Being back on Match again, I’ve been busy checking out all of the new features they have rolled out since I was last a member. I saw this VIP Email feature mentioned once, and now I can’t find any reference to it on the site. It’s amazing how many little changes I see on Match, lots of little redesign touches here and there and a few minor functionality upgrades.
Like at First Sight stands out the most. This is awesome! They throw up a grid of people and you pick the people you prefer the most. I’ve been telling dating sites to do this for at least five years. You’re welcome. It is either powered by VisualDNA or they copied the feature from them and/or IntroAnalytics. I really hope it’s not a copy. They even have you listen to voices and pick out the one you like the most. How long have they had this feature and why the heck isn’t anyone talking about it? This is an enormous shift from the static profiles Match has had for too many years and a welcome change.
Bridget L. Long at Bowling Green State University has written a 300 page study of online dating sites.
Scripts For Online Dating: A Model and Theory of Online Romantic Relationship Initiation.
This study examined online dating practices by exploring the process and scripts for online dating from both sites and site members. The purpose was to uncover how online daters and sites were responsible for changes from more traditional dating scripts, and to add to Script Theory and Social Information Processing Theory. Ethnographic content analysis of online dating sites and in-depth interviews with online daters were conducted to develop a Model for Online Dating and Online Romantic Initiation Theory. The model presented in this study demonstrated how scripts in the online dating process were reciprocal and how the different levels of scripts worked together. This study also added to knowledge of contemporary courtship and decision-making in terms of love styles, shopping lists, elimination strategies and how singles relate to others.
At the moment, this is TL;DR (Too Long, didn’t read), I’ll throw it on the laptop to read at the beach.
Fascinating article in the NY times about The Science of a Happy Marriage.
Why do some men and women cheat on their partners while others resist the temptation? Their findings suggest that while some people may be naturally more resistant to temptation, men and women can also train themselves to protect their relationships and raise their feelings of commitment.
Boston.com has an article Am I Hard-Wired to be Alone? (818 comments). A reader asks “Do you think some people are just not meant to be in relationships? Is it possible that some of us are hard-wired in ways that make it impossible to have love that sticks around?” I have often asked myself that question. All jokes about staying single to burnish my street cred, its a question I ask myself from time to time.
Word on the affiliate marketing boards is that Singlesnet is being sued (again?) because affiliates are using photos of people without their permission.
Stowe Boyd says They Are Recording Everything. Credit Card Purchases Expose Your Lifestyle on Blippy. What if you gave dating sites access to your credit card records? Like the FBI investigators on Criminal Minds, I bet a seasoned credit card executive could paint a detailed picture of your tastes, preferences, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, credit worthiness and a lot more that could be helpful to the matching process.
The Next Evolution of Facebook Platform: Open Graph Protocol
Any webpage can now easily become part of the social graph.
On Facebook, users build their profiles through connections to what they care about — be it their friends or their favorite sports teams, bottles of wine, or celebrities. The Open Graph protocol opens up the social graph and lets your pages become objects that users can add to their profiles. When a user establishes this connection by clicking Like on one of your Open Graph-enabled pages, you gain the lasting capabilities of Facebook Pages: a link from the user’s profile, ability to publish to the user’s News Feed, inclusion in search on Facebook, and analytics through our revamped Insights product.
In summary, by giving your users better, simpler ways to connect with the content on your site, you can then use those connections to provide more personalized, relevant experiences. And the product only gets better over time. The more people that come back to your site, the more connections that are made, the better your service becomes.
The Next Evolution of Facebook Platform.
Littlehint appears to be the first dating site to take advantage of the Facebook “Like” button.
Set For Marriage is $15 a month, there isn’t any matching, surveys, or questionnaires. They allow people to create profiles for free and start browsing for like minded people in their areas.
At LoveFraud, people can commiserate after they have been duped (or worse) by sociopaths.
