Markus Breitenbach

Online Dating

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Markus

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As I’m currently visiting Germany over the winter break, I couldn’t help but notice the advertising for an online dating website here. They spend a lot of money to get this stuff into peoples heads here. I’ve seen some of that stuff advertised in the US (such as match.com and TRUE) so for the hell of it I went and checked out the website. First thing I noticed is that they require you to create an account to see peoples pictures or browse more than a couple of pages in the search results. That, of course, leads to many many stale profiles from people that just want to window-shop and are not really interested in giving it a serious try. To interested parties (i.e. people that pay) this of course might look like there are so many members on the website that it might be worth paying for.

It just helps add to my impression after reading about Bad Experiences with canceling accounts, which gives a not-so-honorable mention to certain US based dating websites. Apparently you can’t just cancel your membership using the website, but have to take a phone-exit interview. Otherwise, your profile will be kept and your credit card will be continue to be charged. It seems that dating websites are forced to keep people active as long as possible (or at least keep up the illusion). The reason for this might be less mean-spirited than one would at first assume. For example, just to have a couple of thousand people in each major city of the US a dating website would have to have roughly 100.000 active members. That is tough to accomplish, esp. given that without the illusion of activity nobody else would join.

With all that said, a friend of mine found his girlfriend through the Denver Personals on Craigslist. It can work.

Comments

4 responses to “Online Dating”

  1. UK Avatar
    UK

    LOL, I can’t believe I just read all that and your mate found someone on Craigs list!! LMAO!

    A couple of 1000 people from each US state and you would be rich, in fact 2000 members from ANY state @ $10/month wouldn’t be too bad! 🙂

    James.

  2. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    Interesting reasoning.

    Speaking of AI and all that: check out http://annunzio.org/ – it offers an online dating bot program for emailing people

  3. DaveR Avatar
    DaveR

    In reality, you only need to have 1 profile on a dating website, providing it is the right person for you! My site has just started and we deliberately did not put up rogue profiles, or profiles of people that were just visitors. Slowly, but surely, profiles are starting to be uploaded and more and more people are registering for the newsletter, waiting to see how it goes. Dating sites need to add a bit of a ‘personal touch’ rather than just be clever bits of software AND you must be able to cancel your subscription immediately.

  4. Markus Avatar
    Markus

    @Dave: Does it actually work on “real” profiles? Do you have woman email you back with that stuff? I played a bit around with it and I must say it’s a bit simple (from an AI standpoint; try negating statements), but it does work well enough.

    @DaveR: True, but my point was that even if a site gets 10.000 new members per month you will end up with only a couple of them near your city and an even smaller number that you might be interested in. Online Dating is something I would try if I were single, but in my opinion the odds are not any better or worse than meeting somebody at a coffee-shop. It’s certainly worth trying, though, as you never know… Good luck with your site!

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