ASSOCIATED PRESS — Nov 25 — Match is charged with sending a female employee out on a date with a male subscriber as "date bait" to keep him signed up and Yahoo Personals with creating fake profiles to entice subscribers. Match.com denied the allegations and obtained an affidavit from the woman in question, who declared she never worked for the company. The suit says Yahoo posts fake profiles and alleges Yahoo also sent him fake "new match" messages when his monthly subscription was up for renewal. After months of failing to meet a potential match, he became suspicious and discovered the same picture of a woman being posted for different cities under different names. Trish McDermott, chief matchmaker at Engage.com and a Match's former VP Romance, said she never saw any type of consumer fraud during her decade at Match.com. She added that the majority of personals sites, including Yahoo and Match.com, employ a business model she believes fails consumers. It's not clear who is a member and who isn't in the pay-to-respond model, in which a user must join a service to respond to an e-mail sent by a potential match but cannot post a profile, McDermott said. If someone e-mails 100 people and gets only one response, he or she could conclude that most of the profiles are fake when they actually show non-subscribers who can't respond to e-mail, she said.
Mark Brooks: Your comments please…
As Senator Cropsey said in a previous Interview:
“Online dating companies need someone who has the authority to speak for the industry.”
What happened with S.I.TR.AS, I.A.D.W, I.D.E.A.O.A.S.I.S?
Who has the authority to speak for the Online Dating and Social Networking Industry?
Most probably, the Industry will urgently require Legislation!!!
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
To me the idea of Match having employees go out on dates with members does not really make much sense. Match has over a million subscribers, if their goal was to stop subscribers from canceling their subscriptions they would need to have hundreds of employees going out on dates to have any real impact.
As for Yahoo, I believe Robert Anthony did find what he says he found, but I don’t believe that Yahoo had anything to do with it. We all know scammers and spammers post fake profiles to the major services and that the major services are lax in their attempts to fight them, but it’s hard for me to believe that Yahoo needs to create fake profiles to entice subscribers. This is something you expect from smaller sites. Also, unless they have a Yahoo employee who has admitted to it, I don’t see how Anthony’s attorney is going to be able to prove that Yahoo had anything to do with it, and it does not look like this is the case.
These allegations have only confirmed my critical observations that on line dating sites have more garbage than gabbage in their salad.
I’ve just written articles about these Match.com and Yahoo! Personals suits for my enewsletter and blog (www.Find-a-Sweetheart.com/blog)that are too long to repost, but here is an edited portion:
Here’s what I think: These suits and others like them say something about the maturing of Internet dating as a whole. First, looking for love on the Internet or through matchmakers or dating services is becoming more and more mainstream and “normal” rather than fringe practice. People are ready to go public when they are disappointed or feel mistreated and look to the courts for remedy.
Second, we are seeing more and more stories of successful pairings of couple who have met online. I met my Sweetie Drew on Match.com in 1998, and I post stories on my blog all the time of people who have met and married via cyberspace. My own clients are making their own success stories. With stories of success come heightened and sometimes unrealistic expectations of what the dating sites will “do.” And frankly, many of the dating sites encourage those fantasies. When expectations rise and results cannot be guaranteed, people get disappointed.
Third, particularly in the cases of the suits against the two giants of online dating, Match.com and Yahoo! Personals, this is a recognition about the lucrativeness of cyber romance. Both Match.com and Yahoo! Personals are pulling in big bucks and therefore have deep pockets, always a lure for people with too much time on their hands and not enough principles. There’s money to be made, right? Even if the cases have no basis, businesses will often offer settlements just to get rid of the negative publicity.
Fourth, I have a very hard time swallowing that either Match.com or Yahoo! Personals would engage in such petty deceptions. These esites are HUGE, with millions of profiles listed. And the fees are tiny compared with the opportunities offered – around $20 to $35 per month for access to thousands, even millions, of eligible singles. The charge that seems particularly ludicrous is that Match.com sends employees out on dates with customers. If true, hat practice would seem incredibly cost-inefficient. Pay an employee to correspond and go out on dates for a paltry $20 – $35 per month subscription fee? I don’t believe it. Match.com in particular has been pretty meticulous about its squeaky clean appearance. I can’t believe that it would put its well-deserved reputation in jeopardy with such silly deceptive practices.
Here’s what is believable: Smaller start-dating sites very well may post fake profiles. I’ve known of a few sites myself who have done so in an attempt to look like things were happening when they weren’t. Dating or matchmaking services that are also very small AND charge high fees would find sending staff out on dates with clients more tempting. But Match.com or Yahoo!Personals? Why bother? They don’t have to, and it’s not worth the time and effort. Or the potential grief.
There are a number of possible explanations for Matthew Evans’ and Robert Anthony’s distress (beyond greed). For the same picture with different names in other parts of the country? There’s nothing to stop the same person from using several different zip codes (that’s how the dating sites locate you geographically, by the zip code you enter) and posting all over everywhere. Also, computers make it all too easy for an individual to simply “steal” a photo, either from another’s profile or somewhere else online, and use it on their own profile.
I agree with Kathryn Lord, who says “These suits and others like them say something about the maturing of Internet dating as a whole.”
———–
Most probably a group of “Erin Brockovich”s will appear soon; they will research if many marketing policies are only dirty tricks!!!
The whitepaper CONSUMERS ARE HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT ONLINE DATING; written by the company WeAttract.
http://www.weattract.com/images/weAttract_whitepaper_v1_4.pdf
Says on page 22 /////…..it should not be too surprising that online dating may have unanticipated consequences. In fact, studies of major technologies and inventions (from cell phones to antibiotics, to cars) have found a repeated pattern of:
-Intensity of spread and excitement.
-Disaster or highly publicized damage is observed.
-Reform occurs in the industry.
-Vigilance by industry and consumers become necessary.
…../////
I think that whitepaper will be metamorphosing to “Many Consumers are GETTING TIRED OF ACTUAL ONLINE DATING SITES, with low_precision/low_reliability matching algorithms; also databases with fake profiles”
There are more than 900 “Online Dating & Social Networking Sites” at the United States and Canada, but top 10 Online Dating sites have 80%/ 85% of actual market (estimated). If you add net paid subscribers of all U.S. dating sites, perhaps the total is less that 10 million.
Although it is from NOV 2003, there is an interesting PPT presentation about how the U.S. MARKET OPPORTUNITY REMAINS ENORMOUS. (page 6)
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/11/111999/presentations/IAC_Personals.pdf
What dating sites are doing / will do to court the other U.S. 79,3 million singles not dating online?
They will have to offer Quality Norms like ISO9001:2000 independently audited, confidential treatment of information provided (professionalism), Code of Ethics and Legislation (background checks included).
They will also have to offer INNOVATIONS, but…..they will come from new discoveries on Theories of Romantic Relationships Development, also new discoveries on Social Networking methods.
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
Ooops!
“If you add net paid subscribers of all U.S. dating sites, perhaps the total is less thaN 10 million. ”