Cliche title but it’s not mine. It’s from a BusinessWeek article on the rise of personality testing on dating sites. Continuing the “Let’s hire a celebrity or high profile doctor spokesperson” path along with True and PerfectMatch, Chemistry.com has a lengthy questionnaire designed by Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University whose recent book, Why We Love : The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, lays out the biology behind our romantic choices.
I’m not clear on the reasoning behind Match launching a whole new IAC property, and only in certain geographic areas. Integrating the new test with the existing Match network would have made more sense. Why launch an entirely new brand? Who wants to visit a site that reminds people of high-school and Bunsen burners?
One pet peeve is the fact that they don’t ask me if I have a Match account and pull some of my existing profile data over is beyond me. Why I am uploading the same photos to two Match properties is beyond me. Talk about squandering an opportunity to get out in front of the open profile movement, which is progressing at a decent clip. Yahoo Personals should be RSS enabled any day now.
Where is Match getting the resources for the new product team, marketing budget and perhaps even an updated technology platform? The question remains, was that money and resources better left to improving the core Match.com property?
On one hand it is almost as if they are giving up on Match.com, which hasn’t changed much in two years. On the other, there are lot’s of very smart people there that are obviously under the gun to improve revenue numbers. I’m not sold that Chemistry.com was the right move.
Perhaps an intrepid Match PR person would care to comment?
[tags: chemistry.com]
