Remembering the Tunguska event

The Tunguska event was an enormously powerful explosion that occurred in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at about 0:14 UT on June 30 1908. The explosion is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 mi) above the Earth's surface.
The energy of the blast was nearly 15 megatons of TNT roughly equal to the United States' Castle Bravo thermonuclear bomb tested on March 1, 1954; about 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan (codenamed  Little Boy).

article "The next secrets of the Web"

"The next secrets of the Web"
 "Entrepreneurs should focus on discovering secrets about human behavior, which are cheap to discover but can have a massive impact."

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!!

Chemistry's Team don't want to innovate in nothing!

Last March I had reviewed Chemistry with its new features.


Chemistry's Team  don't want to innovate in nothing!

I had challenged them, several times,  to replace Chemistry, a 7 years old & obsolete site, performing as placebo, with a a new site with a new matching algorithm using the 16PF5 test or similar including 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.
Also there is a similarity trilogy between genetic, mate choice and personality based recommender systems.

But .... Chemistry's Team don't want to innovate in nothing!

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!

eHarmony USA patched the Questionnaire? 3

In previous posts I had written about patches at eHarmony's Questionnaire in Attitudes and Opinions.
It seems to be an adaptive questionnaire it appears when you nearly finish the last question of the "original & old" questionnaire.

eHarmony USA patched the Questionnaire. 2


Last March eHarmony received a "major" redesign and included the Questions feature.

eHarmony is nearly a 12 years old & obsolete site, and a HOAX with any scientific proof.

I had challenged eHarmony's Team, several times,  to replace eHarmony, a 12 years old & obsolete site, performing as placebo, with a a new site with a new matching algorithm using the 16PF5 test or similar including 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.
Also there is a similarity trilogy between genetic, mate choice and personality based recommender systems.
But .... eHarmony's Team don't want to innovate in nothing!

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!

Article about eHarmony's Passwords weaknesses

eHarmony's spokeswoman Ms. Becky Teraoka said: "The security of our users is of the utmost importance to us. Due to our ongoing investigation and cooperation with law enforcement authorities, we cannot comment on these specific points."

The same after every publicized hacking incident.

And, add probably Meetic, Parship, PlentyOfFish, Match, Chemistry, Perfectmatch, and many others, who had suffered hacking attempts or not publicized hacking incidents.

Was it true that "past summer, June 2011, of eHarmony customers suffered as victims of identity theft once the website was successfully hacked and their credit information stolen and utilized in different markets." ? Who knows?

Facebook launches Find Friends Nearby app

 Facebook launches Find "new" Friends Nearby application.
(intended for dating purposes)

But If man A likes playing cards and woman B also likes playing cards, that does not mean man A likes woman B, or woman B can like man A with the same intensity or interest.


Remember:

WOMEN do not like location awareness because they feel being hunted by men.

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.
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.

Meetic (MEET.PA) shares down

Although it was (nearly) entirely bought by the IAC (Nasdaq:IACI), shares went down.

eHarmony USA patched the Questionnaire. 2

Does eHarmony patch the Questionnaire at frequent intervals?

I remember last March I had written about that:
eHarmony USA patched the Questionnaire.

Instead of innovating with a new site and the normative personality 16PF5 test, eHarmony Inc. patches its 12 years old & obsolete site adding some questions to its old Questionnaire.

eHarmony Situation Analysis 2011, document found using Google.

Just found this document using Google, it seems it was from October 2011.

It also seems it was old plans for eHarmony resurrection.

·  Just this past summer, June 2011, of eHarmony customers suffered as victims of identity theft once the website was successfully hacked and their credit information stolen and utilized in different markets.

The direction of the strategic focus is to diversify. The strategic focus will leverages eHarmony’s brand to address the rising number of competitors entering the online dating industry. The recommended goals and objectives will utilize the popularity of eHarmony’s brand to broaden into a new segment of the target market, “medium term” daters. Also, the focus is to complement the company’s established reputation as the #1 Trusted Online Dating service with the image of being a good corporate citizen.

The Jazzed website was created to tailor to the needs of customers termed “medium term” daters.

Goal A: To aggressively pursue the “medium term” dater segment
Objective 1: To increase traffic into Jazzed website by 10 percent, within six months following the marketing mix campaign
Objective 2: To convert 5 percent of the “declined membership” from the primary eHarmony website into Jazzed subscribers over the next twelve months following the marketing mix campaign.

eHarmony has taken into consideration that for every successful match they make, they loose two subscriptions.

The advertising budget will increase from USD90 million per year to USD95 million per year, with USD8 million allocated to the Jazzed re-launch, and USD2 million for promotion of the philanthropic initiative.

Marketing Strategy
eHarmony’s marketing strategy in the past has been to capture the forty something single men and women looking for a long-term relationship leading to marriage. This has worked for them in the past, but when they first started the online dating website they were the only website of this nature. They were the first to capture a market that was previously overlooked by all others. To maintain their elite status in the online dating industry, eHarmony will continue to aggressively seek this market but will also expand it’s parameters to include the younger generation X and Y’ers that might not necessarily be looking for marriage but companionship with the possibility of marriage later or just looking for someone to connect with that is like minded, which we are calling the “medium-term dater”.
The 2012 Marketing strategy for eHarmony will include the following:

· Reach a new target market – Gen X and Y by steering the medium-term dater to alternate website Jazzed.

· Increase customer awareness of subsidiary websites for dating based on race, age, religion, geographic location, sexual orientation, level of interest, etc.

· Increase brand image by launching a philanthropy campaign in which we donate 1 million dollars to the charity of choice.

· Offer current and new customer’s “bring a friend” coupons to increase new customers to the website

Recently Right Brain Advertising  had published some fresh documents about “eHarmony’s plans”, but if they do what it is planned, eHarmony Inc. will die peacefully, going directly to bankruptcy.

Any CEO needs to show success, achievements during his/her tenure. Mr. Verba should replace eHarmony, a 12 years old & obsolete site, performing as placebo, with a a new site with a new matching algorithm using the 16PF5 test or similar including the latest discoveries in theories of romantic relationships development with commitment.

Ten fake profiles, one OkCupid experiment

Jon Millward published the results of ten fake OkCupid profiles to asess the male-female dynamic in online dating.

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

OkCupid is for fun dating, for entertainment purposes, for instant gratifications; not for serious dating.

Since the beginning of 2003, I had been testing online dating sites -intended for serious daters- by creating dummy (fake) Male/Female profiles and using them as test points for reverse engineering purposes.

Only 3 major discoveries can help to revolutionize the online dating industry.
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.

PAPER The common neural bases between sexual desire and love

 
Dr. Stephanie Ortigue Cacioppo from University of Geneva had published the paper "The common neural bases between sexual desire and love: A multilevel kernel density fMRI analysis"

BrainDesire uses that research for Dating and Relationships

Please remember personality = temperament + character
Personality is composed of two basic types of traits:
traits that an individual acquires, dimensions of character;
and
traits with biological underpinnings, dimensions of temperament (Cloninger 1987).

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.
*Although no actual fresh paper uses the 16PF normative personality test (they mostly use different versions of the normative Big5 personality test instead) and linear or logistic multivariate regression equations to calculate similarity, they clearly show a connection between personality similarity and marital happiness / dyadic success (stability and satisfaction) for some persons.
**Similarity is a word that has different meanings for different persons or companies, it exactly depends on how mathematically is defined.

Also there is a similarity trilogy between genetic, mate choice and personality based recommender systems.

TeAmoRU offers a free subscription

After a "major redesign", TeAmoRU offers a free subscription if you invite 30 or more "friends" from your contact list.
Please remember TeAmoRU is a copycat of eHarmony.

eHarmony Japan obituary.

The former link www.eharmony.co.jp redirects now to www.eharmony.com
eHarmony Japan was never launched but it revealed eHarmony has not any “secret sauce”
Its matching algorithm performs as placebo.

The iDate conference June 2012 (My Final Conclusions)

iDate June 2012 conference was held last 21st and 22nd in Beverly Hills, California, USA

The mobile concept had been evolving since last 5 years.
5 years ago "mobile" was smartphones, Treos and Blackberrys. Now "mobile" is tablets.


The purely free online dating model is dead.
Have you seen how PlentyOfFish (POF) had removed its motto "100% free. Put Away Your Credit Card"?


The next big hacking incident at PlentyOfFish, will be an inside job, from a dishonest (former) employee. POF will end like the LZ129 Hindenburg.


Social Dating is vaporware
Experience had shown serious daters do not tolerate friends / parents / neighbours / relatives / fans or other social networking users to be involved in a private matter as building a personal relationship with future in mind because they are "interested third parties ingredients" in a process that only concerns 2 persons. 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.

Remember:
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.
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.


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)
In case you did not notice, recommender systems are morphing to .......... compatibility matching engines!!!


Please see also The Internet's impact on aspiring countries report from McKinsey


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!


It is all about innovation!

Group Dating like Grouper? Forget it for serious dating

Group dating was offered by MeetUp and Tribe.net during 2003 to 2005
I remember other proposals during 2005 to 2012 like: Compa.UK. Doubledate.com, MixandMeet, 8at8, TableforSix, SmartDate, HowAboutWe, Zoosk, Zin.gl, Engage (then rebranded to Ignighter group dating), Thread, Triangulate, Gelato (then rebranded to Twnty), WooMe, 12Like, LittleHint.

The conclusion was always the same: Persons do not like / do not want group dating.

Latin America Leads as the Most Socially-Engaged Global Region

Latin America Leads as the Most Socially-Engaged Global Region with Users Spending 7.5 Hours on Social Networking Sites in April.

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a global leader in measuring the digital world, today released its latest report on social networking in Latin America from its comScore Media Metrix service. The latest research shows that more than 127 million Latin Americans ages 15 and older visited a social networking destination from a home or work computer in April 2012, with the average visitor spending 7.5 hours social networking during the month. The report also provided analysis on emerging social network Pinterest.com, which saw its audience increase eightfold in the first four months of the year to reach 1.3 million Latin Americans in April.


In is interesting to compare to the older report "It's a Social World: A Global Look at Social Networking"

Who could the next disrupters be?
Of course 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. 
 

About Skout case with minors/teens.

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%).

What level of disaster will it take to lead to reform and new guidelines in the industry?

As I had said before, Skout will be a case of stupid investors' series.

The Power of Like 2: How Social Marketing Works (for big fishes)

The Power of Like2, How Social Marketing Works .... for big companies like WaltMart, Disney, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonalds, MTV, Converse, etc.


I use Firefox 13 with Adblock Plus Add-on, Windows 7 Starter Edition operating system with 2048M of RAM, AVG antivirus free edition 2012 and 1Mbps Internet Broadband.

(I never see the majority of ads thanks to Adblock Plus Add-on)

Online Personals Watch celebrating 8 Years Old

Here is my first thread of comments. I began 7 years ago.

weAttract Releases Controversial Report on Online Dating Industry

"PRWEB -- Mar 9 -- weAttract released a report today identifying seven opportunities and seven threats facing online dating sites. Advice...FOR THE INDUSTRY 1. Open member feedback forum   2. Join in June meeting for agreement of guidelines   3. Share critical mass info. FOR CONSUMERS 1. Ask tough questions   2. Give feedback   3. Do other things besides online dating -- Full Version 50pg  Exec Summary 2pg

Mark Brooks: weAttract is the company behind Yahoo Personals personality profiling.  A number of serious issues are brought up in this report.  A little controversial.  Your comments please..."

Several online dating sites hacked.

The "Russians", as if they were in the cold war era. They had previously copycatted:

the "Fat Man"
The RDS-1 explosion yielded 22 kilotons of TNT, similar to the American Gadget and Fat Man bombs.

The B-29
The Tupolev Tu-4 was a piston-engined Soviet strategic bomber that served the Soviet Air Force from the late 1940s to mid 1960s. It was a reverse-engineered copy of the U.S.-made Boeing B-29 Superfortress.

The Concorde
The Tupolev Tu-144 was the world's first supersonic transport aircraft (SST). The design, publicly unveiled in January 1962, was constructed under the direction of the Soviet Tupolev design bureau, headed by Alexei Tupolev.

The Shuttle
The Buran spacecraft was a Soviet orbital vehicle analogous in function and design to the US Space Shuttle.

The Intel 8086
The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978. The electronics industry of the Soviet Union was able to replicate the 8086 through both industrial espionage and reverse engineering. The resulting chip, K1810BM86, was binary and pin-compatible with the 8086, but was not mechanically compatible because it used metric measurements.

eHarmony.
TeAmoRU is a copycat of eHarmony


Remember last January 2011 PlentyOfFish and eHarmony's highly publicized incident? (and Match & Meetic also hacked but not publicized)
I thought they were going to lead changes in the Online Dating Industry, they were going to run security audits and made great changes but I was wrong. All the rubbish was swept under the carpet and they did not solve anything.

It also seems 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.

Now the "Russians", hacked several online dating sites. Stay tuned. More info soon.
It seems the vulnerability is through mobile devices.

New comScore report, "mobile means tablets"

New comScore report, "mobile means tablets"

new insights on the U.S. tablet market from comScore TabLens™, its forthcoming monthly syndicated service providing insights into tablet ownership and usage.

LIFEPROJECT METHOD / BidNetwork

LIFEPROJECT METHOD posted on  BidNetwork

Passwords^12 Conference

The Passwords^12 Conference will be held at the University of Oslo (Norway) on December 3-4, 2012. The 2-day conference will be free and open for anyone to attend.

Here are the docs from Passwords^11 Conference.
They talked about the PlentyOfFish hacking incident(s)

The "Russians" again, eHarmony hacked

They had not only entirely copycatted eHarmony, now eHarmony hacked again.

And, add probably Meetic, Parship, PlentyOfFish, Match, Chemistry, Perfectmatch,  and many others.

The top 5 papers you should urgently read

"Perceptions of Ideal and Former Partners' Personality and Similarity"
Pieternel Dijkstra / Dick P. H. Barelds / University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Individuals clearly desire a potential partner with a similar personality.
.. educate people, especially singles, about what really matters in long-term relationships, for instance, similarity in personality, instead of complementarity.

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

"Assortative mating, convergence, and satisfaction in married couples" 2010
Gonzaga, Carter and Buckwalter from eHarmony Labs
"This work investigates assortative mating and convergence in personality and their effect on marital satisfaction. Measures of personality were collected from a sample of married couples before they met and twice after they were married. Results showed evidence for assortative mating but not for convergence in an average couple. Similarity and convergence in personality predicted later marital satisfaction. These results indicate that similarity and convergence in psychological characteristics may benefit relationships and that while spouses may choose partners with similar personalities they do not become more like their partners in the early part of their marriage."

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

"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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Only the congruent survive - Personality similarities in couples. Personality and Individual Differences" Rammstedt & Schupp (2008).
"Results of another branch of research in the field of romantic relationships suggest that congruence between spouses leads to marriage satisfaction and marriage satisfaction in turn predicts a long_lasting partnership. Especially against the background of the increasing divorce rate in Germany, reaching over 50% during the last years, personality congruence between spouses might help to explain divorces. If this assumption holds, then long_lasting marriages are those in which the spouses are satisfied with their partnership to such a degree that they doprefer not to end it. If congruence is a good predictor of satisfaction then longer lasting marriages should be those with a higher level of congruence compared to shorter ones or – the other way round - congruent partnerships should be longer lasting on average than less congruent ones. This assumption was clearly supported by the present findings. The longer a marriage lasts the more congruent are the couples. This effect, however, was found to be true only for Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness but not for Extraversion and Emotional Stability."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Enhancing Collaborative Filtering Systems with Personality Information" Rong Hu and Pearl Pu, 2011
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.

ElitePartnerDE / Screenshots

ElitePartner is quite similar to Meetic Affinity.
Their proprietary personality test has 8 traits.
The first 3 of them are tuned to match your opposite (dissimilarity).
Near - Distance
Autarky - Supply
Dominance - Subordination
The rest, 5 of them, are tuned to match you in similarity.
Fate of expectations - Expectations of growth
Communication skills
Empathy
Conflict resolution skills
Stress management




ElitePartner does not have any scientific support, and of course it is a HOAX.

PlentyOfFish's CEO secretly developing new paid online dating site

Raining Autumn here in South America, and a little birdie had come from the North to tell me PlentyOfFish Media's CEO secretly developing new paid online dating site due to  mobile migration is shrinking the revenue of the Online Dating Market a lot. The PlentyOfFish's revenue falling from USD 30 million (2011) to USD 15 million at the end of 2012 because can not show as many ads in mobile devices as in desktops; and ads on mobiles devices has lower CTRs than on desktops.



Remember the previous failures:

PlentyOfFish Marriage Predictor, then rebranded again PlentyOfFish Chemistry Predictor

eVow

UltraMatch

many online dating sites are old & obsolete and soon, they will collapse

 Here is a list of the most interesting scientific studies relevant to the Online Dating Industry for you to consider reading.

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



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 CEO should had launched a new site with a new matching algorithm to replace eHarmony, a nearly 12 years old & obsolete site, performing as placebo, but he failed.

Please remember TeAmoRU is copycat or eHarmony.

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!