores were sufficiently high (roughly 720 out of 800) that I could get admitted, so my I.Q. is above 135, and I had sufficient conscientiousness, emotional stability and intellectual openness to pass my classes. Plus, I can recognize a tree.â€

I’ve heard about using credit card data to assist in the matchmaking process, but the trail went cold a few months ago. Fascinating and perhaps quite useful to larger sites like eHarmony. Let me know if you have seen anything recently on this.

Sharing:

Is Matchmaking Based on Movies a Feature or Niche Dating Site?

David Evans — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:21:49 +0000

Last week I mentioned Cinekin, a dating startup that uses movie ratings to match people. Today I was checking out someone on OKCupid and I saw a message that the women I was emailing with also likes Shawshank Redemption.

This got me thinking that things like movie matchmaking are best utilized as features, like on OKCupid, as opposed to the basis for an ultra-niche website, like Cinekin. Agree or disagree?

Sharing:

Improving Compatibility Matching With Movies

David Evans — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:28:59 +0000

Online Personals Watch mentions Cinekin using movie ratings to match people. Fernando, as expected, takes them to task. Josh Berg at Cinekin weighs in calling their algorithmic matching sytems “as good as Netflix.” Without knowing the full details, I can’t argue that claim, outrageous as it sounds.

I like what Josh has to say about 16 PF5, older tests and they need to evolve. What we don’t know is if movie matching works. Just because compatible people share movie interests, thats a single datapoint, and not strong enough to support much of an audience greater than single movie buffs.

The matching system as more of a feature than a dating site. Perhaps they can license it to other dating sites if it’s a serious bump in effectiveness compared to todays search. Otherwise it’s a neat feature that nobody except film buffs are going to use. And what’s with there being no Netflix API to import your data? Can’t believe that’s not a feature.

Sharing:

I got your non-DNA-based Scientific Matching System Right Here

David Evans — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:22:58 +0000

Basisnote wrote in to say that their scientific compatibility system has recently launched on www.swissfriends.ch, a Swiss dating site. The Basisnote Chemistry-Check is not a DNA test, no sensitive data is collected, it costs about $50 and is simple to use. You can start matching 15 min once the test is shipped to your home, no need to mail the test back to a lab for processing.

I am checking out Swissfriends and waiting for my test to be mailed to me. In the meantime, you absolutely must watch this Swissfriends commercial, I lol’d watching the woman sniff her dates.

Sharing:

Pillow Talk Compatibility Report

David Evans — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:17:01 +0000

Dating sites searching for new revenue streams are hearing a lot more from companies who provide compatibility reports to dating site members.

Years ago I traded WeAttract reports with someone I started dating. We annotated our reports and shared them after our third date. Enlightening to say the least an it didn’t cost us a dime. We referenced that report on and off the entire time we dated.

Today’s crop of compatibly reports weigh in at around $20. Take Pillow Talk Profiles for example, which measures sexual compatibility without revealing any of the details to either person. The report examines both members of the couplesâ€™ views about lifestyle, orientation, attitudes, tolerance, sexual practices and preferences. This results in a report that gives couples the tools to thoroughly evaluate their potential for long-term sexual compatibility.

There is an obvious need for these services, yet it’s been years since a report came out which actually caught the attention of singles. Why is this? OKCupid does basically the same thing, for free. It’s millions of questions are arguably more thorough than any report could possibly be (and more fun to answer IMHO).

Understanding ourselves, our problem areas and fatal flaws is important in the online dating process. Spending $20 on a sexual compatibility report and another $20 on a personality report is a difficult sales proposition for most people. Why not create one report that covers everything which can be sold across the online dating industry?

Dating sites could subsidize the cost of the reports through advertising and sponsorships, then turn members onto newsletters, advice columns and other ways to improve their chances of success.

Stop thinking about third party offers as simply additional revenue streams. Instead, they should be regarded as member benefits useful when promoting your dating sites.

Sharing: