Jack Mardack left a very interesting comment in the post about synthetic validity. I tried to leave a comment on his blog but it was a real pain so here it is.
He says:
Whether you will be heartened or discouraged by developments such as this (new personalty testing systems) depends on whether you presume that the Web’s greater service to human relationships will be as *medium* or as *tool*.
He was talking to Fernando, who is all about finding a better hammer when it comes to personality testing. The problem with this particular breed of hammer is that it is not easy to judge their effectiveness outside of the lab.
An excellent point. Testing systems (tools) are licensed by dating sites (the medium). In the case of online dating, you have to have a medium to be able to use the tools.
Here are a few examples of why tests are so problematic. 20% of the emails I receive from women on dating sites usually say “the service doesn’t think we are a match but I wanted to say hi because I like your profile.�
Talk about getting off to a rocky start. Either I am a good BS’er in my profile, I was not honest on the test, the test is flawed or the other person is not answering questions honestly.
Not easy to pinpoint the problem, is it? Recently, thousands of children got back incorrect grades on their SAT’s due to a malfunction in the system. And we expect consumers to trust a free personality test on a dating site?
I would like to see a study of online daters that takes a serious look at the number of people who take tests, how much they trust/rely on the outcome, and how often they reach out or respond to people “off the reservation� who not not fit into their matching criteria.
The idea of going out to public places to meet people is that in one evening you are saturated with the sights, smells and personalities of potentially thousands of people. All of these experiences inform us about what type of people we seek, and should be used in conjunction with online dating sites.
I would rather meet people in an group situation (online or off), find the people I want to talk more with then take it from there. Much more natural. Online, I realize that this is almost impossible online due to the male inability to respect women when they are not F2F, but that is where Jack’s statement of evolving people for online use rings true.
It’s obvious that people need to be more comfortable with voice and video on dating sites. Accountability is important factor. The exposure and trust levels must be mediated via technology, and a feedback loop linked to reputation is absolutely necessary. If you act like a jerk, people won’t talk to you, simple as that. Same online as off. How difficult is it to build in repercussions, like a time out or bad rating?
The current crop of tools, WeAttract, Backgroundchecks, Vivox, Userplane, are leading the next generation of online dating tools. How they are integrated into the medium, and how people will actually end up using them, is unknown. That’s why I like open services. Throw the profiles out there and let people remix tools and services to come up with the next big thing. For example, where the heck is the third party matchmaker API?
Why are we still relying on static profiles, broken search engines and stagnant dating site technology? The medium is mired in mud, it’s up to these toolmakers to pull us up and out of it.
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