THE ATLANTIC – Jan 18 – Tinder uses a variation of ELO scoring to determine how members rank among the site's userbase, and therefore, which profiles to suggest and whose queues profiles show up in. Invented by the physics professor Arpad Elo to determine rankings among chess players, ELO assigns ranks by judging players' presumed skill levels against each other, when translated to Tinder, the algorithm can be understood on a basic level as one where who you match with determines who the app shows to you. Users matched with those with a high ELO will see the people Tinder as a whole finds more desirable. Those sporting a lower ELO, will only see people who don't get as many matches from high-ranking users.
Category: Outlets – The Atlantic
OkCupid Adds A Feature For The Polyamorous
THE ATLANTIC – Jan 10 – OkCupid will now allow users who are listed as "seeing someone," "married," or "in an open relationship" to link their profiles and search for other people to join their relationship. According to OKCupid's data, 24% of its users are "seriously interested" in group sex. 42% would consider dating someone already involved in an open or polyamorous relationship.
Rise Of The Feminist Tinder-Creep-Busting Web Vigilante
THE ATLANTIC – Oct 27 – Many women say they've received harassing or offensive messages on dating sites. Many women feel overwhelmed and leave messages unreturned. One blogger recently ran an OkCupid experiment for which he set up five fake male and female profiles. After a week, all of the women had received at least one message, the most attractive women had received hundreds, but several of the men remained un-contacted. This kind of rejection can foment a kind of deep resentment among the male daters. A growing contingent of women are dedicated to exposing the shady, hostile, and crass entreaties they get from their digital suitors. There’s Straight White Boys Texting, Dudes of Tinder, a Tumblr collecting a combination of outlandish profile photos and gross messages, and ByeFelipe on Instagram.
by Olga Khazan
See full article at The Atlantic
Mark Brooks: The ByeFelipe Instagram is interesting. Why must the innocent suffer. Sigh.
Q&A With Sam Yagan, CEO Of Match Group
THE ATLANTIC – Oct 13 – Last week, IAC launched Delightful, a dating site aimed at people who seek love and relationships, rather than just hookups. It will be headed in part by the comedian Steve Harvey, who will serve as the brand’s “Chief Love Officer.” “This is our first brand focused on the L word as opposed to other brands that focus on dates,” said Sam Yagan, the Match.com CEO who will run Delightful with Harvey.
Q: What is your role at Match?
A: We sold OkCupid to Match in Jan '11. In Sep '12, I became CEO of all of Match. We haven't slowed OkCupid down. I run all the brands like cousins. You want your cousins to do well, but you want to do better.
Q: Why did you decide to pursue dating?
A: Before we launched SparkNotes, everybody used CliffsNotes, which was sort of the Match of study guides. What really made it work is that SparkNotes was a better product than CliffsNotes, and it was free. We decided for online dating because it was one of the things people pay for, and we wanted to make it free.
by Olga Khazan
See full article at The Atlantic
See all posts on OkCupid
See all posts on Match
See all posts on Delightful
AshleyMadison Has An Ambitious Plan To Conquer China
THE ATLANTIC – June 1 – Last year, Ashley Madison, which launched in 2002 and now has 26M members, began its East Asia expansion, entering Japan in June, Hong Kong in Aug, and Taiwan in Nov. With Singapore and South Korea blocking the site, mainland China remains the last market to be conquered in the region. Ashley Madison is blocked in China. According to a 2012 study by Chinese and Western researchers, Chinese women are far more likely to cheat than women elsewhere. Another phenomenon associated with infidelity in China involves women married to partners whose income is modest. Women who are not happy with their marriages are looking for a better deal rather than trying to enjoy themselves. According to Biderman, ~55% of the “travelers” who visit Ashley Madison Hong Kong are from mainland China, having set up their accounts through VPNs.
Shaadi Skips Straight To The Wedding
THE ATLANTIC – Dec 5 – The online dating scene in India is primarily matrimonial sites. Shaadi.com is, intuitively, a wedding arranged via the Internet. 90% of marriages in India still classify as “arranged”. 1 in 8 singles use the matrimonial sites. The online matrimony market is valued at ~$81M with an annual growth rate of 30%. There are 44M Indians who now have smartphones, giving “hookup apps” like Tinder a huge market. Tinder is seeing ~4% percent daily growth in its Indian user base. Grindr has ~11K members in India.
by P. Nash Jenkins
See full article at The Atlantic
See all posts on Shaadi
See all posts on Tinder
See all posts on Grindr
Has Internet Dating Made People More Disposable?
In 2011, Mark Brooks, a consultant to online-dating companies, published the results of an industry survey titled “How Has Internet Dating Changed Society?” The survey responses, from 39 executives, produced the following conclusions: “Internet dating has made people more disposable, and may be partly responsible for a rise in the divorce rates.” “Low quality, unhappy and unsatisfying marriages are being destroyed as people drift to Internet dating sites.” “Internet dating has helped people of all ages realize that there’s no need to settle for a mediocre relationship.”
Alex Mehr, a co-founder of Zoosk, disagrees. “Online dating only removes a barrier to meeting,” says Mehr. Surely personality will play a role in the way anyone behaves in the realm of online dating, particularly when it comes to commitment and promiscuity.
by Dan Slater
See full article at The Atlantic
See all posts on Match.com See all posts on eHarmony
See all posts on Badoo See all posts on Zoosk
See all posts on Ashley Madison
Computer Dating Of The 1960s
THE ATLANTIC – Feb 14 – Computers did exist in the '60s, in some form — not personal computers, but computers nonetheless. These machines could crunch the numbers on our personalities and spit out intimate matches. But in the 1960s, what was known as "computer dating" involved no Internet and often few to no visuals. People submitted their vital stats along with questionnaires by mail. People waited patiently for days, weeks, and months as companies processed their answers on intelligence, attractiveness, quirks, and preferences, and would perhaps find them matches. The questionnaire model dated back to the Scientific Marriage Foundation in 1957 and flourished throughout the '60s and '70s. "Inevitably, the singles game is putting technology to use with punchcard-plotted introductions that cost $5 to $150. Harvard students founded a landmark computer-dating service called Operation Match. FULL ARTICLE @ THE ATLANTIC