Eye-tracking studies and neuromarketing has always fascinated me. Just last week I was looking at the Emotiv EEG headset (me want!), which is getting into reading brainwaves and eye-tracking at the same time, which excited me to no end.

Why should the dating industry care? Today we see that Tobii Technology and AnswerLab announcing the results of an eye-tracking study showing that men spend 65 percent more time reviewing photos in online dating profiles than women do. Alternatively, women spend 50 percent more time than men reading profile information about their prospective partner’s background and interests.

The study included 39 participants, 18 female and 21 male, who each were interviewed before and after viewing dating profiles on both Match and eHarmony. From the gaze patterns collected, it was discovered that male subjects spend 65 percent more time viewing their potential partner’s photo and 50 percent less time analyzing the profile overall, when compared with the gaze data of female subjects.

40 participants in a random cafe in San Francisco is hardly a scientific study, but I believe the results jive with another eye-tracking study from a few years ago. Most of the results are common sense/knowledge, but its always good to add additional information to the pile.

Lets get to the findings:

Women spent an average of 84 seconds evaluating a profile to assess if it was a match, while men spent an average of 58 seconds.

Men tend to focus on the profile photo.

In some instances, men spent as much as 65 percent more of their time than women looking at the profile photos.

There is also some good information for dating sites to consider.

A profile that showcased personality at the top of the page was perceived as more personal.

A profile that prominently displayed a list of traits was perceived as more businesslike.

I like that Tobii gave out some free advice for dating sites. This is mostly 101-level User Interface/User Experience stuff but good to remember. Far too many dating sites have awfully-designed templates that often do nothing to improve conversions (People Media comes to mind, but at least a few of their sites seem to be improving and looking better).

Implement a streamlined navigation: Avoid too many calls-to-action in the top navigation that can confuse users and distract them from the main profile and its key interactive elements.

Highlight key profile information: Reduce clutter and streamline key profile information (name, location, etc.) to make it easily discoverable.

Carefully weigh your monetization strategies with the user experience: Minimize the disruptions your advertising and subscription models have upon profile viewing. Assess the placement, frequency and style of ads or up-sells to reduce distractions and enhance effectiveness.

Related posts:

1. Tracking Dating Apps on iPhone
2. Study to Reduce HIV and STD Among Gay/Bi Men Online
3. Stats, Tracking and Updates

For the past few months I’ve been working with CNBC on a new dating special that airs next week. Here’s a clip, which features OKCupid’s Sam Yagan, Match and a few other dating sites.

From the show’s website: NBC News and Today Show Correspondent Amy Robach reveals how online daters are using cutting-edge technology in search of love and how digital entrepreneurs are getting rich helping them do it.

You’ll meet scientists, mathematicians and psychologists who claim they can draw revealing conclusions about you from what you do — and don’t do — on their websites. Can online dating really deliver what it promises? CNBC takes you inside a business trying to unlock the secrets of the human heart with science.

Love at First Byte: The Secret Science of Online Dating
Premieres Thursday, February 9th 9p | 10p | 12a | 1a ET

Related posts:

1. The Science of Love
2. NBC Teams up with Perfectmatch for Science Of Love
3. Science of Love on NBC

 Lately I’ve become more and more concerned with what websites and apps are doing with my personal information on Facebook. As previously noted, I have disconnected just about every single dating app, Facebook and website/web service from Facebook, because I had absolutely no idea what any of these companies were doing with my information and I wasn’t seeing a whole lot of value from these deep connections with my “social exhaust”.

Leveraging Facebook Connect to streamline the customer signup process can be quite useful to dating sites and singles alike, but leaving that connection in place doesn’t make much sense if the dating site isn’t doing anything useful with your information. And guess what, most sites don’t. They can vacuum up your information all day long, and to what purpose? Where is the transparency past the generic “Facebook wants to access your wall, Likes, Friends, Etc, click here or be gone.”

I’ve long been a proponent of Facebook-based dating apps and Facebook Connect, and still, nobody is doing anything very interesting with your Facebook data. Lots of companies claim to be revolutionizing online dating with Facebook. Exactly three companies are doing this, Zoosk, Are You Interested and Badoo. Where is the innovation here?

Innovative matching based on FB interests? Nobody is doing that. Posting interesting stuff on my wall? Nobody is doing that. Knowing the names of everyone in my family on Facebook? No thanks. The granularity of sharing your personal information on Facebook is way to loose-goosey for my tastes.

To make matters more complicated, dating sites need to earn my trust before I allow them access to my feed and its associated data (photos, likes, etc). From now on, I’m signing up for all new services , not just dating sites, with an old-school username and password. I’m happy to connect via Facebook if the site in question can prove that doing so will be more beneficial than not. But you have to earn my trust, its not going to be implicit and “one click and here we go” any longer.

I shouldn’t be so hard on dating sites. This is big complicated stuff that has nothing to do with lowering customer acquisition costs, anti-fraud and credit card billing. But then I wouldn’t be doing my job.

So, when are we going to see a dating site do something cool with Facebook? Throwing your dating site in an iFrame is not exactly leveraging Facebook for all its worth. I do receive periodic emails from people claiming to be at the brink of revolutionizing online dating. Thats great, I’m ready to have a look when you are. Don’t forget the boatload of cash you’ll need to get traction and the cautionary tales of the scores of companies that crashed and burned trying similar things on Facebook before you.

While thinking about this post, I went to sign up for Grouper, and it turns out that the only way one can join is via Facebook. Grouper is a Facebook-based social application, so the Facebook signup makes sense, but they should absolutely let people sign up with a traditional username/password combo. I wonder how many people bounce off the home page at the sight of the Facebook Join button? Here’s an Interview with Grouper founder Jerry Guo.

Group dating, social dating, entrepreneurs are doing anything they can to get away from “traditional” dating sites. They know they can’t beat Match in a fair fight, and niche (pretty much done and done at this point) and social are really the only options unless you want to go big and create a more effective matching algorithm which isn’t for the faint of heart, or pocketbook. Oh and mobile too. Same story there. A handful of apps that are 1/2-decent, with 50 copycats and a bunch of other apps that never got anywhere and disappeared before anyone could find out about them. Talk about a tough market to win in. Thank God for Huffington Post, otherwise most of these apps would remain in obscurity.

What new and cool dating apps are you using in conjunction with Facebook? I’m sure I’m missing some hot number that has just launched.

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New York Times has compiled a Latest Hits of online dating and relationship research. As with a new John Mayer or Coldplay album, with most dating research you already know what you’re going to get even before you dig into the data.

While somewhat enlightening, I’ve been listening to the same people say the same thing for a almost a decade now. The only difference is the nuance and surprise that researches tend to exhibit when it comes to the most basic stats that anyone who’s been on a dating site for more than a week would know.

I’d like to see a single research report that has led to innovation, increased efficiency a higher happiness quotient for dating site members.

I’m still waiting…

Major dating sites had more than 593 million visits in the United States last month. Now that gave me pause. That’s probably about 500 million for Match properties and the remainder spread around to The Niches.

Someone should do a study on the number of people who met their mate online and see what their happiness and divorce rates are. In particular, eHarmony, Plentyoffish (or do we call it POF now, I don’t get it.)

Here’s my favorite campaign-season stat. Let’s mine the most generic profile stats and pretend we are amazed that people’s politics actually makes a difference in picking a mate. Of course trotting out the only bi-party relationship in the world, James Carville and Mary Matalin. I vote that no one ever mentions those two again in regards to relationships ever again.

As far as I’m concerned, this is the most important finding in the article:

What people say they want in a mate and what qualities they actually seek don’t tend to correspond,” said Coye Cheshire, an associate professor at the School of Information at Berkeley who has studied this with Mr. Fiore, Professor Mendelsohn and Lindsay Shaw Taylor, a member of the school’s self, identity and relationships lab.

Finally, an interesting point is (re-)made, Bravo. This is a key point behind behavioral matching. What you think you want and what you actually need are often two totally different things. Dating sites like Match and OKCupid and POF get this, and are (one hopes) continuing to evolve their matching systems to take user behavior into consideration.

I find this absolutely fascinating and could talk about it all day. Unfortunately there are few people in the industry that a) believe and b) understand this stuff enough to put it into action on dating sites. And even less that want to have a beer and dig into the details.

If Zoosk made $100 million this year and they have the Zoosk matching system thats so powerful, then how come its not mentioned here?

Badoo reads this stuff and laughs. Matching systems, we don’t need to stinkin’ matching systems. Oops, we just billed your credit card another $25, enjoy talking to the 436,632 non-english speaking people (that aren’t really) in your area.

Everyone knows that dating profiles bring a bare minimum of insight into one’s personality. Where’s the fascinating research into facial coding, astrology, and a few other Big Important Useful things that would make online dating so much easier and effective? The resistance of the online dating industry to even express a modicum of interest in these ideas remains a sad point. If there was no Netflix prize, I doubt anyone would be doing behavioral matching in online dating at this time.

Look at how Google and Facebook innovate, each and every month. Go look at 10 niche dating sites. All owned by the same few companies, running the same 5-year-old templates, with seriously underpowered search engines. Now we’re going to go through niche site saturation, which is going to kill off a whole bunch of dating sites over the next few years, but that’s a story for another time.

The Times article goes on to say that The Journal of Communication used computer analysis to show that four linguistic indictors can help detect lying in the personal essay of a dating profile. I thought we had figured this out a long time ago? That’s what I was working on at Profile Doctor back in 2004.

Overweight and short people lie on dating sites all the time. The dating industry needs to stop talking about how people lie, take some pride and responsibility and do a better job creating more dynamic profiles that accurately reflect a person’s tastes and preferences, regardless of the teeth-grinding dullness they fill their profile essays with.

Why not offer verified photos and an identity check and remove the problem from the table? Oh wait, that hasn’t worked so far, let those fat short old people lie to their heart’s content. Ka-ching!

Researchers found a very high rate of same-ethnicity dating. Just like they did last year, and the year before that (They also found that people breath air). This is where (sadly) someone reading this is thinking, “ZOMG! I need to start a white-only niche dating site.” Actually that’s a great idea for the home-wreckers at Ashely Madi$on. Go for it guys, make us proud.

Thanks to our merry band of intrepid researchers and the NY Times, we know all too well what opaque (not our fault blame the dating site!)  and sad liars online daters are (your truly included).  Now its time to do something about it. I had no idea that I could go ask the National Science Foundation for a grant to do some research that actually improves online dating.

I wonder who’s press release kicked this story off?

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Admin update: having some trouble with the blog, hopefully get it sorted out soon.

Have you looked at the new Subscribe button on Facebook? Among other things it lets people read your updates without being your friend. This, my friends, is yet another indication that Facebook is rolling out features that can ostensibly be used for dating. They just need to read the rest of this post and figure out if more granular subscription options or group invites is the best way to go about sharing specific Facebook data with romantic strangers.

This week I’ve had a number of people tell me about their experiences sharing their Facebook profiles with potential dates. Here’s one way to make Facebook for you in your dating life: Create a new group called AboutMe or something similar, post items you want potential dates to be able to view, and share your facebook url with them (I have a custom url, don’t you?).

What would be even cooler is a link that decays over time, becoming inoperable after say 72 hours. That way you know that those creepers can’t get back into your profile after a first glance.

The subscription button could also allow longer-term access to profile data, sort of like what OkCupid has been doing for years.

Is Facebook going to undermine the entire online dating industry? Of course it is, just a matter of time. Until them, singles should use their Facebook profiles to share details about their tastes, personality and preferences with potential dates. You know, the things that traditional dating sites aren’t very good at doing.

After all, you’ve never seen a Facebook post start with “I can’t believe I’m doing this…”

Read Introducing the Subscribe Button and start using Facebook to meet your match today.

Oh and congrats to Friend Finder Networks for acquiring PerfectMatch. Hopefully they don’t follow in the footsteps of Spark Networks and kill it off like Spark did Engage. Love the idea of the Penthouse business doing deals with the Lifetime network.

What’s the next PerfectMatch product-placement going to be, Must Love Buxom Babes?

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The High Court rejected claims made by US online dating company Plentyoffish Media that it was entitled to assert rights over UK-registered trademarks because it had high UK visitor numbers to its website.

The domain UDate.org is for sale. Email Lee @ lbraxton03@gmail.com for details.

eHarmony Australia has recently released their new iPad app, eHarmony HD, available for free from the iTunes App Store. Also, eHarmony subsidiary Jazzed launches photo-sharing app and is featured in a dating television show. Does anyone think that Jazzed is making an impact? I’m seeing around 100k/month visitors.

NFC will help people find romance.

A recent survey by the University of Leicester suggests that as many as 200,000 people in the UK have fallen victim to online dating scams.

My Love Life is new dating and intimacy app to keep track of and log all aspects of your dates, flirts, sex life and personal activities. Available in itunes for $2.99.

I’ve seen a number of references to the IBISWorld U.S. Dating Industry Report. If you’ve read read it, was it worth the price?

Technology Cancels Out Dating’s Three Day Rule.

Bad Online Dates announces the launch of a new Rescue Bad Dates with Astrology Toolkit.

Jiayuan IPO Research (historical).

New mobile dating and discovery app: WhosHere. Send free texts, images, even VOIP calls, without giving out so much as an email address or phone number.

Online match-maker, eHarmony.com.au, is set to launch a new multi-million dollar integrated marketing campaign to redirect and refresh the brand.

OkCupid has released TameJs, developer tools that make managing certain aspects of dating site code easier to write and manage. What other dating sites are sharing code?

Dan Winchester from FreeDating.co.uk has done some research to find out the likely outcome of a first date, based on information available in a typical online dating profile.

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Back from a week in the woods. Have to find a new place to live in the next few weeks and my car died, not how I expected my summer to go, but that’s life.

Plentyoffish blog says that a recent IAC investor call featuring Match CEO Greg Blatt mentions the Okcupid team signed a deal to stay on for a year  and is focused building a Badoo clone that will get profiles via Facebook to compete in the space. Badoo. Sure its big but what a terrible service. Spam and junk all over the place.

In the past, Match has toyed half-heartedly with acquiring profiles via Facebook, but until now, paying for ad space like everyone else has been the only way to get any significant traffic.

After a few years of a learning curve (Deal with Are You Interested, Little Black Book), perhaps Match can step up to the plate.

The investor call is supposed to be available for 180 days. A month after the event and the call has been pulled down already. Anyone have an audio archive of it? I’d love to hear it.

Match.com Pegasus Limited, Mojo Acquisition Corp, Elicia Acquisition Corp, interesting. Thats a whole lot of tax advantage right there. Interesting reading in regards to the Match deal with Meetic. The deal alone will cost 3 million Euros.

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Given the previous post about Match supposedly wanting to build a Badoo clone on Facebook, I decided to poke around the raw html that the Match web servers send to web browsers, which in turn create the Match web pages we look at millions of times every day around the world.

I learned a few things.

To begin with, all Match profiles are Facebook “objects”. Facebook considers just about everything it touches as an “object” and gives it its own unique identifier (like an IP address or social security number, everyone has a unique one. In fact, This blog has been an Object that Facebook knows about for a long time.

Making everything an object makes sense, because as Facebook evolves from a destination to a distributed platform touching everything on the net, they want to be able to reach out and touch, search, share, read and modify as much of the content on the Internet as possible, including my likes, friends, wall posts, apps, etc.

To show you how easy it is to look at people’s personal information on Facebook, check out these examples. Even if you do it with a browser that is not currently logged into Facebook, you can retrieve a fair amount of information about someone or a Fan page.

If you click https://graph.facebook.com/relaxedguy you will see basic information that Facebook knows about me.

{
“id”: “501791841″,
“name”: “David Evans”,
“first_name”: “David”,
“last_name”: “Evans”,
“link”: “http://www.facebook.com/relaxedguy”,
“username”: “relaxedguy”,
“gender”: “male”,
“locale”: “en_US”
}

My Facebook profile photo http://graph.facebook.com/relaxedguy/picture.

Coca-Cola’s Facebook page https://graph.facebook.com/cocacola.

{
“id”: “40796308305″,
“name”: “Coca-Cola”,
“picture”: “http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/203509_40796308305_256509_s.jpg”,
“link”: “http://www.facebook.com/coca-cola”,
“likes”: 32007587,
“category”: “Food/beverages”,
“website”: “http://www.coca-cola.com”,
“username”: “coca-cola”,
“founded”: “1886″,
“products”: “Coca-Cola is the most popular and biggest-selling soft drink in history, as well as the best-known product in the world.\n\nCreated in Atlanta, Georgia, by Dr. John S. Pemberton, Coca-Cola was first offered as a fountain beverage by mixing Coca-Cola syrup with carbonated water….”
}

Enough generic examples, lets’ get to the good stuff.

Primer: The “og:somedata” stuff seen below is what site owners put invisibly at the top of each page they want Facebook to consider an object. For this blog, at the moment its the same details for all pages. For Match, each person is an Object that has special attributes like username, photo url and a few other things.

One of my Match usernames.

<meta property='og:title' content='agood1foru2know'/>

My Match profile web address and the super-special unique identifier.

<meta property='og:type' content='match:person'/>

My full profile address (Match login required)

<meta property='og:url' content='http://www.match.com/profile/showprofile.aspx/?uid=B88an16AMuFBZCSkMRWw5A==&handle=agood1foru2know&tp=ms&trackingID=526684&bannerID=747303' />

Facebook application ID number. This doesn’t look like a regular number, its way too long. Can anyone explain what it is, like a placeholder?

<meta property='fb:app_id' content='89318d7e8d124c0eb6dc64adcbb14c60'/>

Beginning of one of my profiles, edited down for length.

<meta property='og:description' content="What's up summertime singles? Meet a left-of-center ENFP, cynical and funny optimist, pretty charismatic or so I'm told."  />

I’m not sharp enough to decode the possible relationship between the “uid” and the picture url, but the big issue is that over 100 million Match user photos are freely available for anyone to download. (20 million members, average of 5 photos per member = 100 million give or take).

To be fair, Match could be testing this with 500 people and photos aren’t linked to personal information (although embedding meta-data in photos via steganography and other means is done all the time on certain sites).

Also seen in the raw html that comprised Match profiles is the following text:

Upload a Photo & Unlock Hers
Her Photos are Unlocked!

This looks like a Facebook call-to-action. I have to upload a photo to see another person’s photos. Or its another one of those Match features that I never pay attention to, we’ll know soon enough.

What if Match is looking to expose profiles on Facebook as a way to drive Facebook users to Match? This is sort of what they did on a trial basis with Are You Interested a few years ago. But I have a feeling that Match is going for something much bigger. Perhaps even to be the de facto dating site for Facebook.

The dating industry has been discussing this for years, but the fact that Match and Facebook could be partnering on something so big (the Dating tab at the top of your FB profile), well it just boggles the mind. A dating site with hundreds of millions of people on it.

Of course, perhaps the Facebook object code has been there for many moons and I’m way off-base, I certainly don’t view the html source of every dating site I come across (but maybe we all should).

We we do know is that everything is an object to Facebook and that Match has made it so that all 20 million members (arguable) and their photos are objects that Facebook knows about and can act upon. I’m not entirely clear how the bi-directionality of such a situation would pan out, but I can’t wait for the moment a Match-branded Facebook application asks for my permission to access my personal data and write on my wall while being tied to my Match profile.

Put it this way, its either going to rock right out of the gate or risks being another Little Black Book, Match’s first Facebook app. Last time I checked it had 19 active users. But that was years ago, and Match has gotten much smarter about the power of social.

What are the implications of having tighter integration between Match and Facebook? Perhaps such actions as changes to your Match profile, a new photo, a search completed, an email sent, a wink sent, a profile blocked, could end up on your Facebook wall, or at least tracked and your actions used to personalize, drive traffic, attract eyeballs, etc.These actions have showed up on the Match member home page mini-wall for two years now.

Perhaps mini versions of Match profiles will show up in Facebook search. That would actually be pretty cool. Match is well on its way to extending the “wall” concept of publishing updates such as “Someone you have expressed interest in or we think you would like has updated/uploaded/done some other action” to the entire Internet, starting with Facebook.

Fascinating. What else will Match do with Facebook-tagged profiles? Usually you do something somewhere else and your actions show up on your wall. How will your Facebook and Match actions interact and to what benefit?

Match recently updated their Terms of Service. I don’t know what changed (send me a copy of a recent Match TOS if you have one) but the following gives Match carte blanche to use your profile and photos any way it pleases. I think all changes to privacy policy and TOS should be highlighted, but hardly everyone does this. Just take my info and get me to Farmville.

By posting Content to any public area of Match.com, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Match.com, its affiliates, licensees and successors, an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, reproduce, adapt, modify and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sub-licenses of the foregoing. You further represent and warrant that public posting and use of your content by Match.com will not infringe or violate the rights of any third party.

One could theoretically create a Facebook app that just like any Facebook app, asks for permission to read certain data, enabling the harvesting of minimal information from potentially millions of Match profiles. I say potentially because I don’t see the Facebook object markup on any other Match site that I checked. I’ve spent enough time diving into the Facebook Social Graph to know that there are a lot of interesting ways to retrieve and manipulate data, and thats just the public Facebook API’s. One wonders what third-party developers could do with this information.

Ok, enough speculation. I need to ponder this some more. Regardless of Match’s intentions in regards to Facebook integration, its a great mental exercise to brainstorm the possibilities.

Hoping you will share your thoughts on the subject.

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Have you taken a close look at the new Match profile pages? I just noticed a new feature, The increase in pageviews resulting from the new photo display feature will bring more pageviews and ad dollars for Match.

Investigation of FriendFinder Network. The investigation will reveal whether investors were advised of material risks by their financial advisors including the company’s disclosure that should certain adverse conditions come to pass that the company “may be unable to continue operating as a going concern.” Since its IPO in May 2010, at $10.00 a share, the stock price has plummeted, dropping to approximately $4.00 a share or 60 percent.

Kinect Could Change Dating Forever. This is so cool.

Nicholas Abramovic used to run acquisition at Zoosk and later consulted for SpeedDate. On his blog he has been talking about how Zoosk and SpeedDate have been ripping off each other’s designs for quite some time now.

Matchaffinity: A Match/Meetic property, offers a genuine connection and natural rapport with someone you know is on the same wavelength as you. Interested to know how they calculate my “affinity score”.

One “Unbelievable” Call-to-Action Color Makes $80 Million

2011 Blogging Roadmap: “Zero to product/market fit”

Bounce Rates Demystified

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I am having a blast taking people’s photos and running them through FaceReader from Profiler1. Not to be confused with this competing Face Reader.

Here are some notes culled from discussion with Profiler1 and pulled from their website.

Profiler1 has automated the science of personality analysis using facial features and is now making it available for use on dating sites via the brand new API.

The company offers three different kinds of services facilitated by taking a snapshot or choosing a member’s photo.

The first service is a “Quick Face Reading” which utilizes a special server algorithm and facial recognition system allowing it to read any human face. The replies cover a variety of personality traits and offer descriptions

The second service is called “A Full Face Reading”. This is a more in-depth report due to the fact that one of the experts is also involved in the analyzing process and is able to generate dozens of personality trait assessments.

The 3^rd service as described by Profiler1:

“Personality Match – is the coolest feature your site could ever have. It lets the users choose their spouse’s preferred personality traits at which point our service presents the most suitable matches within your site.

Personology is a diagnostic method used regularly in face-to-face communications workshops, relationship or partner coaching sessions and more. Personology is known for its reliability and accuracy. It is the science of exposing an individual’s personality based on one’s facial structure. Personology has been confirmed to be 92% accurate based on observations and statistical research done in 1950-1963.

The company is about to provide the service through one of the major russian dating sites called Lovplanet.ru.

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