OPW - Jun 17 - Michael Norton, a Professor from Harvard Business School, believes that virtual dating can improve user satisfaction in online dating. According to his research, online daters are normally very dissatisfied after first dates due to overly lofty expectations. Norton's surveys reveal a typical online dater spends 5.2 hours per week searching and 6.7 hours per week reading and writing emails which leads to a poor date lasting less than an hour. Users generally have very high expectations of other users based on profile information and communications. These expectations quickly crumble on the first real date where online interactions meet reality. Norton believes that virtual dating can be a valuable tool to calibrate a dater's expectations prior to the first date. Norton's study shows that daters who had a virtual date prior to a real date had a significantly better experience than those who only viewed profile information alone.
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