IAC acquired another online dating site

IAC acquired another online dating site.

The IAC had increased its paid subscribers database thanks to acquiring companies, like SinglesNet, Meetic, OkCupid and others, but if they acquire is a sign they can not innovate.

The decadence of Chemistry

Chemistry, a7+ years old site, in decadence. Some screenshots.

Facebooksyncing Dating Site Takes on Social Discovery ???

Mashable had published an article saying SNAP Interactive is re-launching its Facebooksynced dating site AreYouInterested as a social discovery website.

social discovering / social dating is illusory/vaporware.

People do not pay for social discovering, for finding new friends, they will pay only for high effective compatibility matching.
See failed proposals like SmartDate, HowAboutWe, Zoosk in decadence since months, Zingl, Engage (then rebranded to Ignighter group dating), Thread, Triangulate, Gelato (then rebranded to Twnty), WooMe, 12Like, LittleHint.

Online Dating for serious daters does not need to be more social, it needs to be more effective/efficient. It needs to reduce the false positives problem.
The Online Dating Industry needs innovations but they will come from only one source: the latest discoveries in theories of romantic relationships development with commitment.
Compatibility is all about a high level on personality* similarity* between prospective mates for long term mating with commitment.
*personality measured with a normative test.
*similarity: there are different ways to calculate similarity, it depends on how mathematically is defined.


PERSONALITY SIMILARITY and not "meet other people with similar interests"

What comes after Social Networking?
My bet: The Next Big Investment Opportunity on the Internet will be .... Personalization!
Personality Based Recommender Systems and Strict Personality Based Compatibility Matching Engines for serious Online Dating with the normative 16PF5 personality test. The market remains enormous!!

How LinkedIn Plans To Grow Hiring Solutions ?

Business Insider had published an article about "How LinkedIn Plans To Grow Its Biggest Business 1,100%"

John and Ronda Hunter written last July 1984 "Validity and utility of alternative predictors of job performance. Psychological Bulletin, No. 96, pp. 72-98" (old but still valid paper) and found that psychological testing is a better predictor of job performance than any other single measure. Psychological tests have a validity coefficient of 0.53, analysis of information provided by the curriculum: 0.37, checking references 0.26, the level of education attained: 0.22 and 0.14 only for the job interview!

As for matching job seekers with employers, the best predictor of job performance is: personality!!!
See paper: "Workers Behaving Badly: Personality at Age 18 Predicts Workplace Deviance at Age 32" by Dr. Kimdy Le

LinkedIn should include a personality test like the 16PF5 to assess personality of applicants.

Featured paper: Personality and Patterns of Facebook Usage.

"Personality and Patterns of Facebook Usage"

ABSTRACT
We show how users' activity on Facebook relates to their personality, as measured by the standard Five Factor Model.
Our dataset consists of the personality profiles and Facebook profile data of 180,000 users (using myPersonality, a Facebook application deployed in 2007.). We examine correlations between users' personality and the properties of their Facebook profiles such as the size and density of their friendship network, number uploaded photos, number of events attended, number of group memberships, and number of times user has been tagged in photos. Our results show significant relationships between personality traits and various features of Facebook profiles. We then show how multivariate regression allows prediction of the personality traits of an individual user given their Facebook profile. The best accuracy of such predictions is achieved for Extraversion and Neuroticism, the lowest accuracy is obtained for Agreeableness, with Openness and Conscientiousness lying in the middle.

----------------

The Big Five Personality Model to assess personality is good for guidance purposes and not good enough for predictive purposes.
"Because the Big Five groups the more specific primary-level factors, feedback organized around the five Global Factor scales is more easily understood. For detailed feedback or predictive purposes, one should assess the more specific primary factors. Research has shown that more specific factors like the primary scales of the 16PF Questionnaire predict actual behavior better than the Big 5 Global Factors. For example, one extravert (a bold, fearless, high-energy type) may differ considerably from another (a sweet, warm, sensitive type), depending on the extraversion-related primary scale score patterns, so deeper analysis is typically warranted." Extracted from the 16PF5 Manual


Other papers like
- "Personality Impressions Based on Facebook Profiles"
- "What lies beneath: The linguistic traces of deception in online dating profiles."
- "Perceptions of trustworthiness online: the role of visual and textual information"
- "Reading between the lines: linguistic cues to deception in online dating profiles"
- "Making Sense of Strangers' Expertise from Signals in Digital Artifacts"
- "The Truth about Lying in Online Dating Profiles"
had shown that browsing profiles at social networking sites or online dating sites, any person will assess quite well the level of Extraversion of the other persons and not well the other personality traits.
and
- "Can you resist the temptation of Facebook: Asymmetrical Facebook-study association predicts academic performance"
- "The Effect of Personality Factors in Predicting Information Disclosure Online"
- "Frequent Facebook Use: Maladaptive Addiction or Healthy Social Strategy?"
- "People or Profiles?: Seeking Out or Warding Off the Perspectives of Others on Facebook"
- "ePersonality: Differential perceptions of personality during online and real-world social interactions"
- "Who are you on Facebook? The role of personality and gender in online social networking sites"
- "Using MySpace increases the endorsement of narcissistic personality traits"
- "Facebook Norms: How People use Facebook to Share and Connect with Others"
- "Personnel Selection, Facebook, and the Dilution Effect: Is More Information Really Better?"
had only discovered people who make an intensive use of social nets, had some personality disorders.



The only way you could have any type of accurate personality analysis is using a normative personality test, like the 16PF5.

How One Man Made A Million Babies With Free Online Dating ???

"based on the number of marriages that have resulted in these matches, over one million babies have been born as a result of his website."

They are really victims of big human experiment with unprecedented consequences!

I live in a South American country and I am really astonished to see how the entire Online Dating Industry for serious daters in 1st World Countries is a HOAX, performing as a Big Online Casino, with a low effectiveness/efficiency level of their matching algorithms (less than 10%).
The Online Dating Industry is selling elixirs, tonics, snake oil liniments and other patent medicine and performing like the Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Industry before the USA Food and Drug Administration was created where any player can make any claim without any credentials.
There is no/weak Legislation, no ID verification, low reliable background checks, no Quality Norms like ISO 9001:2008 for customer service, except for the Indian company Shaadi.

Cheating at eHarmony

Just begun to see some women posting their email addresses or cell phone numbers.  

See 2 screenshots as sample.

Stupid investor series: today, Tagged

TechCrunch says Social Network Tagged have just raised USD15Million.

Tagged, a social network for meeting new people (a.k.a. social discovering == online dating) ,  will be a "stupid investors case of study" for several venture funds.

People do not pay for social discovering, for finding new friends, they will pay only for high effective compatibility matching.
Online Dating for serious daters does not need to be more social, it needs to be more effective/efficient.

Personality-based Recommender Systems: An Overview / at ACM Recommender Systems 2012

Dr. Nunes and Dr. Hu are going to talk at ACM Recommender Systems 2012

Tutorial 2: Personality-based Recommender Systems: An Overview and Dr. Graepel is also going to give the session Towards Personality-Based Personalization

------------------

Personality Based Recommender Systems are the next generation of recommender systems because they perform FAR better than Behavioural ones. (past actions and pattern of personal preferences)
That is the only way to improve recommender systems, to include the personality traits of their users.
They need to calculate personality similarity between users, but .... there are different formulas to calculate similarity.

Have you seen as Personality Based Recommender Systems need to calculate personality similarity between users, they really are compatibility matching engines like the ones used in the Online Dating Industry?
They mostly use the Big5 to assess personality and the Pearson correlation coefficient to calculate similarity.

WorldWide, there are over 5,000 -five thousand- online dating sites
but no one is using the 16PF5 to assess personality of its members!
but no one calculates similarity with a quantized pattern comparison method!
but no one can show Compatibility Distribution Curves to each and every of its members!
but no one is scientifically proven!

In compatibility matching methods there are 2 steps:
1) to objectively measure personality traits or other human variables (with the 16PF5 test).
2) to calculate compatibility (similarity) between prospective mates.


Three words with different meanings for different persons or companies: Compatibility / Personality / Similarity

Sometimes the word compatibility means a high degree of similarity between several variables (religion, education, income, personality, likes and dislikes, etc.) of prospective mates; sometimes compatibility means a mix of similarity and complementarity between variables; sometimes when a dating site says compatibility or even chemistry, nobody really knows exactly what it means!

Some online dating sites offering compatibility matching methods use the word similarity as: "a proprietary Dyadic Adjustment Scale", others mean: "a proprietary multivariate linear regression equation", some say a mix of similarity and complementarity meaning: "a proprietary multivariate logistic regression equation", still others mix similarity and complementarity meaning: "a proprietary equation to calculate compatibility between prospective mates!"

Personality could be assessed by different methods.
No actual online dating site offering compatibility matching methods uses the 16PF5 normative test available in different languages, the 5th version actualized after Census 2000.

Please also read:
An exercise of similarity.
How LIFEPROJECT METHOD calculates similarity

What comes after Social Networking?
My bet: The Next Big Investment Opportunity on the Internet will be .... Personalization!
Personality Based Recommender Systems and Strict Personality Based Compatibility Matching Engines for serious Online Dating with the normative 16PF5 personality test. The market remains enormous!!

eVow game over, finally!

In September 2010, eVow's compatibility matching system was launched.
A paid site from the owners of PlentyOfFish.
eVow's compatibility matching system never had any scientific proof. It was only "home grown" based on similar interests, values and birth order item.
It did not include any personality assessment nor personality similarity calculation.

More PLAGUE of rubbish recommender systems 2012

Here are 5 new papers:

"An Association Rule-Based Recommendation Engine for an Online Dating Site"
"SRec: A Social Behaviour Based Recommender for Online Communities"
"A people-to-people recommendation system using Tensor Space Models"
"Recommending people to people. The nature of reciprocal recommenders with a case study in online dating"
"Trust-Based Recommendation: an Empirical Analysis"

useless at all for the Online Dating Industry because:
- they do not assess personality of daters.
- and can not break the online dating sound barrier.

Please also read: paper "Online Dating Recommender Systems: The Split-complex Number Approach"

paper "Online Dating Recommender Systems: The Split-complex Number Approach"

In a previous post I had written about "The PLAGUE of recommender systems for the Online Dating Industry"


Now there is a new paper: "Online Dating Recommender Systems: The Split-complex Number Approach", useless at all for the Online Dating Industry because:
- it does not assess personality of daters.
- and can not break the online dating sound barrier.

That paper will be presented at  4th ACM RecSys Workshop on Recommender Systems & the Social Web



Recommender systems (a.k.a recommendation engines) can be based on:

- past actions (as the formerly Beacon at Facebook)

- a pattern of personal preferences (by collaborative filtering, as the actual one at Facebook) The main disadvantage with recommendation engines based on
collaborative filtering is when users instead of providing their personal preference try to guess the global preference and they introduce bias in the recommendation algorithm.

- personality traits of users.

Personality Based Recommender Systems are the next generation of recommender systems because they perform FAR better than Behavioural ones
(past actions and pattern of personal preferences)
That is the only way to improve recommender systems, to include the personality traits of their users.
Have you seen they need to calculate personality similarity between users?
Have you seen there are different formulas to calculate similarity?
In case you did not notice, recommender systems are morphing to .......... compatibility matching engines!!!
They mostly use the Big5 to assess personality and the Pearson correlation coefficient to calculate similarity.


PLEASE DO REMEMBER:
In compatibility matching methods there are 2 steps:
1) to objectively measure personality traits or other human variables (with the 16PF5 test).
2) to calculate compatibility between prospective mates.

Actual online dating sites offering compatibility matching methods, when calculating compatibility between prospective mates, have less or at least the same precision as searching on one’s own. [in the range of 3 or 4 persons compatible per 1,000 persons screened]
* That is because they use:
a) simplified versions of personality traits, instead of the 16PF5 or similar with the complete inventory (16 variables)
b) inadequate quantitative methods to calculate compatibility between prospective mates, like eHarmony which uses Dyadic Adjustment Scale or other sites which use multivariate linear / logistic regression equations o other equations.
 The 3 milestone discoveries of the 2001 – 2010 decade for Theories of Romantic Relationships Development are:
I) Several studies showing contraceptive pills users make different mate choices, on average, compared to non-users. “Only short-term but not long-term partner preferences tend to vary with the menstrual cycle”
II) People often report partner preferences that are not compatible with their choices in real life. (Behavioural recommender systems or other system that learns your preferences are useless)
III) What is important in attracting people to one another may not be important in making couples happy. Compatibility is all about a high level on personality similarity between prospective mates for long term mating with commitment.
Also there is a similarity trilogy between genetic, mate choice and personality based recommender systems.
WorldWide, there are over 5,000 -five thousand- online dating sites
but no one is using the 16PF5 to assess personality of its members!
but no one calculates similarity with a quantized pattern comparison method!
but no one can show Compatibility Distribution Curves to each and every of its members!
but no one is scientifically proven!
but no one can show you a list of compatible persons like this:
( for a prospective male customer / sample but calculated with real values)
“Over 1,000,000 million women database, here is the list of the 12 more compatible with you. Notice that woman#1 is the most compatible with you but she could be more compatible with other men right now.
woman#01 is 95.58476277% compatible
woman#02 is 95.56224356% compatible
woman#03 is 95.52998273% compatible
woman#04 is 94.18354278% compatible
woman#05 is 93.00453871% compatible
woman#06 is 93.00007524% compatible
woman#07 is 92.99738452% compatible
woman#08 is 92.37945551% compatible
woman#09 is 92.29779173% compatible
woman#10 is 92.27114287% compatible
woman#11 is 92.19515551% compatible
woman#12 is 92.12249558% compatible”

Please also read:
An exercise of similarity.
How LIFEPROJECT METHOD calculates similarity

True game over, could eHarmony Inc. be next???

True, which does business as True dot com, listed assets of up to USD50,000 and liabilities of between USD50 million and USD100 million, owed to between 100 and 199 creditors, a bankruptcy petition shows.

True, which has 35 employees, generates an average of about USD650,000 of revenue every month, according to the company's bankruptcy filings.

Could eHarmony Inc. be next???

Match had only won a battle, not the war

Match had won dismissal of lawsuit by online daters.

It was a similar lawsuit like:
Dannon's Activia, DanActive health claims draw USD21M fine.
Power Balance Bracelets lawsuit.
The PIP breast implants scandal.
The 2010 was the year of the "PIP scandal". Thousands of women throughout the world carrying a time bomb: prosthesis with uncertified gel, increased risk of rupture and leak into ganglions, increase risk of developing capsular contractures.
 

I live in a South American country and I am really astonished to see how online daters in "1st World" countries are really victims of human experimentation.

 
The Online Dating Industry is performing like the Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Industry before the USA Food and Drug Administration was created.
There is no/weak Legislation, no ID verification, low reliable background checks, no Quality Norms like ISO 9001:2008 for customer service, except for the Indian company Shaadi.
The entire Online Dating Industry for serious daters in 1st World Countries is a HOAX, performing as a Big Online Casino, with a low effectiveness/efficiency level of their matching algorithms (less than 10%). The Online Dating Industry needs to kill the Matchmaking Industry, like computers killed typewriters.
The Online Dating Industry needs Innovations, but Innovations are not adding more bells and whistles to actual online dating sites. Or launching new ones with the same stupidities as the old ones.


 Actual online dating sites offering compatibility matching methods, when calculating compatibility between prospective mates, have less or at least the same precision as searching on one’s own. [in the range of 3 or 4 persons compatible per 1,000 persons screened]
* That is because they use:
a) simplified versions of personality traits, instead of the 16PF5 or similar with the complete inventory (16 variables)
b) inadequate quantitative methods to calculate compatibility between prospective mates, like eHarmony which uses Dyadic Adjustment Scale or other sites which use multivariate linear / logistic regression equations o other equations.
 The 3 milestone discoveries of the 2001 – 2010 decade for Theories of Romantic Relationships Development are:
I) Several studies showing contraceptive pills users make different mate choices, on average, compared to non-users. “Only short-term but not long-term partner preferences tend to vary with the menstrual cycle”
II) People often report partner preferences that are not compatible with their choices in real life. (Behavioural recommender systems or other system that learns your preferences are useless)
III) What is important in attracting people to one another may not be important in making couples happy. Compatibility is all about a high level on personality similarity between prospective mates for long term mating with commitment.
Also there is a similarity trilogy between genetic, mate choice and personality based recommender systems.
WorldWide, there are over 5,000 -five thousand- online dating sites
but no one is using the 16PF5 to assess personality of its members!
but no one calculates similarity with a quantized pattern comparison method!
but no one can show Compatibility Distribution Curves to each and every of its members!
but no one is scientifically proven!
but no one can show you a list of compatible persons like this:
( for a prospective male customer / sample but calculated with real values)
“Over 1,000,000 million women database, here is the list of the 12 more compatible with you. Notice that woman#1 is the most compatible with you but she could be more compatible with other men right now.
woman#01 is 95.58476277% compatible
woman#02 is 95.56224356% compatible
woman#03 is 95.52998273% compatible
woman#04 is 94.18354278% compatible
woman#05 is 93.00453871% compatible
woman#06 is 93.00007524% compatible
woman#07 is 92.99738452% compatible
woman#08 is 92.37945551% compatible
woman#09 is 92.29779173% compatible
woman#10 is 92.27114287% compatible
woman#11 is 92.19515551% compatible
woman#12 is 92.12249558% compatible”

Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults

In an age of short-lived celebrity marriages, widespread divorce, babies being born outside of marriage, and the ever-popular “hooking up,” young people are remarkably traditional about their expectations for love, marriage and children—for both themselves and society at large, according to a new Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults.

The Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults is based on 1,029 interviews of 18- to 29-year-olds from USA. The margin of error is +/- 3.06 percent. A mixed-mode methodology was used for that project.

The poll, directed by Clark psychology professor Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, reports that 86 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed nationwide expect to have a marriage that will last a lifetime.

TheCompleteMe: same road as SmartDate???

TheCompleteMe: same road as SmartDate???

Remember SmartDate ?

eHarmony Brazil, 2nd birthday

eHarmony Brazil was launched last August 2010, 2 years ago; but can not take off.  

Now it offers a “free” communication weekend; it is not really free because it does not include eHarmony mail.

The new WhatIf feature at eHarmony

Just testing eHarmony again, and noticed the new WhatIf feature. You need to be a subscriber to use it.

The WhatIf feature
“1)  We’ll show you some additional people we want you to consider.
2)  You decide who you like and don’t like.
3)  Send a quick message, and we’ll make the introduction.”

That is what exactly UltraMatch feature from PlentyOfFish, and other peoples’  recommenders had been doing since years ago with a low success rate (OkCupid, Match, HowAboutWe and others).

eHarmony’s team, instead of innovating, they are adding more bells and whistles to the site.

My bet: That feature will ruin eHarmony, it will introduce more noise. eHarmomy Inc. will be game over in less than a year, directly to bankruptcy.

————————

Latest Research in Theories of Romantic Relationships Development shows: compatibility is all about a high level on personality* similarity* between prospective mates for long term mating with commitment
*personality measured with a normative test.
*similarity: there are different ways to calculate similarity, it depends on how mathematically is defined.

WorldWide, there are over 5,000 online dating sites but no one is using the 16PF5 (or similar test) to assess personality of its members.
Without offering the NORMATIVE16PF5 (or similar test measuring exactly the 16 personality factors) for serious dating, it will be impossible to innovate and revolutionize the Online Dating Industry
All other proposals are NOISE and perform as placebo.

It seems C-level dating executives do not pay attention to new and fresh research, and thanks to that, many online dating sites are old & obsolete and soon, they will collapse (eHarmony, PlentyOfFish Chemistry Predictor, Chemistry, True, PerfectMatch, Parship, Meetic Affinity, Be2, etc)

eHarmony’s former CEO (Mr. Verba) should had launched a new site with a new matching algorithm to replace eHarmony, a 12 years old & obsolete site, performing as placebo, but he failed.
Please remember TeAmoRU is copycat or eHarmony.

12 years defrauding their customers / users.
12 years scamming  its clients with automatic renewal of their subscriptions.
12 years of a HOAX.
12 years of a big human experiment with unprecedented consequences.

IAC’s CEO should had launched a new site with a new matching algorithm to replace Chemistry, a 7 years old & obsolete site, performing as placebo, but he failed.

Moreover, the mobile migration will shrink the Online Dating Market a lot, and many sites will collapse!