OkCupid has launched a new feature called WTF. I received the press release and read the FAQ on the website. I still don’t understand what is does.

For each match question you and another user aren’t perfectly matched on, WTF will display your respective preferences, your respective answers, how well (or poorly) they matched, and a damage score that tells you mathematically just how much messing up that question hurt the match between you two.

Then I found the FAAAQ! – Frequently Asked for Answers About Questions, which explains the concept and the math behind it in more details.

We’ll see what adoption rates are like, too complicated for me, just give me more fun tests.

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In case you missed it, the battleground for online dating dominance shifted over the weekend.

First, we learned that True.com is most likely delinquent on its advertising payments. As a result True’s ads are increasingly harder to find in the usual places like Myspace and it’s rankings continue to sink. More in the New York Times article, Is True.com Being Untrue to Advertising Partners?

A few datapoints:

• In June of 2006, True.com has been ranked as the nation’s No. 1 dating site, according to Hitwise.
• September 2006 I wrote that True was going to internally build and launch a targeted on-site advertising system. This was the first sign of trouble. Why go to the trouble to build an ad serving system when there are literally dozens to partner with?
• Back in March Markus wrote that True now has more unique visitors per month than singlesnet and match.com combined.
• Then came the Hot But Virtious New York Times article. Look at the traffic spike, then drop- off.

I’ve been saying all along that the True revenue juggernaut would never last. The capitalists will argue that “at least True made a lot of money,” but is that really how you want to measure success in the online dating space? And did they really?

Mark Brooks thinks ad rates will most likely go down and is worried that True.com damaged the reputation of the online dating industry. Certainly, some other site like Mate1 or SinglesNet will come in and pump up ad rates back up again. As for the reputation of the industry, we know all about that already.

Do you think this kind of stuff is being talked about at Tech Crunch 40 today? Of course not. silicon Valley and the Web 2.0 crowd are much more civil for the most part, because they understand that the stakes are much higher and that your competition might end up as your partner so it’s best to play as nice as possible. Not so in Texas, where is seems just about anything goes.

The dating industry has become a bare-knuckle brawl, the winners relying on creative accounting, sketchy business practices, low-brow advertising and questionable black-box matching systems.

And how is the consumer fairing in the middle of the mess? Not so well. A less than one percent success rate is nothing to crow about. Clearly, recommending people is a lot harder than introducing someone to a new band or author. We have a long way to go before online dating can be considered anything close to a successful industry. Yes, I know, $700 million in revenue, but I’ve never seen this number even remotely backed up?

With all the hype around Niche sites, they aren’t taking the business away from paid sites like everyone thought. Neither are the free sites for that matter, but that is a different topic alltogether.

Love Ain’t Chemistry

Upset at the idea of being Rejected by consumers, eHarmony has brought a complaint against Chemistry.com before the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. According to the Wall Street Journal:

The division ruled last week that Chemistry failed to defend its claim that it could use the “latest science of attraction to predict which single men and women you’ll have a relationship and dating chemistry with.” The division said Chemistry should discontinue that claim as well as several related to it.

Match said it disagrees with certain of NAD’s findings but would discontinue the claims at issue. NAD can refer cases to regulatory bodies, including the Federal Trade Commission, if its recommendations aren’t followed.

I have spend some time with Helen Fisher, the anthropologist who created the Chemistry matchmaking system and while I’m no scientist, I place a higher value on brain chemistry than I do answering multiple-choice tests, so there is my bias, right out in the open.

I’d like to know how the BBB was able to effectively consider all the evidence in just a few weeks. Here’s a link to the report,which is impossible to bookmark on the NAD website and downloaded as an asp file type for some reason.

Claims at issue included:

• “Introducing Chemistry.com—the first online personals site to understand the importance of chemistry in dating, serious relationships and even marriage.â€?

I’ll buy that, eHarmony doesn’t focus on Chemistry and it is the name of the company after all (Raises eyebrows).

• “At Chemistry.com we move beyond online personals and get you out dating in the real world faster, because that’s what really matters to single men and women who are seeking serious relationships or even marriage.â€?

I don’t see anything wrong with claiming to get you dating faster. Maybe call it a goal of the service?

• “Once we have your results, we use the latest science of attraction to predict which single men and women you’ll have a relationship and dating chemistry with.â€?

No problem with that, it’s the basis for the entire business model. Did the NAD read up on current state of the art matching and decide that Chemistry was not utilizing the latest science? I’m back to questioning what the BBB knows about scientific matching and what are the criteria for analysis?

• “It’s our belief that meaningful relationships are built on two equally important foundations: compatibility and chemistry. Other sites may help you find out if you’re compatible, but only Chemistry’s next-generation system, based on years of research into human attraction and successful relationships, is designed to help you find both of these essential elements.â€?

Dr. Fisher labeled her research as preliminary, -1 points.

• “An advanced matching system that combines compatibility with chemistry.â€?

Hard to call this one. A great turn of phrase (says the marketer in me.)

• “Chemistry.com is the first site to match by both compatibility and chemistry.â€?

Replace chemistry with zip code or shoe size, is that wrong?

• “Chemistry.com is unique in several other ways as well. The 1-2-3 Meet process enables you to learn some important things about your potential partner before you meet, hence alleviating some of the awkwardness of our first encounter. The scheduling tool makes it easy to find a time and place to meet. Chemistry.com also provides you with potential matches so you don’t have to make the initial approach yourself.â€?

-1 point, that is basically the eHarmony pitch except they have something like 15 steps.
Eharmony has some incredibly smart people on their team, as does Chemistry. From my perspective, would you rather answer questions about the length of your fingers or answer 436 questions? Guess what, people like to do both.

Eharmony has prevailed this round and Chemistry clearly needs to focus and stay the course and keep the marketing machine going if they want to compete head to head with eHarmony.

Can you imagine if the Federal Trade Comission has to get involved and people start looking at True? Total bloodbath, nobody wins except for social networks, which by the way are all instituting background checks.

Finally, we have Match and WeAttract going at it this month and Yahoo! Personals settling out of court. It’s a good time to be a laywer in the online dating space.

One final thought. eHarmony = Microsoft and Chemistry = Apple.

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Happy National Singles Week. Did you know that Operation Match, the first example computer matchmaking, took place in 1965?

Behold, a fascinating article in the The New York Times by Ian Ayres about Super Crunchers, which focuses on the matching systems that power eHarmony, PerfectMatch, True and Yahoo! Personals.

This is the best overview of how dating sites match members that I’ve ever read in the MSM (mainstream media). Learn about wisdom of crowds, regression and Myers-Briggs testing. See how dating sites hide the details of their matching systems as closely as the Coke recipe.

Eharmony comes under a fairly strenuous attack towards the end of the piece, which is taken from a book by the same name. Steven Levitt, the co-author of Freakonomics, praises the book, which means I’m buying Super Crunchers right after I hit the publish button.

The article quotes True.com’s chief psychologist James Houran, but James hasn’t worked at True in several years. I noticed several other inconsistencies but thats what happens when you kill trees and put ink on them. I wonder if Super Crunchers has an errata website?

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After months of cleavage-spotting and erotic videochat ads, this Christian Mingle ad on Myspace was a bit of a letdown. I can’t believe I just said that!

I took a bunch of OKCupid tests over the weekend. That was more fun than I expected, although I was taken aback when branded a “Hornivore” after taking a sex test.

It didn’t take long to realize that since the tests you take are public, it’s a good idea to take a wide range of tests so people don’t think you’re a total pervor , square, for that matter. I tend to take the same tests that people I find interesting take. Fascinating feedback loops occur when you start discussing your test results.

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Time Magazine has named eharmony.com one of the top five worst sites on the web. Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark.

Personality profiling will be front and center in coming months.

Markus gets it right, the Chemistry.com “Rejected” anti-eHarmony campaign initiated the investigation into eHarmony’s exclusionary practices (if reporters copying what other reporters say without understanding the entire issue is an investigation). Once the media caught wind of the situation and the pile-on began, it was clear that eHarmony lost the battle to Chemistry, but what of the war, because like it or not, that is what the skirmish between the two has become.

(Disclaimer: I have done some work with Chemistry in the past.)

Does anyone else feel like eHarmony has been more focused on hardware upgrades than media relations and PR this year?

There is something to be said about keeping your mouth shut and focusing on taking over a large portion of the online dating market, which eHarmony has accomplished brilliantly in a few short years, leaving the majority of the online dating industry to fight over the precious few daters that pay for the privilege of belonging to a date-warehouse.

“No comment” has always been the party line at eHarmony in regards to the whole pro-Christian/anti-gay allegations. Why open the company to the scrutiny of the media and public when there are hundreds of millions of dollars to be made? The problem for eHarmony now is that they have no choice in the matter. High-powered PR operatives experienced with damage control are in place and certainly putting together a response, be it marketing-focused or in the courts. Make no mistake, eHarmony brought this on themselves. Bringing this courtside would probably do more harm than good for both parties, especially Chemistry, which is the new kid on the block and can’t afford the distraction at such a critical time in the company’s lifecycle.

Eharmony has established itself in the dating market, but at what cost to singles?

Eharmony is certainly going to feel the sting of the Chemistry.com ad campaign, which if they play their cards right, will be worth much more than the $12 million ad campaign which put the “Rejected” ads in front of prime time viewers on shows like The Office.

You have to give it to Chemistry, those ads are compelling, funny and make you think, which is a lot more than I can say for any other online dating ad I’ve seen on tv.Yahoo! Personals France has dome some pretty interesting ads, but those are, a bit too French for the American market.

The interesting thing is that it doesn’t matter how many people are on Chemistry or what their test is like. Is it demonstrably more efficient than the eHarmony test? Who knows? I’ve spend time with Helen Fisher, who created the test for Chemistry, and I like her basis for the test, but when it comes to results, the jury is still out.

Food for thought: Imagine how popular eHarmony would be if they came out with a 50-question test for those currently excluded.

Further reading: Time did a piece, Is eHarmony Biased Against Gays? back in June. Or, as usual, Google is your friend.

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EHarmony is now offering an expanded version of their standard personality profile for $9.95. The Premium Personality Profile provides in-depth analysis of 15 critical aspects of your personality.

I dislike taking tests of any kind but enjoy reading the results, most of the time. Sometimes it’s ok not to know know your fatal flaws.

I noticed a few grammar errors, sloppy. Someone needs a spell-checker.
Not worth ten bucks but this made my morning:

What a great life you have, and a great attitude to boot. You know when to buckle down and push ahead to get the job done, and you do it well. You know when to lay the tools of your trade aside, grab your kite and head for the meadow where you can run with the wind.

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Plentyoffish has officially launched a relationship needs assessment feature. I believe this is the feature I wrote about back in May in a post titled PlentyofFish Is Now EChemistry.com. I had to re-read the title twice. Funny choice of words.

The Relationship Needs Assessment determines in great detail a person’s overt and hidden needs in a relationship. But that’s not all. This assessment provides users with highly specific guidance for putting the results in practice. Therefore, each user receives customized “Action Plans�? that outline specific questions and topics for the user to ask or explore with potential partners.

These “Action Plans�? are based entirely on the unique answer patterns of the test taker, so everyone receives guidance that is custom-made for them. There is nothing like this assessment on the Internet today.

When I think of PoF I think of massive amounts of traffic, competitors using the database as a marketing tool, mediocre quality profiles and oversaturation in the press by human interest reporters that haven’t spent 10 minutes on a typical dating site. And now certain tech pundits have elevated Markus on to a pedestal based on Alexa ranking, with little regard to the actual website itself. That’s what internet success is all about these days. It’s not the quality of the experience, it’s your traffic ranking and Adwords revenue. Maybe I’m old school. I prefer quality over quantity. And of course there is the sour grapes factor.

The media will contine to feed on itself, and the exposure is worth a few million more to Markus.

I have been using eHarmony for the past week or so. I want to take a test and have 25 great women show up in my inbox. I have been disappointed with the results at eHarmony. Pages broken or not loading, the majority of the women don’t have photos and those that do have been so far out of my range that I wonder what it’s like for people that don’t live in a major metro area. Is eHarmony better for conservatives in the heartland than liberals near the coasts?

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Dr. James, Houran has written an article at Onlinedatingmagazine warning singles to avoid falling for scientific matching hype that has permeated the online dating industry. Houran comes across as the tell-all scientist who knows the dark secrets of the dating industry while managing to stick up for his work at True.com and putting down the Chemistry.com and eHarmony blogs.

Dr. Houran tells us he has revealed in several papers that scientific matching tests “are often invalid and a waste of time and money.”

And then:

And yet, ignorant industry insiders with their own blogs and consulting services portray these developments as advancements that are good for online daters.

I don’t know if he is talking about me, but I am the first to admit that I don’t understand the first thing about the scalability factors associated with DISC-based personality tests and why one test may be better than another. These are profit-based dating sites after all, and leveraging their black-box personality test in marketing campaigns is par for the course.

It’s all marketing rhetoric to me because the explanation of how the tests operate and the results simply aren’t there or accessible enough for most online daters.

The dating industry would be better off validating personality tests and matching algorithms than worrying about background checks.

Just what is Dr. Houran’s angle here? I don’t know who is paying his bills, who his clients are or what he’s trying to accomplish in this anti-dating industry/blog rant. Going on ABC and doing Time magazine interviews is more self-serving than coming up with a real solution to help singles focus on realistic expectations.

James, I would be more than happy to read your papers, please send me copies and make yourself available to explain the finer points, thanks.

Finally, the irony of the Chemistry.com banner ad running alongside the article was amusing.

Related posts:

1. The increasing role of scientific matching
2. I got your non-DNA-based Scientific Matching System Right Here
3. Scientific matching

Kiran Rana, senior dating officer at the India Times, is looking for vendors of psychometric test for the Liv2luv.com dating site. The test should analyze a user personality automatically after a series of questions (via images or text) and then reflect that in his/ her profile.

Interested parties should contact Kiran Rana at Kiran.Rana@indiatimes.co.in.

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Looks like the new trend in online dating is finding out what kind of dog you are, your stripper name or your love score. Even PlentyOfFish is getting into the game.

Here at Plentyoffish.com we have gone and hired some of the worlds leading experts in Personality Testing. These experts have built the personality tests you pay $60/month for at paid dating services.

By taking their work to the next level they have now designed and built a compatibility test which will allow Plentyoffish.com to give you matches you will have chemistry with!

Take the test today and start meeting people you have chemistry with!

Markus has never really warmed to the concept of personality tests, but given that he’s at a stalemate about what direction to take PoF in since Facebook has been stealing a good portion of his traffic, it looks as if he has set his sights on eHarmony and Chemistry.com.

Two months ago Markus said:

I’ve looked into personality testing, and from what i’ve heard from sites using it, if tests are not part of the signup process less then 10% of daters are willing to use it.

He goes on to talk about OKCupid not being a dating sites, but more of an Emode testing site with a dating spin. I never thought Markus would add testing to the site, it didn’t make sense before and still doesn’t to me, but I’m sure he will get jillions of people to take the test and then have something else to compare PoF to other dating sites.

The Plentyoffish Compatibility Test (POFCT) measures five broad dimensions of personality that are each essential for building a romantic relationship. It’s not the case that a person must be “high� on each of the personality characteristics to be in a relationship. Instead, what is important is how your personality interacts with the personality of your romantic partner on each dimension. Or what is commonly called “chemistry.� Based on decades of empirical research in psychology, the POFCT captures the five key ingredients that can determine whether or not two people have the “right� chemistry.

Self-Confidence, family orientation, self-control, openess and easygoingness are the five ingredients. I’m not a scientist, and I have strong reservations about the validity of all testing proceedures, but these seem like just about every other test out there. If those questions were developed by the world’s leading experts in personality testing, I’d like to see their credentials and an analysis of their methods.

Most dating sites are too scared people will see the wizard behind the curtain when it comes to serious tests. You can argue one test is better than another, but the test doesn’t make the service what it is, it’s the people.

Here’s the PoF personality test and the FAQ.

Related posts:

1. Why I am not a Lawyer or Reporter
2. Yahoo Love Style test
3. PersonalityPro