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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That research is old and useless at all. It was only valid for Online Dating sites offering Browsing/Searching Options.
It was done BEFORE the discovery uncovered by Eastwick and Finkel 2008; also Kurzban and Weeden, 2007; Todd, Penke, Fasolo, and Lenton, 2007 who found that people often report partner preferences that are not compatible with their choices in real life.
Virtual dating is terrible slow and boring, looks like *SpeedDating with puppets*.
Online Dating had evolved: from Browsing/Searching Options to Recommendation Engines / Matching based on Self-Reported Data and now Online Dating is evolving to Compatibility Matching Algorithms
The Online Dating Industry does not need improvement.
That is adding more bells and whistles to a Piper Seminole flying at 350km/hour.
The Online Dating Industry needs innovations, but
they will come from only one source: the latest discoveries in theories of romantic relationships development with commitment.
Innovation is a Spaceship flying at 35.000 km/hour, 100 times faster.
Posted by: Fernando Ardenghi | Jun 17, 2010 at 07:54 PM
Fernando, I think you mean it evolved from CompSci 101-level algorithms to things like behavioral targeting. Matching algorithms will always continue to evolve, its not a step in the process. That said, sites that only match A/S/L and if you like sports are not exactly employing algorithms, thats a generic database query. But the truth is that there are several top-10 sites which make a ton of money and have lots of users and they have little advanced functionality (SinglesNet for example).
The behavioral stuff that IntroAnalytics and POF and OKCupid and others are doing is promising, but it's all walled-garden stuff. Its needs to be open because like the Netflix prize, opening up the problem set to a larger community is what is going to move the ball forward the fastest.
Virtual dating is as Markus calls it, a 5% feature, meaning 5% of a sites members will check it out. Nobody knows how large that 5% is though, because the whole virtual dating thing is in its infancy.
Posted by: Datinginsider | Jun 18, 2010 at 07:50 PM
Virtual dating looks more promising than matching. Matching is only marginally better than plain old search.
Technically, virtual dating would make online dating work faster for most in the long run.
Look into psychometrics, which is "the theory and technique of educational and psychological measurement, and includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and personality traits." A computer cannot predict romantic compatibility. It can only predict who might be similar or dissimilar to you based on generalized traits.
Fernando, time for someone to say it. Stop being a troll hopping from every dating blog post and repeating yourself. If you're that deep into this why don't you do something besides dropping negative comments everywhere. Contribute something of value. Anyone can go around and make negative remarks. So far, you have no credibility yet so you're wasting time. Let's see the 'speed of online dating' at work. Get it together man! Its getting old...
Posted by: J | Jun 20, 2010 at 02:40 PM
J, it looks like you may have directly lifted your psychometrics quote from my blog. I'm flattered. The rest is right here:
http://sl2rllove.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-second-life-works-and-dating-sites.html
Posted by: Stacy Passell/Ruby Destiny | Jun 20, 2010 at 07:55 PM
It's only in its infancy to the dating industry itself. There are many, many people who have experienced virtual courtship in MMOs first hand as I have without needing to look at a single profile. http://sl2rllove.blogspot.com/2010/06/revolution-theres-no-way-to-fix-whats.html
Posted by: Stacy Passell/Ruby Destiny | Jun 22, 2010 at 07:53 AM