A while back the New York Times said New Online-Date Detectives Can Unmask Mr. or Ms. Wrong. There are hundreds of background check companies that offer services directly to singles. They all think they can make money in the dating market. Truth is, except for one or two companies with direct dating site partnerships, dating sites for the most part don’t want to offer background checks and these third-party solutions are going to require huge online marketing budgets to get the attention of singles.
Some dating site slooooowly appear to be warming up to the idea of identity verification, which has its own set of thorny issues in terms of how people react to search results with some people being verified and others not. At some point do I lose out if I’m not verified? Why do I have to pay more just to be on even ground with everyone else? And how will free sites deal with this? A freemium upgrade or avoid them entirely?
And how the heck do you ask someone to get verified? Talk about awkward. There are actually some neat ways to go about enticing people to sign up for these services, but I’m not seeing them used out in the wild.
The “We don’t to background checks” text that sites are placing on their home pages hasn’t stopped bad people from doing bad things. For this you can thank True.com for putting the legislative wheels in motion. A great marketing angle on their part. What the current legislation has done is get the industry to realize that many singles incorrectly assume that dating sites already offer verification services.
The problem with ID verification and background checks are that singles need to buy them, dating sites will never absorb the cost themselves. They are only worthwhile if everyone is verified by the site, which is not going to happen anytime soon at mainstream dating sites.
However, a few new entrants such as Tru.ly are doing some very interesting things with verification and identity. Keep an eye on them because they really understand the value of multi-use verifications, not just background checks for dating.
While I applaude dating sites taking some initiative to help make singles safer, a working solution that sites and singles can both be comfortable with is a long way off. The reality of the situation is that common sense is 1000 times more effective than any system put in placbackground check or verification systems that dating sites put in place.
Image: SafeDate t-shirt from 2005. They were one of the first background check companies to pitch the dating industry.
