article: How to Land an Angel Investor

Ms. Janet Tavakoli had published the article "How to Land an Angel Investor"
Although angel investors mainly do not invest in dating sites,  I agree with her in "Pitch a dating site that sounds like 20 other dating site pitches in the last month. I'd be delighted to introduce you to each other." because persons/daters do not pay for social discovering, for finding new friends, they will pay only for high effective compatibility matching.
See failed proposals like TheCompleteMe, SmartDate, HowAboutWe, Zingl, Engage (rebranded to Ignighter group dating, then rebranded again to StepOut), Thread, Triangulate, Gelato (then rebranded to Twnty), WooMe, 12Like, LittleHint.
 
WorldWide, there are over 5,000 -five thousand- online dating sites
but no one is using the 16PF5 (or similar) 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!

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.


STRICT 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 remain enormous!!

When the Hiring Boss Is an Algorithm!

The Wall Street Journal had published an interesting article about Xerox. 
"When looking for workers to staff its call centers, Xerox Corp. used to pay lots of attention to applicants who had done the job before. Then, a computer program told the printer and outsourcing company that experience doesn't matter.

The software said that what does matter in a good call-center worker—one who won't quit before the company recoups its $5,000 investment in training—is personality. "

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 always: personality!!!
See paper: "Workers Behaving Badly: Personality at Age 18 Predicts Workplace Deviance at Age 32" by Dr. Kimdy Le


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 remain enormous!!

little birdie: "PlentyOfFish is on sale now"

The Spring had blossom here in South America. Birds are singing, the flowers open their petals exhaling sweet fragrance.

A little birdie came to my window and told me:
"PlentyOfFish is on sale now"

Several times I had said PlentyOfFish was on sale, but this rumour seems to be true.
"Its free - freemium model will not be viable with many users migrating to mobile and the owners had failed to launch a new site using the 16PF5 test or similar."

PlentyOfFish performs mainly as a Behavioural Recommender System and the entire site looks like a collection of patches, like those quilts that are a union of patches.

If the owners of PlentyOfFish can not innovate in the Online Dating Industry, the best strategy for them is to sell PlentyOfFish.

All is peace and harmony in South America, in another tuning with the North Hemisphere.

The Simpsons, Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress, Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, YouTube, Blogger, Wikipedia, Bing, Twitter, Skype are BIG successes in Argentina!!!
I have the theory that if something is successful in Argentina, it could be a success in the World.
If it can NOT be a success here in Argentina, it will definitely NOT be a success in the World.
NO online dating company (for serious daters) has success here in Argentina nor Brazil or other Latin American country.

eHarmony's new homepage

same dog with different collar
same book with different cover
same food with different taste
12+ years old obsolete site and a HOAX, based on a big scientific fraud.

PASSWORDS no more than 14 characters, same as ever, same as hacking incidents of before!

Jazzed GAME OVER, eHarmony hacked again???

I seems eHarmony was hacked again.  
Who could benefit most from that situation?

The “Russians” again???
As if they were in the cold war era.

Several online dating sites, like PlentyOfFish and eHarmony HAD BEEN ALERTED IN ADVANCE, since 2009 about security holes, but they had not paid the attention it deserved.

stupid investors' series: Perceptual Networks

"Perceptual Networks was formed to make it easy for everyone to find the best people for them to meet next in their lives. Whether you are looking for an employee, a golf buddy, a spouse or a roommate, we're making apps for that. "

social discovering / social dating is illusory/vaporware
It will be a case of study for several venture funds (a stupid investors' series). 

People do not pay for social discovering, for finding new friends, they will pay only for high effective compatibility matching.
See failed proposals like TheCompleteMe, SmartDate, HowAboutWe, Zingl, Engage (rebranded to Ignighter group dating, then rebranded again to StepOut), 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.


STRICT 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 remain enormous!!

men and women see things differently

Dr. Israel Abramov et al had published 2 interesting studies showing men and women had differences on how they see the world.

Abramov, I., J. Gordon, O. Feldman and A. Chavarga. "Sex and Vision I: Spatio-temporal Resolution."
Cerebral cortex has a very large number of testosterone receptors, which could be a basis for sex differences in sensory functions. For example, audition has clear sex differences, which are related to serum testosterone levels. Of all major sensory systems only vision has not been examined for sex differences, which is surprising because occipital lobe (primary visual projection area) may have the highest density of testosterone receptors in the cortex. We have examined a basic visual function: spatial and temporal pattern resolution and acuity.

Abramov, I., J. Gordon, O. Feldman and A. Chavarga. "Sex and Vision II: Color Appearance of Monochromatic Lights."
Because cerebral cortex has a very large number of testosterone receptors, we examined the possible sex differences in color appearance of monochromatic lights across the visible spectrum. There is a history of men and women perceiving color differently. However, all of these studies deal with higher cognitive functions which may be culture-biased. We study basic visual functions, such as color appearance, without reference to any objects. We present here a detailed analysis of sex differences in primary chromatic sensations.

If you plan to design usability studies, please take into account those discoveries.

Is POF full of hackers/scammers?

Last April I had tested POF Spanish version, and I test it again.
Nothing had changed, it is really a mess.

Checked some women's profiles and they look really fake. Is POF also full of hackers/scammers?

RecSys 2012 ACM Conference On Recommender Systems

Academics/Researchers wasting time, publishing rubbish in the Recommender Systems Arena.
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 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.
------------------

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. 


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

ACM Recommender Systems 2012 series.

Presentations:

"How Users Evaluate Each Other in Social Media"



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.
----------------------------------
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!!

eHarmony Inc. to close Jazzed

Launched 2 years ago, never took off.
It was funny eHarmony, a paid site, had launched a free online dating proposal (Jazzed) nearly at the same time PlentyofFish, a freemium site, had launched its paid proposal, eVow (failed, game over). Both eHarmony and PlentyOfFish had failed in launching other dating proposals to complement their long time strategy.
Now eHarmony Inc. has 2 options.
One, die peacefully, going directly to bankruptcy.  Free communications days are useless at all, traffic declines after them.
The other, try to innovate with a new independent site.
————

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 TheCompleteMe, SmartDate, HowAboutWe, 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!!

Latin American countries digital future 2012!

The United States is no longer the center of the Online Universe.
Latin America is the fastest growing region!
Online population in Latin America is young. 3 of 5 Internet Visitors are less than 35 years old.
Peru, Brazil and Argentina host the more involved online users in the region.
Google sites are the most visited destination in the region, Facebook the more involved.
Social media is redefining COMMUNICATION IN THE DIGITAL WORLD AND THE REAL WORLD!
Five of the more involved markets in Social Networks are in Latin America!
Social Networks in Latin American countries spread across the age groups, almost replicating the Online Population Distribution.
Online users from Chile and Argentina are the most intensive online video viewers.

MercadoLibre (online retail), Despegar-Decolar sites (travel), Yahoo!Finance, Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail are leaders in their categories.
Facebook leads but almost with no growth, while Tumblr and Scribd have a dramatic increase.

Smartphones and Tablets: Mexico and Chile have the most traffic from mobile, then Brazil and Argentina follows.

The online population from Argentina reached 13.5 million unique visitors and consumed an average of 26.3 hours per visitor in June 2012.
Argentineans had consumed on average 10.4 hours per visitor per month on social networks, ranking second in the world rankings after Russia.


Argentinean digital future from ComScore

Chilean digital future from ComScore

Mexican digital future from ComScore

---------------------------------------------------
Do you remember what I had been saying since years?
The Simpsons, Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress, Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, YouTube, Blogger, Wikipedia, Bing, Twitter are BIG successes in Argentina.

I have the theory that if something is successful in Argentina, it could be a success in the World.
If it can NOT be a success here in Argentina, it will definitely NOT be a success in the World.

NO online dating company (for serious daters) has success here in Argentina (Match, Meetic, eHarmony, Chemistry, PerfectMatch, PlentyOfFish, OKCupid, etc) nor Brazil or other Latin American country.