Former executives are not entrepreneurs!

Former executives are not entrepreneurs!

"LikeIt, the people discovery service, is shutting down on April 30th. The service launched over a year ago by former Match executives and received ~USD1.7M funding from various investors including POF (PlentyOfFish) and CrunchFund."

Former executives from online dating sites are not entrepreneurs. Those former executives can cook a barbecue under the water, they are smoke sellers, but they are not going to innovate in nothing.

 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.
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"

-------------------
Prospective entrepreneurs score different from prospective managers / businessmen / businesswomen.
prospective entrepreneurs mostly score VERY LOW in some specific variables I and M and VERY HIGH in E, Q1 and Q2, like this 16PF5 personality pattern
A:5.B:8.C:7.E:10.F:3.G:8.H:8.I:2.L:7.M:2.N:5.O:5.Q1:10.Q2:9.Q3:5.Q4:4"

"Good" Q1 2013 for IAC Personals, will wait and see Q2

"Good" Q1 2013 for IAC Personals, will wait and see Q2
because
"Match (IAC Personals)
Core, Meetic and Developing revenue increased to USD113.8 million, USD55.0 million and USD20.1 million, respectively, driven by increases in subscribers.
Profits increased due to higher revenue, lower customer acquisition costs as a percentage of revenue and operating expense leverage. Revenue and profits in the prior year period were negatively impacted by the write-off of USD5.2 million of deferred revenue in connection with the Meetic acquisition. "


The IAC's International Operations are really coins. IAC's Personals revenue in Latin America is really coins! (in the range of USD29 million, less than PlentyOfFish)

 NO INNOVATIONS SINCE YEARS IN THE ONLINE DATING INDUSTRY.
C level executives are cooking barbecues under the water (selling smoke) and not paying attention to latest research from Academics which could be beneficial for the Online Dating Industry. Wasting precious time with Matchmakers which should be obsolete. 
Actual matching algorithms used by eHarmony, Chemistry, PlentyOfFish and others, even behavioural recommender systems, can not be improved, they need to be discarded NOW.
See also
IAC/InterActive' CEO Discusses Q4 2012 Results - Earnings call Transcript

The unexploited Latin American Market remains enormous!

9+ years old but still valid presentation from the IAC

------------------------
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!


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!!

PAPER: "Bootstrapping Trust in Online Dating: .... "

PAPER: "Bootstrapping Trust in Online Dating: Social Verification of Online Dating Profiles"

Abstract.
Online dating is an increasingly thriving business which boasts billion dollar revenues and attracts users in the tens of millions. Notwithstanding its popularity, online dating is not impervious to worrisome trust and privacy concerns raised by the disclosure of potentially sensitive data as well as the exposure to self-reported (and thus potentially misrepresented) information. Nonetheless, little research has, thus far, focused on how to enhance privacy and trustworthiness.
In this paper, we report on a series of semi-structured interviews involving 20 participants, and show that users are significantly concerned with the veracity of online dating profiles. To address some of these concerns, we present the user-centered design of an interface, called Certifeye, which aims to bootstrap trust in online dating profiles using existing social network data. Certifeye verifies that the information users report on their online dating profile (e.g., age, relationship status, and/or photos) matches that displayed on their own Facebook profile.
Finally, we present the results of a 161-user Mechanical Turk study assessing whether our veracity-enhancing interface successfully reduced concerns in online dating users and find a statistically significant trust increase.


Online daters do not use / do not want to use their real names on dating sites.

iDating Industry Misses The Boat

Mark Brooks had posted about " iDating Industry Misses The Boat".

I agree. NO INNOVATIONS SINCE YEARS IN THE ONLINE DATING INDUSTRY.
C level executives are cooking barbecues under the water (selling smoke) and not paying attention to latest research from Academics which could be beneficial for the Online Dating Industry. Wasting precious time with Matchmakers which should be obsolete. 
Actual matching algorithms used by eHarmony, Chemistry, PlentyOfFish and others, even behavioural recommender systems, can not be improved, they need to be discarded NOW.

PAPER: "Exploring personality-targeted User Interface design ...."

"Exploring personality-targeted User Interface design in online social participation systems"

We present a theoretical foundation and empirical findings demonstrating the effectiveness of personality-targeted design. Much like a medical treatment applied to a person based on his specific genetic profile, we argue that theorydriven, personality-targeted UI design can be more effective than design applied to the entire population. The empirical exploration focused on two settings, two populations and two personality traits: Study 1 shows that users' extroversion level moderates the relationship between the User Interface (UI) cue of audience size and users' contribution. Study 2 demonstrates that the effectiveness of social anchors in encouraging online contributions depends on users' level of emotional stability. Taken together, the findings demonstrate the potential and robustness of the interactionist approach to UI design.

That paper was presented at CHI 2013, April 27–May 2, 2013, Paris, France.

Paper: "Control Your Game-Self: . .. . "

Paper: "Control Your Game-Self: Effects of Controller Type on Enjoyment, Motivation, and Personality in Game"

"To investigate the relationship between player experience (PX) of a game and a player's in-game personality (how they felt about themselves), we chose to compare the effects of different game controllers.
.... controller choice affects a player's enjoyment and motivation of a game, but also affects a player's perception of themselves during play as measured by their in-game personality."

"Whether they are made to entertain you, or to educate you, good video games engage you. Significant research has tried to understand engagement in games by measuring player experience (PX) ... Our study shows that there are a number of effects of controller on PX and in-game player personality.
....

we designed and implemented a custom game that allowed us to compare three controller types (Microsoft Kinect, PlayStation Move, and Xbox GamePad).
we show how controller choice affects a player's perception of themselves and how their perceived personality (using the five factor model) within the game (game-self) compares to their idealized version of themselves (ideal-self) and their reality (actual-self).
We designed a simple 3D game where the premise was that the user was flying inside of a tornado in a ship and the goal was to collect spinning items. .... The experiment was conducted with 78 students from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada (38 female, mean age=25.8, SD=6.6).
The player's trait personality was assessed using the Big Five Inventory (BFI). ...  . Participants completed the BFI five times. At the beginning of the experiment, participants were asked to reflect on their actual-self and rated their agreement with 44 statements of the form .... Participants also reflected on their ideal-self, by completing items of the form "The type of person you wish, desire, or hope to be…", with the same items as used for assessing actual-self. .. After each game condition, participants were asked to assess their game-self using a short form (15 questions). .... Items in the short version covered all 5 aspects of personality, the number of items representing the scales E, A, O, N, C per questionnaire were stable, and we fully counterbalanced the presentation.
..........
The use of personality theory in general – and the five factors in particular – have been useful for understanding play in several contexts. For example, the five factors of personality have been shown to correspond with a player’s preferred genre and motivation to play. In the area of player taxonomies, research has shown that player type can be predicted from the personality traits of the player, and that considering personality traits in combination with player taxonomies and game design elements can inform the understanding of enjoyment in game play. Additionally, research has shown that personality traits carry into general behavior in virtual worlds .........
... research on character choice in World of Warcraft has shown that players create characters closer to their ideal-selves than to their actual-selves, and that this trend was stronger for those with higher depression scores.

Figure 5 shows the differences in perceived personality in game for the different controllers in the context of perceived actual-self and ideal-self. Interestingly, the in-game personalities are contained within the boundaries of actual-self. Contrary to expectations of game play, the game did not produce more idealized versions of players, but moved their perceived personality further from their ideal than their actual-self (with the exception of neuroticism)."

That paper was presented at CHI 2013, April 27–May 2, 2013, Paris, France.

LikeIt (TheCompleteMe) GAME OVER next April 30th 2013

As predicted in this blog with first hand information, LikeIt (TheCompleteMe) GAME OVER next April 30th 2013

LikeIt (TheCompleteMe): a "Stupid Investors' series" case of study!!!
Former executives from online dating sites are not entrepreneurs. Those former executives can cook a barbecue under the water, they are smoke sellers, but they are not going to innovate in nothing.

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.
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"
-----------------

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 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.)

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, see why your brain distorts.

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.


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 Swiss 16PT is NOT the same as the 16PF5 test

The Swiss 16PT is NOT the same as the 16PF5 test.

The 16PT is ipsative
The 16PF5 is normative

That Swiss ipsative 16 PT Personality Test is a version of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The Swiss ipsative 16 PT Personality Test is used at IQfriends and IntelligentElite, I had reviewed it during 2011 and 2012.
and not the normative 16PF5 test (the 16PF 5th edition)

The MBTI has only 4 binary variables and gives you 16 different possibilities
INTP · INTJ · INFJ · INFP
ISTP · ISTJ · ISFJ · ISFP
ESTP · ESTJ · ESFJ · ESFP
ENTP · ENTJ · ENFJ · ENFP

The 16PF has 16 variables taking integer values from 1 to 10
The whole possibilities are 10E16 (the ENSEMBLE)
i.e. 10,000,000,000,000,000
World Population 7.0*10E9 = = 7,000,000,000
(7.0 * 10E9) / 10E16 == 7.0 * 10E(-7) or 0.7 * 10E(-6) or 0.70 micro part!
7,000,000,000 / 10,000,000,000,000,000 == less than 1 micro part!!!
World Population is less than 1 micro part of the whole set of different valid patterns of the 16PF5.

That is why I had invented a new quantitive method to compare personality patterns
like

PERSONALITY PATTERN
Client #01 ---- 16PF5 Profile A:6.B:7.C:6.E:8.F:9.G:6.H:7.I:7.L:8.M:7.N:2.O:5.Q1:8.Q2:7.Q3:3.Q4:4
Client #02 ---- 16PF5 Profile A:5.B:7.C:4.E:8.F:7.G:4.H:5.I:6.L:4.M:6.N:8.O:9.Q1:6.Q2:8.Q3:4.Q4:4
<#02|CQ|#01> == 74.79865772%

 --------------------

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 (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
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."

See also  FIRO, CPI and 16PF5 tests.
-------------------------------- 
AND also remember IQ tests are ability tests, answers could be Right or Wrong, so the questions should be sorted in increasing difficulty forming a Rasch Hierarchy. Those IQ tests sould be constructed using Modern Test Theory / Item Response Theory (IRT).
Intelligent Elite / IQfriends, Brainiac Dating, IQ Gorgeous and the others DO NOT meet IRT, they are all ... rubbish.

article in newspaper about Prof. Dr. Manfred Hassebrauck

Article in newspaper about Prof. Dr. Manfred Hassebrauck explaining what is love.

Please remember he is the brain behind the FriendScout24's - BeziehungsQuotienten-Check (BQ-Check).
That compatibility test DOES NOT include any personality assessment and is a BIG HOAX.

To my best knowledge Prof. Dr. Manfred Hassebrauck have not proven (without revealing proprietary information) that FriendScout24 compatibility matching algorithm, BQ-Check, can match prospective partners who will have more stable and satisfying relationships (and a low divorce rate) 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 for public and Academic scrutiny of findings.

Latest Research in Theories of Romantic Relationships Development outlines: compatibility is all about a high level on personality similarity between prospective mates for long term mating with commitment.

------------------------
 I am fully tired of saying: 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.
Innovations are not adding more bells and whistles to actual online dating sites.
The Online Dating Industry is waiting for the innovative compatibility matching method which can kill the Matchmaking Industry and other Offline Dating Proposals.
Because the innovations the Online Dating Industry needs, will definitively come from the new discoveries on Theories of Romantic Relationships Development.
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.

Political Sorting in Social Relationships / Evidence from an Online Dating Community

Interesting paper from Yale University: "Political Sorting in Social Relationships / Evidence from an Online Dating Community" It is all about similarity.

See also "Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization" from Stanford University.

"The data from online dating sites are especially revealing. Even though single men and women seeking companionship online behave strategically and exclude political interests from their personal profiles (Klofstad, McDermott, and Hatemi 2012), partisan agreement nevertheless predicts reciprocal communication between men and women seeking potential dates (Huber and Malhotra 2012). "

IAC to acquire PlentyOfFish Media ... soon ???

It is said a 2 years long negotiations will end soon.
The main obstacle is the price.
The owners of PlentyOfFish Media's sites (PlentyOfFish, eVow and several dating sites powered by a white label dating company) think its company is worth USD 1.0B (USD 1,000,000,000) but the IAC does not want to pay more than USD120 Million (a 3X Revenue)
The best timing to sell your online dating company is when you do not need to, when it is a healthy ship and not when the owner/CEO is simply jumping from a sinking ship. If the owners of PlentyOfFish can not innovate in the Online Dating Industry, the best strategy for them is to sell PlentyOfFish.

The IAC (InterActiveCorporation, nasdaq: IACI) previously tried to acquire eHarmony for USD500 Million during November 2011, but failed.

Free/freemium online dating sites like PlentyOfFish and OKCupid are only marketing tools useful to send prospective customers to paid online dating sites like Chemistry and eHarmony.
When free users got tired of free sites, they migrate to a paid one.
Revenue of IAC Personals (Match, Chemistry, OKCupid, Meetic, ParPerfeito, MeeticAffinity, SinglesNet, People's Media Communities, DateHookUp and others) is in the range of USD750 million.
Revenue of eHarmony' sites (USA, Canada, Australia, UK and Brazil) is in the range of USD250 million.
Revenue of IAC Personals + Revenue of eHarmony' sites == USD1,000 Million == USD1B
Revenue of PlentyOfFish Media's sites (PlentyOfFish, eVow and several dating sites powered by a white label dating company) is in the range of USD40 million.
USD40million / USD1,000 Million == 4% of market (in revenue).
PlentyOfFish has the traffic but others receive the money.
PlentyOfFish tried to be the next free eHarmony and failed.
The owners of PlentyOfFish tried to launch a paid online dating site inside PlentyOfFish and failed.
They also failed with the PlentyOfFish Marriage Predictor.
And then failed again with eVow, a paid online dating site, but with less quality than PlentyOfFish. It is funny eHarmony, a paid site, had launched a free online dating proposal (Jazzed, failed) nearly at the same time PlentyofFish, a free site, had launched its paid proposal, eVow. Both eHarmony and PlentyOfFish had failed in launching other proposals to complement their long time strategy.  
The real secret of PlentyOfFish is: it needs to show ads mainly from online paid sites, then send prospective customers there and receive commissions when they acquire a paid membership.
PlentyOfFish had reached operating ceiling where it operates, mainly in Canada, United Kingdom, United States and Ireland, less in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, Germany and France.





I always thought the IAC could be more interesting in destroying PlentyOfFish than to acquire it (although every time the IAC acquires a site, it destroys it), because with USD10 Million they can develop a new compatibility matching site to replace Chemistry, a 8 years old obsolete site.

Ginsberg GAME OVER at Match.

Ginsberg GAME OVER at Match. After more than 10 years? at Match, she was "discretely" sent as CEO of Tutor.  I remember she was one of the brains who last December 2004, called Dr. Helen Fisher to design Chemistry; the last innovation at Match, a compatibility matching method that never performed as expected.

Is eHarmony free forever? or not?

"Now free to communicate" says its homepage.  That is why eHarmony had begun to promote itself as a FREE site. Like PlentyOfFish, a FREE site with paid features.

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

Please see how to revolutionize the Online Dating Industry.

Still waiting for the new sites!

The Online Dating Industry is quite calm, as the calm that preceeds any big storm. I smell in the air something big will happen soon.

Tallygram, OkCupid's proposal for Friend Finding On Facebook, closes.

Tallygram, OkCupid's proposal for Friend Finding On Facebook, closes.

They do not want to innovate.

IAC Personals (Match, Meetic, Chemistry, OKCupid and others) does not want to innovate.

PlentyOfFish does not want to innovate.

eHarmony does not want to innovate.

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.
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"


My bet: LikeIt (TheCompleteMe) social dating site, GAME OVER soon




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. 

eHarmony moves from dating to job matches ???

Remember last November 12, 2008? "MBAinteract, Inc., the leading professional network for MBA students, alumni, and employers, today announced that Dr. J. Galen Buckwalter was elected to MBAinteract's board of directors. Dr. Buckwalter has previously served on MBAinteract's Advisory Board. He has extensive experience in personality matching through working as the Chief Scientist at eHarmony, Inc. and through authoring more than 100 papers in the fields of psychology, neuropsychology and health services."

MBAinteract was a failed start up to match employers with people holding a MBA and looking for a new job.


Now eHarmony moves from dating to job matches  ????



Remember eHarmony 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.

and

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
That is nothing new, plenty of firms can match jobs with candidates using personality tests.

How Many More Online Dating Sites Do We Need? article

As every 2 years, Martin Zwilling updates the article  "Startups: Your Online Dating Site Will Fail", in this case called "How Many More Online Dating Sites Do We Need?"


I agree with him that "Investors are looking for real innovation, not copycats with more bells and whistles. So are customers. Let's give it to them."

No innovations since years 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.
Innovations are not adding more bells and whistles to actual online dating sites.
The Online Dating Industry is waiting for the innovative compatibility matching method which can kill the Matchmaking Industry and other Offline Dating Proposals.
Because the innovations the Online Dating Industry needs, will definitively come from the new discoveries on Theories of Romantic Relationships Development.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 "Partnership longevity and personality congruence in couples"

Partnership longevity and personality congruence in couples

"Evidence of assortative mating according to personality was reported in a previous SOEP-based study ["Only the congruent survive - Personality similarities in couples. Personality and Individual Differences" Rammstedt & Schupp (2008)].
Based on population representative data of almost 7,000 couples, high levels of congruence between spouses were found, which increased with marriage duration. Almost 5,000 of these couples were tracked over a five-year period with personality assessed at the beginning and end of this time, which allowed us to investigate the relationship between personality congruence and marriage duration longitudinally. Using this data, we investigated (a) whether personality congruence is predictive for partnership longevity and whether congruence therefore differs between subsequently stable and unstable couples, (b) if stable couples become more congruent, and (c) if separated couples become less congruent with regard to their personality over time. The results provide initial evidence of personality congruence as a predictor for partnership longevity: the more congruent couples are in the personality domain of Openness, the more stable their partnership. In addition, we found no indications of an increase in personality congruence over time within the stable couples; within the separated couples, however, a strong decrease in congruence was detectable."

"Birds of a feather flock together—this folk saying also seems to hold for personality. Assortative mating for personality was demonstrated in a previous study (Rammstedt & Schupp, 2008) based on population-representative data of almost 7,000 couples, as well as in several other studies based on somewhat smaller and/or more selective samples (e.g., Bleske-Rechek, Remiker, & Baker, 2009; Gonzaga, Carter, & Buckwalter, 2010; McCrae et al., 2008).
..................

Gonzaga, Carter, & Buckwalter, 2010 = eHarmony's researchers.

..................

..... we hypothesize personality congruence to be predictive for partnership longevity and assume congruence to be higher in couples who turn out to be stable than in couples separating in the years thereafter (Hypothesis 1). On the other hand, it could be argued that longterm couples become more similar in their personalities over time. For example, for someone less open to experience than his or her partner, joining this partner in cultural activities might make him or her more interested and thus more open. We could therefore assume a personality change towards higher congruence over time in stable couples (Hypothesis 2). However, neither of the two alternative hypotheses is supported by data from previous studies. Gonzaga, Carter, and Buckwalter (2010), using data from an online relationship service [eHarmony], and Caspi, Herbener, and Ozer (1992), using data from the 20-year Kelly Longitudinal Study of couples, found no evidence that couples' resemblance increased over time.

.........."

 [Similarity is a word that has different meanings for different persons or companies, it exactly depends on how mathematically is defined. I calculate similarity in personality patterns with (a proprietary) pattern recognition by correlation method. It takes into account the score and the trend to score of any pattern. ]


Please see:
"Stability and change of personality across the life course"
and
"personality traits are highly stable"

Remember:
Personality traits are highly stable in persons over 25 years old to 45 years old (the group of persons who could be most interested in serious online dating) They have only minor changes in personality (less than 1 interval in a normative test) and the 16PF5 test will not "see" them because 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.

Please read also:

"Personality similarity and life satisfaction in couples" (2013) 

"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. "The present study's results, as well as the results found in previous studies (e.g., Eastwick & Finkel, 2008), may be used to educate people, especially singles, about what really matters in long-term relationships, for instance, similarity in personality, instead of complementarity."

"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 Personality similarity and life satisfaction in couples (2013)

PAPER Personality similarity and life satisfaction in couples (2013)

"The present study examined the association between personality similarity and life satisfaction in a large, nationally representative sample of 1,608 romantic couples. Similarity effects were computed for the Big Five personality traits as well as for personality profiles with global and differentiated indices of similarity. Results showed substantial actor and partner effects, indicating that both partners' personality traits were related to both partners' life satisfaction. Personality similarity, however, was not related to either partner's life satisfaction. We emphasize the importance of thoroughly controlling for each partner's personality and for applying appropriate analytical methods for dyadic data when assessing the effect of personality similarity in couples."
..............
"However, as far as personality similarity in romantic couples is concerned, the everlasting question about who is a person's perfect match has not yet been answered satisfactorily. Is having a partner whose personality is similar to one's own associated with higher levels of satisfaction? Or do we prefer someone rather dissimilar?"
.............
"Global profile similarity is calculated using Intraclass Correlation Coefficient.
Shape similarity is calculated by correlating the scores in one partner's profile with the scores of the other partner's profile using Pearson correlations.
Elevation similarity is measured using difference scores (i.e., absolute value of difference between the overall mean across traits: mean similarity).
Scatter similarity is also computed using difference scores (i.e., absolute value of difference between the variances across all traits within the profiles: variance similarity)."

[Similarity is a word that has different meanings for different persons or companies, it exactly depends on how mathematically is defined. I calculate similarity in personality patterns with (a proprietary) pattern recognition by correlation method. It takes into account the score and the trend to score of any pattern. ]

.............................................
"Participants: total sample size of 1,608 couples (Nind = 3,216). Men were on average 51.88 years old (SD = 13.58), women 49.10 years (SD = 13.35). The mean length of the relationship was 24.21 years (SD = 14.11) and the majority of couples were married (85%).
Personality was assessed using a German 10-item instrument derived from the Big Five Inventory. For each trait, participants reported the extent to which each of the two statements per personality trait described themselves on an 11-point scale ranging from 0 (completely disagree) to 10 (completely agree). Correlations between the two items for Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness were .39, .11, .24, .40, and .21, respectively." THAT IS WHY THE PAPER IS FLAWED, BIASED.

The paper "Only the congruent survive - Personality similarities in couples. Personality and Individual Differences" Rammstedt & Schupp (2008), was not EVEN cited.

Also the papers written by  Dr. Pieternel Dijkstra, not EVEN cited.
"Our findings may help understand why so many relationships end in divorce due to mismatches in personality."
"Discussion
Our findings strongly support the 'similarity-attraction' hypothesis: Individuals clearly desire a potential partner with a similar personality. In addition to finding a mate with a similar personality, our study showed that individuals seek a mate who is slightly 'better' than they are: They prefer a mate who is somewhat less neurotic, more agreeable, more conscientious, more open and more extraverted than they are themselves.
.... mismatches in personality are a frequently mentioned cause for relationship break-up. If former partners indeed have dissimilar personalities, our findings underline how difficult it is for many people to select a mate with a similar personality, or, alternatively, how little value individuals put on finding a similar partner in terms of personality.
The present study's results, as well as the results found in previous studies (e.g., Eastwick & Finkel, 2008), may be used to educate people, especially singles, about what really matters in long-term relationships, for instance, similarity in personality, instead of complementarity."

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


Next post will be about the NEW PAPER "Partnership longevity and personality congruence in couples" Rammstedt, Schupp et al. (2013)

Please read also:
"Stability and change of personality across the life course"
and
"personality traits are highly stable"

Remember:
Personality traits are highly stable in persons over 25 years old to 45 years old (the group of persons who could be most interested in serious online dating) They have only minor changes in personality (less than 1 interval in a normative test) and the 16PF5 test will not "see" them because 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.

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.)

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.