Getting online daters to stray out of their comfort zones and search for new people has always been a problem for dating sites. Usually, search is a set it and forget it situation, where users set their initial search criteria and then leave it like that forever. You see the same people, over and over and over again, and it gets tiring.
Some sites put a gallery of members on the home page. These are often hand-picked beauties that you have no chance with, but they are effective at getting you to send them an email. Online daters, especially women, love getting hundreds of emails every day on dating sites. What else could they possible have to do besides respond to your tender missive?
A year ago Match implemented the Daily 5, which put 5 new people in front of members they might not have necessarily come in contact with. It drove up traffic to some extent
PlentyofFish has always done a pretty good job at putting new people in front of me, albeit in a gallery style view which just has you clicking on the hottest people and ignoring the rest.
OKCupid’s Daily Quiver is awesome, predating many popular copycat features like Daily5. I use it all the time. Simple, straightforward and it plain works.
Over the weekend I was clued into the new OKCupid Ice Breakers feature, currently in beta. I found out about it when a an email showed up from someone asking me about snowboarding. I wrote them back and realized this was something new, the email was about snowboarding. Nothing about “Great profile”, or “sexy eyes” or “I want to be of making your acquaintance in the time that is of near.” (not that OKC has a scammer problem, it’s probably the cleanest dating site I’ve been on.)
When I finally saw the Ice Breakers link in the navigation I clicked it and was greeted with the attached photo. I cycled through a bunch of people, I don’t really want to talk to women about poker but I will entertain a brief conversation about biking, politics or if left-handed people are better lovers. What’s kind of cool is that you don’t get to see the person’s profile or photo. Seems like OKCupid took this from their Crazy Blind Date, which never really did it for me but kudos for Sam and the gang for trying something new.
It will be interesting to see if Ice Breakers increase the amount of member communication and result in more relationships. Check it out for yourself.
