past failures, today: cinekin

 More than 3 years ago I had reviewed Cinekin.

Now "OkCupid Partners For Movie Compatibility Matching"

Remember:
profiling by music preferences to assess personality
video preferences to assess personality
color preferences to assess personality
bookmarks preferences to assess personality
handwriting analysis to assess personality
purchases and buying trends from credit cards to assess personality
and other methods like them
add a lot of distortion to the measurement.

The best way to assess personality of daters is using a normative instrument.

PAPER: "The role of Facebook in romantic relationship development"

The role of Facebook in romantic relationship development: An exploration of Knapp's relational stage model.
"This study examines the implications of social networking web sites (SNSs) within romantic relationships. Specifically, Knapp’s (1978) stage model of relationships is examined through a new lens wherein the role of SNSs, specifically Facebook, is explored in the escalation stages of romantic relationships (i.e., initiating, experimenting, intensifying, integrating, and bonding). Furthermore, this study sought to discern the interpersonal and social implications of publicly declaring oneself as "In a Relationship" with another person on Facebook (i.e., going "Facebook official" or FBO). Ten mixed-sex focus groups were conducted. Analysis revealed that Facebook is one of the primary means of uncertainty reduction in the initial stages of relationship formation. College students consider FBO to be indicative of an increased level of commitment in relationships. Typically, relationship exclusivity precedes a discussion on becoming FBO, which occurs when the relationship is considered stable. Going FBO has implications for the public proclamation of one’s relationship status as described in Knapp’s model, and these results differ for men and women. Theoretical implications for the role of SNSs in romantic relationships are discussed."

"Participants were 24 men and 31 women from a small Midwestern university, who had romantic relationship experience at the time since they started using Facebook, and ranged from 18 to 23 years of age. They were recruited by soliciting from courses across the university. Some were offered extra credit in exchange for their participation, whereas others participated without compensation. The data for this study come from a larger set of focus groups conducted on Facebook users. Also 10 mixed-sex groups ranging in size from four to eight participants were analyzed. Participants reported spending an average of 2.39 h (SD ¼ 1.25) each day actively using Facebook (i.e., not just logged in, but using the interface)."


Please remember:
Experience had shown serious daters never use social networking sites/applications for dating purposes and Online daters belong to 3, 4, 5 or 6 online dating sites at the same time.

Social networking/applications could merge with online dating for fun, for flirting, for entertainment purposes, for instant gratification.
Social networking and online dating for serious daters are like water and oil, they will never mix.
Social dating is vaporware. 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.
Innovations are not adding more bells and whistles to actual online dating sites.
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.

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 (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! The only way to revolutionize the Online Dating Industry is using the 16PF5 normative personality test, available in different languages to assess personality of members, or a proprietary test with exactly the same traits of the 16PF5 and expressing compatibility with eight decimals (needs a quantized pattern comparison method, part of pattern recognition by cross-correlation, to calculate similarity between prospective mates.)

Woman sues Match for USD10 million

Mary Kay Beckham barely survived being stabbed 10 times with a butcher’s knife by a man she met on Match. 
Police say the assailant, Wade Ridley, also confessed to killing another woman he met on the dating site.
Beckham’s lawyer says Match lulls customers into a “false sense of security,” and is suing the company for USD10 million.

Please remember the Jana Claudia Gómez Menéndez case
and
the Sonia Varaschin case. (not sure if she was related to PlentyOfFish,  A denounce never investigated???)

Also read Theresa Saldana case.

Have you seen how Match Japan operates?
It has little traffic but Japaneses need to upload up to 7 certificates to increase reliability of their profiles.
Human proof: a copy of driver’s license, health insurance, passports.
Address proof: inhabitant vote, invoices from different services.
Working proof: Employee proof
Earnings proof: The withholding certificate which can prove the earnings of the preceding year, the final return, either one of the certificates for paid taxes.
Graduation proof: Diploma or graduation certificate.
Celibacy proof: The celibacy certificate from certificate for marriage information service / marriage consultation trader.
Credit card proof: When charge service of match is purchased (purchase with credit card certification), credit card proof becomes effective.
They are like ID verification and (I think) the employment certificate can perform as a background check if the employer had checked criminal records.
You upload the certificates in JPEG format (fully scanned or photographed) and the Match Japanese Team review them one by one. Then they add the certificate seals to your profile (the ones you had uploaded and they were approved by Match Team)
When other dater sees your profile, he/she can request you to disclose those certificates, and if you agree, then you show the scanned certificates (I think that is the way it works)

eHarmony Japan also offered those features:

The Online Dating Industry has no/weak Legislation, no ID verification, low reliable background checks, no Quality Norms.
No one compatibility matching method is Scientifically Proven.
BUT
A variety of new laws, or new interpretations of existing laws, could subject dating sites to claims or otherwise harm their business.

Leia & Lena, 2 fake profiles at eHarmony for test purposes!

"eHarmony as an Information Retrieval System: Searching, Matching, and Matchmaking" (page 150)

Introduction
Since 2000, the internet dating site eHarmony has specialized in matching heterosexual singles for long-term relationships leading to marriage (Prodhan, 2008); integrating a sophisticated, psychological profiling system within an online dating framework to make finding love less arbitrary. eHarmony promotes a principle of self discovery and of potential partners, and it is through a hybrid of current technology and old-fashioned matchmaking that their foundation of introspection and data processing is formed (Orr, 2004, pg. 55): "By combining the best scientific research with detailed profiling of every member, we screen thousands of single men and single women to bring you only the ones that have the potential to be truly right for you" (eHarmony Website, 2012, Scientific Matchmaking, para. 1). PAGE 150
....................
For purposes of testing the criteria of measurement, as well as potentially varied outcomes of the search results, 2 user-models were devised: "Leia", or user-model 1, is your typical "loser" type, intelligent and artistically inclined, yet socially awkward and severely emotionally maladjusted, as opposed to user-model 2 who embodies user-model 1's paradox. "Lena" views herself as highly social, gregarious, emotionally stable, optimistic, extremely attractive and healthy—she is "perfect" in the way, albeit in a bland, superficial sort of way, that she doesn't exist; and doesn't, as she was strictly contrived for testing purposes. PAGE 151
..................
As evidenced by user-model 2 who was purposely constructed to reflect a highly superficial, 5'7 beauty with shallow interests in cultural, artistic, and intellectual pursuits, "Lena's" profile was considered desirable by the interface and her potential matches; and judging by her potential matches, one would say the results are fairly accurate.
Despite eHarmony's efforts to appraise the human personality within a scientific sensibility, since the human element is not taken into consideration until communication ensues, which occurs after matches are reviewed, this appraisal still remains on a superficial level. The 29 dimensions of compatibility do not comprise the real-life chemistry that must occur in order for a match to be successful; the test itself does not test these facets but must be done so in a real-life, interpersonal setting. A personality test cannot also realistically take into account all facets of personality, as its entirety is multi-dimensional; this encompasses quirks, minor subtleties and the overall complexities of character, including the scope of any unperceived, individual flaws that may be undetected by a static questionnaire. PAGE 155
------------------------------------------------------
Please remember eHarmony has 2 bogus patents about its Compatibility Matching Algorithm.

eHarmony, a 12+ years old obsolete site, uses a Compatibility Matching Algorithm based on personality similarity with the Big5 normative personality test and Dyadic Adjustment Scale (invented by Dr. Graham B. Spanier in 1976) as its core. The Guided Communication Process (a mutual filtering step) is an appendix of its main matching algorithm.

eHarmony is not "scientifically proven" because eHarmony Labs could not prove eHarmony's matching algorithm can match prospective partners who will have more stable and satisfying relationships -and very low divorce rates- than couples matched by chance, astrological destiny, personal preferences, searching on one's own, or other technique as the control group in a peer reviewed Scientific Paper.

eHarmony's Compatibility Matching Algorithm consists of 2 stages.
* A mutual filtering stage common to any online dating site like PlentyOfFish, Match, Chemistry, True, PerfectMatch, Parship, MeeticAffinity, OkCupid, Be2, FriendScout24, etc.
* The core stage.


The core stage of eHarmony's Compatibility Matching Algorithm:
1) The normative Big5 test to assess personality (The Big 5 is good for guidance/orientative purposes but not good enough for predictive purposes)
2) Dyadic Adjustment Scale (invented in 1976) to calculate compatibility (similarity) between prospective mates.
3) The Guided Communication Process (a mutual filtering step) designed to narrow even more the field of persons you give a better chance of getting along with, and also it is useful for feedback purposes.
  

PAPER: " .... Is the Internet Driving Competition or Market Monopolization?"

Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay: Is the Internet Driving Competition or Market Monopolization?
Abstract: This paper discusses the general characteristics of online markets from a competition theory perspective and the implications for competition policy. Three important Internet markets are analyzed in more detail: search engines, online auction platforms, and social networks. Given the high level of market concentration and the development of competition over time, we use our theoretical insights to examine whether leading Internet platforms have non-temporary market power. Based on this analysis we answer the question whether any specific market regulation beyond general competition law rules is warranted in these three online markets.

"it is rather obvious that many very successful Internet-based companies are nearly monopolists. Google, Youtube, Facebook, and Skype are typical examples for Internet firms who dominate their relevant markets and who leave only limited space for a relatively small competitive fringe." .... "Counter-examples are online real estate brokers, travel agents, and many online dating sites, where several competing platforms coexist."


Please remember: The Online Dating Industry has no/weak Legislation, no ID verification, low reliable background checks, no Quality Norms.
No one compatibility matching method is Scientifically Proven.
BUT
A variety of new laws, or new interpretations of existing laws, could subject dating sites to claims or otherwise harm their business.

Worldwide there are less than 7 million paid members (adding up all the ones at eHarmony, Match, Chemistry, Meetic, MeeticAffinity, OkCupid, PeopleMedia's Communities, PlentyOfFish, Parship/eCift, etc). The market remains enormous for new players.

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.

Dating Algorithms: Continuing the Conversation...?

To Online Personals Watch, the post "Dating Algorithms: Continuing the Conversation..." my answer is:

 "online dating" is a broad concept to define a large group of different proposals. (searching by your own, Matching based on Self-Reported Data / Bidirectional Recommendation Engines and Compatibility Matching Algorithms)
 
There is no innovations since years for the Online Dating Industry!

 C level executives do not  pay attention to latest research from Academics which could be beneficial for the Online Dating Industry. 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%). In the same range as searching by your own.
 
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!

I had reviewed over 55 compatibility matching engines intended for serious dating since 2003, when I had discovered "the online dating sound barrier" problem.
 
The 3 latest discoveries in theories of romantic relationships development with commitment.
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.
STRICT PERSONALITY SIMILARITY and not "meet other people with similar interests"

 Breaking "the online dating sound barrier" is to achieve at least:
3 most compatible persons in a 100,000 persons database.
12 most compatible persons in a 1,000,000 persons database.
48 most compatible persons in a 10,000,000 persons database.
100 times better than Compatibility Matching Algorithms used by actual online dating sites!

The only way to achieve that is:
- using the 16PF5 normative personality test, available in different languages to assess personality of members, or a proprietary test with exactly the same traits of the 16PF5.
The ensemble of the 16PF5 is: 10E16, big number as All World Population is nearly 7.0 * 10E9
- expressing compatibility with eight decimals, like The pattern 6.7.6.8.9.6.7.7.8.7.2.5.8.7.3.4 is 92.55033557% +/- 0.00000001% similar to the pattern 7.7.6.8.8.7.6.5.8.7.4.5.7.7.3.4
Using a quantized pattern comparison method (part of pattern recognition by cross-correlation) to calculate similarity between prospective mates.

That is the only way to INNOVATE and revolutionize the Online Dating Industry.

High precision in matching algorithms is precisely the key to open the door and leave the infancy of compatibility testing.
It is all about achieving the eighth decimal!
With 8 decimals, you have more precision than any person could achieve by searching on one's own, but the only way to achieve the eighth decimal is using analysis and correlation with quantized patterns.


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 RUBBISH and perform as placebo.
 

Facebook Graph Search / Was too premature to launch ?

Steven Loeb from VATOR had published the article "Facebook Graph Search was too premature to launch"

I do not think it is too premature, because I think it is too obsolete!

Search Engines are evolving to Recommender Systems (a.k.a recommendation engines) and they 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 using the Like button) 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.
As they need to calculate personality similarity between users and there are different formulas to calculate similarity those recommender systems are morphing to .......... compatibility matching engines as the one used by online dating sites like eHarmony, PlentyOfFish, Chemistry and others!!!
They mostly use the Big5 to assess personality and the Pearson correlation coefficient to calculate similarity.
What comes after the pure Social Networking model?
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 proposals with the normative 16PF5 personality test. The market remains enormous!!

PAPER "Quantifying the association between personality similarity and marital adjustment .. "

"Are spouses who are more similar in terms of their personalities more satisfied with their marriages?" Short answer, yes.


NEW PAPER
"Quantifying the association between personality similarity and marital adjustment using profile correlations: A cautionary tale"

Profile correlations are sometimes used to quantify personality trait similarity between relationship partners. These coefficients are then used to test whether similar couples are happier couples. The current paper describes several different methods of calculating profile correlations and outlines procedures for testing whether these coefficients are related to marital adjustment in a sample of 1643 couples. There was little evidence that profile correlations were related to marital adjustment after accounting for normativeness (i.e., the degree to which an individual's profile matched the typical personality profile) and when accounting for each individual's personality attributes. Results suggest that researchers using profile correlations should be cautious given that the interpretation and psychological meaning of results often depend on how the coefficients are calculated.

"... research about similarity informs how psychologists evaluate online dating services that often claim personality compatibility is an important ingredient in successful relationships" (I add Actual matching algorithms used by eHarmony, Chemistry, PlentyOfFish and others, even behavioural recommender systems, can not be improved, they need to be discarded NOW.)

The above paper is also related to the paper "Is spousal similarity for personality a matter of convergence or selection?"


First thing I do when receiving any paper is to read the title, then the abstract and check bibliography cited.

In this case I was surprised to see some importants papers not even cited like:

"Only the congruent survive - Personality similarities in couples. Personality and Individual Differences" 2008 Rammstedt and Schupp.

"Personality influences on marital satisfaction: Integrating the empirical evidence using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) model" 2009 Charania and Ickes.

"Personality Similarities Predict Relationship Satisfaction in 23 Countries" Erina Lee, Gian Gonzaga, and Emily M. Maywood (from eHarmony Labs)

"Similarity predicts relationship satisfaction in Brazil" 2011 Erina Lee, Gian Gonzaga.

"Partner Preferences of the Intellectually Gifted" 2012 Pieternel Dijkstra, D. P. H. Barelds et al.

"Relationship Compatibility, Compatible Matches, and Compatibility Matching" 2011 Susan Sprecher.

"Generalization in mate choice copying in humans" 2012 Robert I. Bowers, Skyler S. Place, Peter M. Todd, Lars Penke, and Jens B. Asendorpf.

"Personality, Partner Similarity and Couple Satisfaction: Do Opposites Attract or Birds of a Feather Flock Together?"  2011 Adrienne Kaufman

"Personality similarity between self, partner and parents" 2011 D. P. H. Barelds and Pieternel Dijkstra.

"Perceptions of Ideal and Former Partners' Personality and Similarity" 2010 Pieternel Dijkstra / D. P. H. Barelds.

"Personality similarity, perceptual accuracy, and relationship satisfaction in dating and married couples" 2011 Mieke Decuyper, Marleen De Bolle and Filip De Fruyt.

"It's that time of the month: The effects of hormonal shifts on female mate value, depressive symptomology, and short term mating orientation." 2011 Heather Adams and Victor Luévano.

From the paper "METHODOLOGICAL AND DATA ANALYTIC ADVANCES IN THE STUDY OF INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS: INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE"

At page 413 says: "It is vital for the study of personal relationships, as for any scientific discipline, to develop methodologies that are specifically designed to address the questions posed by the discipline. The articles in this special issue represent an effort in that direction. Perhaps equally important is the need for individuals who are involved in relationships study to learn these new techniques and to apply them in their research. It is also important for investigators to challenge statisticians to create new analytic techniques when existing ones are inadequate. These tasks are left to you, the reader."

That is because I had invented a new quantitative method to calculate similarity.


In compatibility matching algorithms there are 2 steps:
1) to measure personality traits or other variables.
2) to calculate compatibility between prospective mates.

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.

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)

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! The only way to revolutionize the Online Dating Industry is using the 16PF5 normative personality test, available in different languages to assess personality of members, or a proprietary test with exactly the same traits of the 16PF5 and expressing compatibility with eight decimals (needs a quantized pattern comparison method, part of pattern recognition by cross-correlation, to calculate similarity between prospective mates.)
High precision in matching algorithms is precisely the key to open the door and leave the infancy of compatibility testing.
It is all about achieving the eighth decimal!
With 8 decimals, you have more precision than any person could achieve by searching on one's own, but the only way to achieve the eighth decimal is using analysis and correlation with quantized patterns.
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.

PAPER: "Recommendation in reciprocal and bipartite social networks ...

I had been reading the paper "Recommendation in reciprocal and bipartite social networks - a case study of online dating"

I do not know which online dating site the authors used to test their recommender.

The masterminds behind the Facebook's graph search feature should also read that paper and notice "online dating" is a broad concept to define a large group of different proposals.

WorldWide, there are over 5,000 (five thousand) online dating sites they can be classified as:
1.0: "Browsing/Searching Options, Powerful Searching Engines" " "You can fastly search for the person you want, but most probably that person does not exist or does not want to meet you because you are not compatible with him/her."
1.5: "Unidirectional Recommendation Engines"
2.0: "Matching based on Self-Reported Data / Bidirectional Recommendation Engines"
3.0: "Compatibility Matching Algorithms"
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"

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.


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.
In case you did not notice, recommender systems are morphing to .......... compatibility matching engines, as the same used in the Online Dating Industry since years, with low success rates, because they mostly use the Big5 to assess personality and the Pearson correlation coefficient to calculate similarity.

Please remember: Personality traits are highly stable in persons over 25 years old to 45 years old.

 
In compatibility matching methods there are 2 steps:
1) to objectively measure personality traits or other human variables (with the 16PF5 test) without distortion.
2) to calculate compatibility between prospective mates 

IPSATIVE personality tests are OBSOLETE (self-descriptive questionnaires) and should be discarded: MBTI (PerfectMatch), DISC (ThomasKnowsPeople), Enneagram (Dopasowani) or other proprietary ipsative tests like the ones used at Chemistry, ButterfliesAgain, Doskonalapara, PembePanjur, LittleHint, oneGoodLove and others.

NORMATIVE personality tests like Big5 versions used at PlentyOfFish, eHarmony , Meetic Affinity, Parship, Be2, True are good for guidance (for orientation) purposes but 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

Online dating sites using the Big Five model could be considered obsolete sites, because the Big Five model has been proven as "an incomplete model"
  Normative tests can not simply be translated, because you need the norm for that test, and that norm is actualized each and every time Census Figures are released

The 16PF5 test is available in
- English for the United States and the Norm for the United States (sample of individuals with the same demographic characteristics of the United States).
- English for Canada and the Norm for Canada (sample of individuals with the same demographic characteristics of Canada)
- English for the United Kingdom and the Norm for the United Kingdom (sample of individuals with the same demographic characteristics of the United Kingdom).
- English for Australia and the Norm for Australia (sample of individuals with the same demographic characteristics of Australia).
- French for France and the Norm for France.
- German for Germany and the Norm for Germany.
- Spanish for Spain and the Norm for Spain.
- Italian for Italy and the Norm for Italy.
and many more "With over 60 years of research and application behind it, the 16PF5 has become internationally well known and respected, with over 20 different translated versions."

The output of the 16PF5 test are 16 variables STens (Standard Tens) taking integer values from 1 to 10. STens divide the score scale into ten units.
STens have the advantage that they enable results to be thought of in terms of bands of scores, rather than absolute raw scores. These bands are narrow enough to distinguish statistically significant differences between candidates, but wide enough not to over emphasize minor differences between candidates.

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! The only way to revolutionize the Online Dating Industry is using the 16PF5 normative personality test, available in different languages to assess personality of members, or a proprietary test with exactly the same traits of the 16PF5 and expressing compatibility with eight decimals (needs a quantized pattern comparison method, part of pattern recognition by cross-correlation, to calculate similarity between prospective mates.)
High precision in matching algorithms is precisely the key to open the door and leave the infancy of compatibility testing.
It is all about achieving the eighth decimal!
With 8 decimals, you have more precision than any person could achieve by searching on one's own, but the only way to achieve the eighth decimal is using analysis and correlation with quantized patterns.
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.

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!! 


---------------
Which is the RIGHT approach to innovate in the Personality Based Recommender Systems Arena?
The same approach to innovate in the Online Dating Industry == 16PF5 test or similar to assess personality traits and a new method to calculate similarity between quantized patterns. Oh that is exactly ............ guess ............. yes ........ LIFEPROJECT METHOD, ready since 2001!

TWO new fresh papers for the Online Dating Industry.

PAPER "Do men vary more than women in personality? A study in 51 cultures"
"Do men vary more than women in personality? Evolutionary, genetic, and cultural arguments suggest that hypothesis. In this study we tested it using 12,156 college student raters from 51 cultures who described a person they knew well on the 3rd-person version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. In most cultures, male targets varied more than female targets, and ratings by female informants varied more than ratings by male informants, which may explain why higher variances for men are not found in self-reports. Variances were higher in more developed, and effects of target sex were stronger in more individualistic societies. It seems that individualistic cultures enable a less restricted expression of personality, resulting in larger variances and particularly so among men."

The measurement instrument was Form R of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992), a 240-item measure of the Five-Factor model of personality. It measures the five basic personality dimensions Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), Openness to Experience (O), Agreeableness (A), and Conscientiousness (C).
Translation and administration of the measurement instruments constituted an international collaborative effort. Valid peer reports were available for 12,156 target persons (51.9% female) from 48 countries, but as samples from French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland, from England and Northern Ireland, and from China and Hong Kong were kept separate, the number of samples was 51. Sample sizes varied from N = 106 (Northern Ireland) to N = 919 (United States), 63.5% of the informants being female. The distribution of target age was bimodal with local maxima of 21 and 45 years, reflecting the instruction to describe a college-aged male or female person, or an adult male or female person beyond age 40.
For statistical inference, we relied on hierarchical linear modeling, testing a three-level model. The outcome variable was the squared deviation of each target person's score from the culture-, sex-, and facet-specific mean. As a variance is the average squared deviation of individual observations from their mean, the sample mean of squared deviation scores (SDS) is the variance in that sample.

Stronger personality differences in more developed societies may reflect more opportunities and more diverse behavioral options in such cultures, allowing a less restricted expression of personality dispositions, whereas expressions of personality may be more restricted in less developed societies reflecting lack of money, stricter social norms, lack of political freedom, and lack of educational and vocational opportunities.

PAPER "Sex Differences in Variability in Personality: A Study in Four Samples"
Objective: Men vary more than women in cognitive abilities and physical attributes, and we expected that men would vary more in personality too. That this has not been found previously may reflect that (a) personality was measured by self-reports that confound target sex with informant sex, and (b) men actually vary more but accentuate personality differences less than women.
Method: We analyzed informant reports and self-reports on the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R or NEO PI-3) collected for two community and two student samples from four countries: Czech Republic (N = 714; age M = 36.1, SD = 14.1; 58% women), Estonia (N = 1,685; age M = 42.6, SD = 13.4; 58% women), Belgium (N = 345; age M = 18.4, SD = 3.0; 78% women), and Germany (N = 302; age M = 23.4, SD = 2.7; 56% women).
Results: Higher male than female variability was found in each sample for informant reports of Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Men but not women were overrepresented in both tails of the distributions of several personality traits.
Conclusions: According to liability-threshold models of mental disorders, this may contribute to men's overrepresentation in some kinds of deviant groups.

NONE of the above studies had checked if women are taking contraceptive pills or other hormonal therapy.

Dr. Martina Hřebíčková had also presented the poster "Regional stereotypes do not reflect personality traits of real people" at the ASSOCIATION for RESEARCH in PERSONALITY 2nd Biennial Conference / Riverside, California / June 16-18, 2011

Remember to read papers:
Predictability of Personality Traits is Dismal !!!
"Personality Similarities Predict Relationship Satisfaction in 23 Countries"
"Culture and Close Relationships: A Psychological View"

--------------------------------
NO INNOVATIONS SINCE YEARS IN THE ONLINE DATING INDUSTRY.

C level executives do not  pay attention to latest research from Academics which could be beneficial for the Online Dating Industry.

Posing personality: Is it possible to enact the Big Five traits in photographs?

NEW AND FRESH PAPER!

"Posing personality: Is it possible to enact the Big Five traits in photographs?"


Abstract: Person perception research has focused on the accuracy of observers receiving truthful target information; however, in real life people may often wish to manage the impression that they convey. We investigated whether people can "pose personality" in photographs. Sixty target participants posed each in 10 photographs in which they sought to express the high and low poles of the Big Five traits by means of physical appearances. Observers (N=401) rated targets' personality and likability from each photograph. The results showed that targets successfully posed as Extravert and, to lesser extent, as Introvert, Neurotic, Non-Conscientious, and Open, and that targets could not convey impressions of high and low Agreeableness.

People often wish to adjust and control the image that they convey to others, but this tendency has received relatively little attention in the literature. Given the hugely increased possibilities for connecting with others online, the present findings according to which people are, in portrait photographs, able to "fake" some of their personality characteristics (e.g., high Extraversion, high Openness), but not others (e.g., high Agreeableness) are important.

This paper is a BIG PUNCH to online dating sites offering Personality Traits analysis based on facial features (like  Soul2Match, FindYourFaceMate, FaceReader from Profiler1) helping to detect levels of soulmate love and friendship like the Digital Physiognomy software.
BIG PUNCH also to speeddating events.

AND
BIG PUNCH also to Behavioural Recommender Systems / Recommendation Engines for Online Dating sites.

NO INNOVATIONS SINCE YEARS IN THE ONLINE DATING INDUSTRY.

C level executives do not  pay attention to latest research from Academics which could be beneficial for the Online Dating Industry.

WE HAVE CHEMISTRY! ??? NOT

Last year Dr. Helen Fisher had published the article "WE HAVE CHEMISTRY!" The Role of Four Primary Temperament Dimensions in Mate Choice and Partner Compatibility. Fisher, HE (2012) Geoff Warburton, Ed. The Psychotherapist, Autumn 2012:Issue 52: 8-9. United Kingdom.

8 long years ago, during December 2004, Dr. Helen Fisher was contacted by the people from Match to create Chemistry, the last innovation at Match, a compatibility matching method.

I remember I had seen two draft papers from Chemistry:
The first clearly shows:
a) that Chemistry has a low successful "1.2.3 MEET in person step-by-step process", low successful first meeting rate for its members.b) its matching method only reported early stage attraction between prospective mates and after the first meeting; in some persons attraction reduces its level OR worse even, morphs/metamorphoses to rejection. i.e. it is working only for short term mating!!!

The second shows:
a) the high serotonin type (Builder) who is attracted to people like themselves and the high dopamine type (Explorer) who also is attracted to people like themselves, could be looking for a LONG term romantic relationship.
and
b) the high estrogen Negotiator who is attracted to the high testosterone Director and vice versa, could be looking for a SHORT term romantic relationship.

The persons who use Chemistry, meet in person, and after that want to continue dating, is only a very small percentage of them. Less than 6% reach the first meeting in person stage. Of that 6% who reach the first meeting in person stage, not known exactly the percentage of persons who want to continue dating, but I suspect it is very low.

The success rate* of Chemistry is less than 6%. The majority of their members are not going to achieve a long term relationship with commitment (or marriage) using that site.
*success rate == percentage of persons who leave the site because they found someone compatible.

There is no Scientifc Paper, peer reviewed by Academics from different Universities (public scrutiny of findings) showing Chemistry's matching algorithm can match prospective partners who will have more stable and satisfying relationships than couples matched by chance, astrological destiny, personal preferences, searching on one's own, or other technique as the control group AND there never will be any paper because IPSATIVE personality tests like the proprietary one used at Chemistry are OBSOLETE (self-descriptive questionnaires) and should be discarded.

I had applied reverse engineering and discovered that Chemistry is in the range of 3 or 4 persons as highly compatible per 1,000 persons screened, the same range any person can achieve by searching on one's own or mutual filtering methods (recommendation engines).  

IPSATIVE personality tests are OBSOLETE (self-descriptive questionnaires) and should be discarded: MBTI (PerfectMatch), DISC (ThomasKnowsPeople), Enneagram (Dopasowani) or other proprietary ipsative tests like the ones used at Chemistry, ButterfliesAgain, Doskonalapara, PembePanjur, LittleHint, oneGoodLove and others.


NORMATIVE personality tests like Big5 versions used at PlentyOfFish, eHarmony , Meetic Affinity, Parship, Be2, True are good for orientative purposes but not good enough for predictive purposes.
eHarmony, True, PerfectMatch, MeeticAffinity, Parship, Be2, PlentyOfFish, Chemistry and others are in the range of 3 to 4 persons compatible per 1,000 persons screened. Any member of those sites receives on average 3 to 4 prospective mates as compatible for dating purposes per 1,000 (one thousand) members screened in the database. So in a 10,000,000 persons database, any member will see 30,000 to 40,000 members as highly compatible; 30,000 persons is the population of an average small city. Any person can achieve 3 to 4 persons as highly compatible per 1,000 persons screened, searching by his/her own or by mutual filtering methods!

eHarmony , True, PerfectMatch, MeeticAffinity, Parship, Be2, PlentyOfFish, Chemistry and others have a low effectiveness/efficiency level of their matching algorithms.
The Online Dating Industry does not need a 10% improvement, a 50% improvement or a 100% improvement. It does need "a 100 times better improvement"





Actual matching algorithms used by eHarmony, Chemistry, PlentyOfFish and others, even behavioural recommender systems, can not be improved, they need to be discarded NOW.

"online dating" is a broad concept.

Seth Fiegerman at Mashable had published the article "How Facebook Graph Search Could Disrupt Online Dating" but ..."online dating" is a broad concept to define a large group of different proposals.

WorldWide, there are over 5,000 (five thousand) online dating sites they can be classified as:
1.0: "Browsing/Searching Options, Powerful Searching Engines" " "You can fastly search for the person you want, but most probably that person does not exist or does not want to meet you because you are not compatible with him/her."
1.5: "Unidirectional Recommendation Engines"
2.0: "Matching based on Self-Reported Data / Bidirectional Recommendation Engines"
3.0: "Compatibility Matching Algorithms"
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"


There is a range convergence phenomenon between the 3 mains tools online dating sites offer now: Searching by your own, Recommendation Engines and Compatibility Matching Methods based on proprietary models or the Big5. Any member receives on average 3 to 4 prospective mates as selected / recommended / compatible for dating purposes per 1,000 members screened in the database.

They all 3 are performing the same for serious daters, with a high percentage of false positives, like gun machines firing flowers.

Most probably Dr.  Andrew T. Fiore, Data Scientist at Facebook is one of the masterminds behind graph search. Check some of his publications to understand why he is not going to revolutionize the Online Dating Industry for serious daters, graph search can kill fun dating proposals like Badoo, HowAboutWe, Zoosk, LikeIt (rebranded from TheCompleteMe), even OkCupid and PlentyOfFish (POF).
(especially the Thesis ROMANTIC REGRESSIONS An Analysis of Behavior in Online Dating Systems September 2004)

Experience had shown serious daters never use social networking sites/applications for dating purposes and Online daters belong to 3, 4, 5 or 6 online dating sites at the same time.

Social networking/applications could merge with online dating for fun, for flirting, for entertainment purposes, for instant gratification.
Social networking and online dating for serious daters are like water and oil, they will never mix.
Social dating is vaporware. 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.
Innovations are not adding more bells and whistles to actual online dating sites.
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.


- No actual online dating site offering a compatibility matching method [OkCupid, eHarmony, eSyncrony, True, MeeticAffinity, Chemistry, PerfectMatch, Be2, Parship, MyType, RewardingLove, PlentyOfFishMarriagePredictor and others] has a credible peer reviewed Scientifc Paper by Academics (public scrutiny of findings) from different Universities showing its matching algorithm can match prospective partners who will have more stable and satisfying relationships with low divorce rates than couples matched by chance, astrological destiny, personal preferences, searching on one's own, or other technique as the control group.
They are all like placebo, because they have less or at least the same precision as searching on one's own OR less or at least the same precision as recommendation engines [in the range of 3 or 4 persons compatible per 1,000 persons screened]
Moreover
The success rate* of Chemistry is less than 6%**.
The success rate* of eHarmony is less than 10%**.
*success rate == percentage of persons who leave the site because they found someone compatible.
**estimated by Fernando Ardenghi using reverse engineering.

The majority, over 90% of their members are not going to achieve a long term relationship with commitment (or marriage) using those sites.

The Online Dating Industry is performing like the Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Industry before the USA Food and Drug Administration was created.
The Online Dating Industry is selling elixirs, tonics, snake oil liniments and other patent medicine.

The Online Dating Industry needs Innovations, but the innovations the Online Dating Industry needs will come from only one source: the latest discoveries in theories of romantic relationships development with commitment 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.  [uncovered by Eastwick & Finkel (2008); Kurzban & Weeden (2007); Todd, Penke, Fasolo, & Lenton (2007)]
(Behavioural recommender systems or other system that learns your preferences are useless)

III) The strict personality similarity axis.
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.

Also 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 and they need to calculate personality similarity between them.

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!