Intelius this week received much laughter during it’s DEMO demo of DateCheck, an application which tells you instantly with a quick background check whether you need to make an excuse and back out of a date as soon as you can. I talked with Melissa Korb at Intelius earlier this year about the service, which was nowhere near as feature rich as it appears to be now. Looks like they were busy over the summer.
Intelius is a company with access to staggering amounts of your personal information. Thanks to them, your next date is going to be able to look up all your dirty secrets before you even meet.
This is a good thing in many ways, but I’m concerned about the quality of a date check originating from an email address of phone number. In this day and age of anonymous calling and throwaway email addresses, this is not the kind of source information I would call reliable. And what happens if they are wrong? Can you sue a background check company if they screw up? Where does the accountability lie? Data is constantly shifting, being bought and sold, moved across systems and databases, and bits tend to rot after a while. It all comes down to the Terms of Service.
The companies that are successful know, acknowledge and prepare for this. Unfortunately, many don’t do a good enough job at verifying data, and consumers have no idea what to think, let alone dating sites. Selecting background check providers has been very difficult for dating sites. Few understand the entire process, who has access to the good data, and many other factors which should be addressed when doing due diligence on providers. Most dating sites argue over the price instead, which, while important, is not the key issue when selecting a background check provider.
Intelius features are all branded and look to be available as a bundle or separately.
With features like Sleaze Detector, Compatibility, Net Worth, Interests and Living Situation you can be in the know on the go. “Look up before you hook up.”
Compatibility focuses on the person’s astrological compatibility with you; “net worth,†including the size of the person’s home and how many bedrooms it has; “interests,†and “living situation,†like whether or not the person already has a spouse or is living with his or her parents.
You can tell if someone lied about their real name or age, or if they have a DUI on their record. If you want more than summary information, you have to pay to get a specific report.
Frankly, I am somewhat surprised at the reaction they received at DEMO given that there are many companies focused on the online dating industry who have offered background checks for several years, like BackgroundChecks (powers eHarmony ID verification) and HonestyOnline, albeit without the astrological compatibility.
I wonder who Intelius licensed the astrological compatibility data from and how useful it is? That’s actually a feature I find intriguing. Dating sites haven’t warmed up to astro-matching. Maybe consumers will get it from a bundled third-party service like Intelius instead.
Tech Crunch goes to town on Intelius in this March 2009 post talking about alleged scams and a torrent of bad publicity and Better Business Bureau Complaints. In a word, ouch. This is the kind of reputation wound that is going to require some explaining if Intelius expects to partner with dating sites.
Identity verification is one thing, a full-bore background check is another. Dating sites barely recognize the value of ID verification and none have embraced complete user-initiated background checks. I think dating sites are going to have a hard time with this.
Date Check is at it’s core a direct-to-consumer marketing play, which is expensive and the privacy issues are so thorny it makes my head spin, let alone the stigma of being checked – you never know if someone performs a Date Check on you.
I’m all for doing whatever is possible to keep singles safe online and hope the online dating industry will start offering more safety services. They’ve heard the pitch for years and nobody is integrating. When will the tide turn and dating sites will realize that consumers will buy services that make them safe and more efficient? What’s it going to take?
Vist Intelius Mobile for more information on Date Check. iPhone, Blackberry and Android applications are coming soon.
