The lumbering juggernaut we like to call Match.com has added tagging to profiles. Except they call them MatchWordsTM. Go, go metadata! I was wondering how long it would take for a major dating site to get with the tagging program.
One small, problem, the tags are broken and don’t work at the moment. Oops.
“MatchWords are an exciting new way of finding people with common interests. Add your own MatchWords to your profile, and get in on the excitement now.” As with tagging pioneer Consumating, Match members click a word to see more profiles tagged with the same word.
Clicking the plus sign next to a word to add that word to your profile. You can’t tag other people, which is understandable and probably a good thing. Can you imagine the nasty things people would tag each other?
They even, gasp, display tags as a tag cloud, at least in a static graphic on my home page. I don’t see evidence of tag clouds anywhere else though. Now I can’t find any reference to the tag cloud, where did it go? If you’re not a blogger or read tech blogs, tag clouds are probably a new concept. The idea is to display a list of all tags people use, popular tags being larger font, different color, and so on. The problem with this display style is that most people click the big bold tags instead of the small ones, perpetuation words like “blonde, sexy, legs and hottieinnyc.”
The main Matchwords page has the top 10 most popular words and top 10 most recently added. This is exactly how not to implement tags. Tags are great for looking for the obscure, the hard-to-find, the little phrase thats going’ to connect you to the person of your dreams. Travel, golf and family? Totally useless phrases. Match needs to treat tags differently than generic keyword searches.
A link to to the top 1,000 tags is broken into men and women, nice touch.
They have created a list of starter words for everyone. They were a bit too broad for my liking, so I removed several and added a few more. I tried a few risque words. Boobs and ass are not valid. b00bs and A$$ are awaiting approval. All of George Carlin’s 7 dirty words are filtered. I can’t wait to see how far Match will let people go with tags. Tags awaiting approval or not valid are listed below your tag list. the invalid list of words is going to be huge in about 5 hours.
It’s an easy way to see what tags are most popular. When it’s working correctly, http://www.match.com/matchwords/brownhair should take you to all profiles tagged with “brownhair.”
As per the status quo, Match has sprinkled information about Matchwords across the site. Inconsistent user interface guidelines on the site have resulted in various faux pas such as rolling over the “New” icon brings up a link to the FAQ page, but people have no idea the New icon is a link unless they roll over it accidentally.
In other places, Match links to a Matchwords howto article in Happen Magazine. Nothing I like more than reading about new features while looking at boobs.
Dating sites should go out and do as Match has done, just make sure to call tags something besides Matchwords. Matchphrases is a logical choice. I like the phrase so much I just registered the domain. Soon enough, you’ll be able to search tags across multiple sites (hint hint).
