My neighborhood was among the last to get upgraded to digital cable in Boston. While perusing video on demand I came across the Comcast Dating Channel, which launched on Valentine’s Day.
The Dating Channel is based on video personals tied to online profiles on HurryDate.
Members are searchable by viewer favorites, age ranges 18-20, 21-29, 30-40+ and something called Greatest Moments which turned out to be a somewhat funny montage of excerpts of memorable profiles. The Viewer Favorites section was empty for some reason.
Almost all of the profiles I looked at features members who were well spoken, following scripted questions varied enough to make viewing a dozen profiles or more is entirely possible before growing tired of the experience. Contacting members is accomplished by logging into HurryDate and searching for the member.
The Dating Channel experience is best undertaken while browsing the HurryDate website, which makes it easy to jump back and forth between member videos and web profiles.
The first 15 minutes were fun, each profile is a few minutes long and you can fast forward, rewind or back out of watching any profile. After a while I began to think the experience would be much more compelling if it resembled Hot Or Not, with a faster pace and the ability to rate people. The service will be much more useful when the search capability is more in line with what users expect: search by smaller age ranges, interests, etc. The first-generation of the service is off to a good start, hopefully future versions will include more interactivity and personalized experience. For example, members should be filtered by area once the service rolls out to more cities.
Note to Comcast. When I return to the main category menu, the previous selection should stay highlighted, making it easier to select the next video profile.
DOD has video shoot days scheduled across the country. DOD also lets users send in their own amateur video, providing a special segment on how to make your own amateur video to show your unique personality. Keep it PG is the only guideline. I can only imagine the “Girls Gone Wild” videos that will be sent in.
Overall, I enjoyed the DOD experience. Tighter integration with HurryDate and better search functionality will improve the service to the point where all they need is a few million profiles to make it successful.
