online dating expert rants, my perspectives

I was reading Dave Evan's (online dating expert) rant about open dating profiles/mobile dating/facebook.

1) Dave wants to be able to link his blog to his match profile. To those that aren't aware, dating sites don't give you the same ability to link out as do social networking sites. Obviously dating sites that have subscription relationships with their customers, like to keep all interaction within their site. It's their way of continually being the intermediary in the relationship, and thus providing value and ongoing utility. I agree they probably should be more flexible, although dating sites tend to serve a demographic (generally speaking) that may not necessarily need this functionality. If someone is hip to this kind of functionality, then they're dating on MySpace anyway.

2) Dave hints to Match that they should tighten up their web service rather than mess around with mobile initiatives. The cool thing about the mobile stuff they're doing is that it mirrors their web db. Before, as recent press pointed out, Match.com and Match Mobile were on different dbs. Just getting to this point is a big deal, and will open the door for more cross functionality. I for one, am rooting for their mobile initiative. How many other online dating sites will you find on a carrier deck?

3) From Dave's post: "People do use anonymous calling, or so Match and Jangl want you to know. I can’t talk about the numbers, but what I do know is that adoption rates take a long time. Dating isn’t Facebook and the mainstream online daters are not the Tech Crunch 50k."

Online dating sites and facebook are two different worlds and the users of these have different mindsets, although people in the younger demo certainly date on fb. Online dating sites are more explicit about searching for mr goodbar, whereas fb is about your friends. You'd be surprised how many people in online dating sites want to talk by phone.

And Dave is right, mainstream online daters are not the Tech Crunch 50K. That's all the reason why the solution for private calling which is mapped to online dating sites, needs to be very straight forward, and baked into the flow of the site. We wouldn't expect online daters to be posting widgets and links into their profiles, which kind of goes back to #1.

I also noticed Said from World Singles follows Daves blog. (Yo Said let's talk about #3).

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Comments

[ravi]

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[BRYAN]

hows it hanging?