Could finding the best matchmaking algorithm be an important utilitarian cause?
It would certainly create a lot of utility.
I have no experience with dating sites (so all the following information is second-hand), but a few people told me there was still an opportunity on the market to make a good one. On the existing dating sites it was impossible to make a search query they wanted. The sites collected only a few data that the site makers considered important, and only allowed you to make a search query about them. So you could e.g. search for a “non-smoker with a university degree”, but not for a “science-fiction fan with a degree in natural science”. I don’t remember the exact criteria they wanted (only that some of them also seemed very important to me; something like whether the person is single), but the idea was that you enter the criteria the system allows you, you get thousands of results, and you can’t refine them automatically, so you must click on them individually to read the user profile, you usually don’t find your answer anyway, so you have to contact each person to ask them personally.
So a reasonable system would have some smart way to enter data about people. Preferably any data; there should be a way to enter a (searchable) plain text description, or custom key-value pair if everything else fails. (Of course the site admins should have some statistics about frequestly used custom data in descriptions and searches, so they could add them to the system.) Some geographical data, so that you could search for people “at most X miles from …”.
Unfortunately, there are strong perverse incentives for dating sites. Create a happy couple—lose two customers! The most effective money-making strategy for a dating site would be to feed unrealistic expectations (so that all couples fail, but customers return to the site believing their next choice would be better) and lure people to infidelity. Actually, some dating sites promote themselves on Facebook exactly like this.
So it seems to me that a matchmaking algorithm done right could create a lot of utility, but would be very difficult to sell.
EDIT: Another problem: Imagine that there are is a trait which makes many people unattractive. A dating site that allows to search by this criteria will make searching people (who dislike this trait) happy, but people with this trait unhappy. If your goal is to make more money, to which group should you listen? Well, that depends on the size of the groups, and on their likelihood to leave if the algorithm goes against their wishes.
So a reasonable system would have some smart way to enter data about people. Preferably any data; there should be a way to enter a (searchable) plain text description, or custom key-value pair if everything else fails.
OkCupid has basically custom key-value pairs with it’s questions. While you can’t search after individual questions you get a match rank that bundles all the information from those questions together. You can search for that match rank.
A dating site that allows to search by this criteria will make searching people (who dislike this trait) happy, but people with this trait unhappy.
Dating websites also care about getting true data. Is there a trait that 100% of people reject at first glance, why should anybody volunteer the information that he possesses the trait?
People only volunteer information when they think that the act of volunteering the information will improve the ability of the website to find good matches for them.
If you are a smoker you don’t want to date a person who hastes smokers and therefore you put the information that you are a smoker into your profile.
Yeah, you are right. No search engine will help if people refuse to provide the correct data. Instead of lying (by omission) in person we get lying (by omission) in search engine results.
There could be an option to verify or provide the option externally. For example after meeting a person, you could open their profile and write what you think are their traits (not all of them, only some of them that are wrong or missing). If many people correct or add something, it could be displayed in the person’s profile. -- But this would be rather easy to abuse. If for whatever reason I dislike a person, I could add an incorrect but repulsive information to their profile, and ask my friends (with some explanation) to report that they dated the person too, and to confirm my information. On the other hand, I could ask my friends (or make sockpuppet accounts) to report that they dated me, and to confirm a wrong positive information about me.
Another option could be real-life verification / costly signalling. If a person visits the dating agency personally, and shows them a university diploma / a tax report / takes an IQ test there, the agency would confirm them as educated / rich / smart. This would be difficult and costly, so only a few people would participate. Even if some people would be willing to pay the costs to find the right person, the low number of users would reduce the network effect. Maybe this verification could be just an extra service on a standard dating site.
Another option could be real-life verification / costly signalling. If a person visits the dating agency personally, and shows them a university diploma / a tax report / takes an IQ test there, the agency would confirm them as educated / rich / smart.
I think that would probably work. The person can send a scan of the university diploma/tax report. If I would run a dating website I would make that a optional service that costs money.
HotOrNot for example allows verification through phone numbers and linking of a facebook account but they don’t provide verification services that need human labor.
Paid dating websites don’t seem to shy away from using human labor. I know that big German dating websites used to read personal messages of users to prevent them from giving the other person an email address in the first message that would allow contract without the web site.
Another thing I don’t understand is that the dating websites don’t offer users any coaching.
Another thing I don’t understand is that the dating websites don’t offer users any coaching.
1) Perverse incentives. Make your customers happy: lose them. Keep your customers hoping but unsatisfied: keep them.
2) There already exists a separate “dating coaching” industry, called PUA. Problem is, because of human hypocrisy, you cannot provide effective dating advice to men without insulting many women. And if a dating website loses most female customers, it obviously cannot work (well, unless it is a dating website for gays).
However, neither of these explains why dating services don’t offer false coaching, one that wouldn’t really help customers, but would make them happy, and would extract their money.
Maybe it’s about status. Using a dating website can be a status hit, but it can be also rationalized: “I am not bad at attracting sexual partners in real life. I just want to use my time effectively, and I am also a modern person using the modern technology.” It would be more difficult to rationalize a dating coaching this way.
I think the innate nature of dating is such that if you want success stories your incentive is to optimize as much as possible for success and the failure rate and single population will take care of it itself
You seem to have completely missed my point. Let me try an analogy: If reliable cars sell better, car manufacturers are incentivized to make their cars more reliable for the cost than their competitors ad infinitum. If a car is infinitely reliable, they never get repeat purchases (clearly they should start upcharging motor oil like printer ink). However, we’re so far from perfect reliability that on the margin it still makes sense for any given car developer to try to compete with others to make their cars more reliable.
That doesn’t take into account damage to cars or relationships from car accidents. It also doesn’t account for polyamory or owning more than one car.
If okcupid’s saturation level was 90 percent of the single population, that would be one thing, but there’s WAY more marketing to do before that could ever happen and having a good algorithm is basically their entire (theoretical)advantage.
It would certainly create a lot of utility.
I have no experience with dating sites (so all the following information is second-hand), but a few people told me there was still an opportunity on the market to make a good one. On the existing dating sites it was impossible to make a search query they wanted. The sites collected only a few data that the site makers considered important, and only allowed you to make a search query about them. So you could e.g. search for a “non-smoker with a university degree”, but not for a “science-fiction fan with a degree in natural science”. I don’t remember the exact criteria they wanted (only that some of them also seemed very important to me; something like whether the person is single), but the idea was that you enter the criteria the system allows you, you get thousands of results, and you can’t refine them automatically, so you must click on them individually to read the user profile, you usually don’t find your answer anyway, so you have to contact each person to ask them personally.
So a reasonable system would have some smart way to enter data about people. Preferably any data; there should be a way to enter a (searchable) plain text description, or custom key-value pair if everything else fails. (Of course the site admins should have some statistics about frequestly used custom data in descriptions and searches, so they could add them to the system.) Some geographical data, so that you could search for people “at most X miles from …”.
Unfortunately, there are strong perverse incentives for dating sites. Create a happy couple—lose two customers! The most effective money-making strategy for a dating site would be to feed unrealistic expectations (so that all couples fail, but customers return to the site believing their next choice would be better) and lure people to infidelity. Actually, some dating sites promote themselves on Facebook exactly like this.
So it seems to me that a matchmaking algorithm done right could create a lot of utility, but would be very difficult to sell.
EDIT: Another problem: Imagine that there are is a trait which makes many people unattractive. A dating site that allows to search by this criteria will make searching people (who dislike this trait) happy, but people with this trait unhappy. If your goal is to make more money, to which group should you listen? Well, that depends on the size of the groups, and on their likelihood to leave if the algorithm goes against their wishes.
OkCupid has basically custom key-value pairs with it’s questions. While you can’t search after individual questions you get a match rank that bundles all the information from those questions together. You can search for that match rank.
Dating websites also care about getting true data. Is there a trait that 100% of people reject at first glance, why should anybody volunteer the information that he possesses the trait?
People only volunteer information when they think that the act of volunteering the information will improve the ability of the website to find good matches for them. If you are a smoker you don’t want to date a person who hastes smokers and therefore you put the information that you are a smoker into your profile.
Yeah, you are right. No search engine will help if people refuse to provide the correct data. Instead of lying (by omission) in person we get lying (by omission) in search engine results.
There could be an option to verify or provide the option externally. For example after meeting a person, you could open their profile and write what you think are their traits (not all of them, only some of them that are wrong or missing). If many people correct or add something, it could be displayed in the person’s profile. -- But this would be rather easy to abuse. If for whatever reason I dislike a person, I could add an incorrect but repulsive information to their profile, and ask my friends (with some explanation) to report that they dated the person too, and to confirm my information. On the other hand, I could ask my friends (or make sockpuppet accounts) to report that they dated me, and to confirm a wrong positive information about me.
Another option could be real-life verification / costly signalling. If a person visits the dating agency personally, and shows them a university diploma / a tax report / takes an IQ test there, the agency would confirm them as educated / rich / smart. This would be difficult and costly, so only a few people would participate. Even if some people would be willing to pay the costs to find the right person, the low number of users would reduce the network effect. Maybe this verification could be just an extra service on a standard dating site.
I think that would probably work. The person can send a scan of the university diploma/tax report. If I would run a dating website I would make that a optional service that costs money. HotOrNot for example allows verification through phone numbers and linking of a facebook account but they don’t provide verification services that need human labor.
Paid dating websites don’t seem to shy away from using human labor. I know that big German dating websites used to read personal messages of users to prevent them from giving the other person an email address in the first message that would allow contract without the web site.
Another thing I don’t understand is that the dating websites don’t offer users any coaching.
1) Perverse incentives. Make your customers happy: lose them. Keep your customers hoping but unsatisfied: keep them.
2) There already exists a separate “dating coaching” industry, called PUA. Problem is, because of human hypocrisy, you cannot provide effective dating advice to men without insulting many women. And if a dating website loses most female customers, it obviously cannot work (well, unless it is a dating website for gays).
However, neither of these explains why dating services don’t offer false coaching, one that wouldn’t really help customers, but would make them happy, and would extract their money.
Maybe it’s about status. Using a dating website can be a status hit, but it can be also rationalized: “I am not bad at attracting sexual partners in real life. I just want to use my time effectively, and I am also a modern person using the modern technology.” It would be more difficult to rationalize a dating coaching this way.
On the other hand, there’s a win for the dating site if there are people who met there are in good relationships and talk about how they met.
I think the innate nature of dating is such that if you want success stories your incentive is to optimize as much as possible for success and the failure rate and single population will take care of it itself
If you don’t mind waiting 18 or so years for your new potential customers...
You seem to have completely missed my point. Let me try an analogy: If reliable cars sell better, car manufacturers are incentivized to make their cars more reliable for the cost than their competitors ad infinitum. If a car is infinitely reliable, they never get repeat purchases (clearly they should start upcharging motor oil like printer ink). However, we’re so far from perfect reliability that on the margin it still makes sense for any given car developer to try to compete with others to make their cars more reliable.
That doesn’t take into account damage to cars or relationships from car accidents. It also doesn’t account for polyamory or owning more than one car.
If okcupid’s saturation level was 90 percent of the single population, that would be one thing, but there’s WAY more marketing to do before that could ever happen and having a good algorithm is basically their entire (theoretical)advantage.
Apparently I did. But either way works.