Slashdot article New Dating Sites Match People Through DNA Tests. I love /., as it’s called, check out these comments:
Yeah… Submit your DNA profile to a for-profit corporation that lets you do things with it through a web interface. Your info will never be hacked. Your info will never be sold. Your info will never be given to government agencies. Trust us.
I didn’t RTFA, because I can proudly say that I was involved in the group that produced MHC mediated sexual selection studies that ScientificMatch.com uses to claim their rationale. A few comments: First, if Scientific match has any wits about them, they’ll also consider other information. I don’t think anyone’s stupid enough to think there’s a single correlate to mate selection. But the worry about people who are too different is poorly founded – MHC diversity is strongly retained throughout most human lineages.
I believe that DNA testing will possibly be a single component of matching/compatibility systems of the future. I met with ScientificMatch founder Eric Holzle when he was getting started. Nice guy, great market potential, but at a much lower price. ScientificMatch is over $1,000, which is why it’s no getting much traction at the moment.
Holzle didn’t have any success stories to share. In fact, he is planning to phase out the dating part of the site he started in 2007 to market the tests directly to matchmakers and couples. He promises a refund of the $1,995.95 lifetime membership.
Something told me that wasn’t going to work, but he had to try.
Sense2love is going to offer the GeneParter $99 test starting next month. Read the Sense2Love blog. All of a sudden ScientificMatch looks like it’s ridiculously overpriced.
Then there’s Basisnote (translated) and a few others wanting to compete in the space. I’ve talked to most of them.
If you thought the battle to bring identity verification to online dating was brutal, just watch the science guys try to sell their ideas. All of the dating site business development people have heard the pitch, and they politely decline the offer, because it’s going to scare the hell out of their members and create massive branding problems.
Anything that gets in the way of converting visitors to paying members is a waste of time, or so dating sites seem to think. As with background checks, perhaps the DNA dating market is really better suited to Human Resources companies or some other more welcoming market.
Can DNA and science do an end run around tests and matching systems? I don’t know, no one else does either. Maybe OKCupid can offer it to some members and write a blog post about it.
