Category: Outlets – The New Yorker

Location Based Apps: Women Are Overwhelmed And Creeped Out

Posted on February 28, 2013

Women-online-datingNEW YORKER – Feb 27 – Blendr is a location-based dating apps for straight people. It was created by the same folks who made Grindr, the hookup app that has 4.5M users. The founders weren’t willing to disclose the number of Blendr users. When it comes to apps, men tend to be more willing to use location-based dating features. Women are different. Women may initiate contact less frequently, but they are comfortable reaching out first if they see a profile that appeals to them. Maybe the real failure is that no one has built an app that women want to use. On Check Him Out, women are “shoppers” and men are “products.” Only women can initiate contact, though men can “favorite” profiles. The site claims that 59% of the users are women. Women want authenticity, privacy, a more controlled environment, and a quick path to a safe, easy offline meeting. Coffee Meets Bagel, founded by three sisters, sends you a match and then sets a deadline by which you have to either “like” or “pass.” Three Day Rule caters to women who are searching for Mr. Right as opposed to Mr. Right Now. It functions as an intermediary. It shows just a few carefully selected matches at a time—bypassing the deluge problem, and saving busy professionals from scrolling through pages and pages of profiles. The site is still in beta mode and not open to the general public, and will eventually be for paying users only.

by Ann Friedman
The full article was originally published at New Yorker, but is no longer available.

See all posts on Grindr         See all posts on CheckHimOut
See all posts on Blendr        See all posts on CoffeeMeetsBagel

Re: Looking for Someone

Posted on July 26, 2011

Online Dating & Matchmaking Site Benchmark Report THE NEW YORKER – July 26 – A letter in response to Nick Paumgarten’s article from Anne Holland, Publisher of Subscription Site Insider’s Dating Site Benchmark Report.

Nick Paumgarten, in his piece on Internet dating, mentions the two business models that make up the online dating industry: free sites that generate ad revenue and subscription sites that offer fee-based services. But a fascinating fact is that the paid-content sites are thriving more than their free counterparts. Most of the industry’s $1.4 billion in yearly revenues comes from subscription fees, even though most of the highest-traffic sites are free. A new study shows that 88% per cent of the free sites are considering launching paid offerings.

The full article was originally published at The New Yorker, but is no longer available.

Sex, Love, and Loneliness on the Internet

Posted on June 27, 2011

Online dating keyboard THE NEW YORKER – July 4 – In 1964, on a visit to the World’s Fair, in Queens, Lewis Altfest, came upon an open-air display called the Parker Pen Pavilion, where a giant computer was selecting foreign pen pals for pavilion visitors. You filled out a questionnaire and received a card with the name and address of a like-minded participant. Altfest and his friend Robert Ross heard about a program called Operation Match, which used a computer to find dates for people. A year later, they had a prototype, which they called Project TACT (Technical Automated Compatibility Testing). Each client paid $5 and answered ~100 questions. TACT transferred the answers onto a computer that spit out your matches.

Online dating sites draw on the premise that there has got to be a better way. They rely on algorithms, some add an extra layer of projection and interpretation. There are thousands of dating sites; the big ones, such as Match.com and eHarmony and PlentyOfFish and OK Cupid (among the free ones). Mark Brooks, the editor of Online Personals Watch, said, “Starting a site is like starting a restaurant. It’s a sexy business, looks like fun, yet it’s hard to make money.”

The dating sites are themselves a little like online-dating-site suitors. They want you. They exaggerate their height and salary. Each has a distinct personality and a carefully curated profile. Nothing determines the atmosphere and experience of an Internet dating service more than the people who use it, but sometimes the sites reflect the personalities or predilections of their founders. If the dating sites had a mixer, you might find OK Cupid by the bar, muttering factoids and jokes, and Match.com in the middle of the room, conspicuously dropping everyone’s first names into his sentences. The clean-shaven gentleman on the couch, with the excellent posture would be eHarmony.

Match.com went live in 1995. It is now the biggest dating site in the world. eHarmony is the one most overtly geared toward finding you a spouse. It was launched, in 2000, by Neil Clark Warren, a clinical psychologist who had spent three decades treating and studying married couples and working out theories about what made their marriages succeed or fail. By reputation, OKCupid is where you go if you want to hook up. OK Cupid was also perhaps the most desirable eligible bachelor out there, until February, when it was bought for $50M by Match.

by Nick Paumgarten
See full article at The New Yorker

See all posts on Match.com         See all posts on Plentyoffish
See all posts on eHarmony           See all posts on OkCupid