Dating sites: Why do some work and others dont?

November 8, 2007 1:46 PM

Dating sites: Some seem to work better than others. By work I mean getting interest/dates out of them. There's a lot of variance in design and functionality amongst these sites. I'm inclined to believe in the cases where the site totally didnt work there's something fundamentally flawed about them.

A few years ago I spent a lot of time on dating sites, which was ultimately a successful experience. However it always fascinated me how some sites worked really well and others totally not. Until I found metafilter I didnt particularly have anyone to discuss this with. I ponder it from time to time. No Im not active on any dating sites nor wishing I was.

I was on most/all of the free sites around and a couple of paid ones and most of the social networking ones.Generally I kept my profile the same and stuck to the same strategy. In this I was a constant. Therefore either my strategy was unsuitable for the site or the site was flawed in its design.

I'm interested to hear your opinions about sites that didnt seem to work for you, particularly why you think it didnt work. By work I mean getting interest/having dates. Theres a million reasons why dating doesnt work and I want to keep that separate.

posted by browolf to human relations (13 comments total)

several dating sites have been targeted by Attorneys General in this country for various deceptive and abusive practices... you may want to look into that.
posted by Mr_Crazyhorse at 1:48 PM on November 8, 2007

My issue with most of the dating sites is that they allow people who aren't paying to put their pictures up. I log onto the dating site, "wow great guys," I try to contact them, get no response. Why is that? Because half of the guys on don't have paid accounts.

:-(
posted by Chia_Earth at 2:35 PM on November 8, 2007

Membership size would be an obvious one. The more members a site has the more likely you are to find someone suitable.
The other thing thats kinda obvious is search quality - the better the search facilities the more likely you are to be able to find members who suit your requirements

Target demographic is another possibility, if their marketting was more targetted towards a certain type of person/group of people that you didn't fit into - that would also account for lack of dates.

Did any of them email you to notify you that new members matching your preferences had joined? I would imagine that would be a very helpful feature.
posted by missmagenta at 2:39 PM on November 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Just want to add that those are my thoughts as a web developer (and can be applied to many sites not just dating), I've never actually used an online dating service - I've never needed to.... not to say that I'm a hottie - I just got lucky and found a guy who loves me for all my flaws before I got to the age of 'OMG my biological clock is ticking!' or 'argh, where did my social life go?'
posted by missmagenta at 2:43 PM on November 8, 2007

Some years ago, I did the Internet-dating thing (and wound up getting married as a result). I tried a number of different sites, settled on one for a while (matchmaker.com, I think), stopped using that, and then switched to nerve.com (before it started to suck, from what I understand). But I looked at quite a few.

What made nerve.com successful, IMO, was that A) the profiles didn't involve too many questions, and the few that were there encouraged creativity in the response. A trap that many other sites seem to fall into is trying to break your personality down into a multitude of objectively defined facets, which other people can then search on. This makes profile-editing tedious and short-circuits serendipity. The idea that you can restrict your profile search to wind-surfing, dog-owning vegetarians no doubt appeals to database programmers, but is superfluous in the real world.

I looked at one site that actually logged who had looked at your profile, and let you see that information. Something about that creeped me out.

I read an analysis of e-harmony recently, written by a programmer who used the service. His bottom line: despite the incredibly tedious profile-creation process, their super-amazing algorithm boils down to one parameter: geographic proximity.
posted by adamrice at 2:56 PM on November 8, 2007 [3 favorites]

Chia-Earth's point is a good one. Jdate.com, for example, will keep profiles up for people who are no longer paying for the service (you profile isn't removed until you actually go through the effort to have it deleted) and are therefore unable to receive or respond to messages. This gives jdate the the ability to (falsely, in my opinion) claim there are "(some super high number) profiles to browse" when in reality you may be sending your message into the great abyss.

They actually use this as a marketing tool in that if you are no longer paying for the service and receive emails from other users, jdate.com will contact you to let you know you have messages waiting for you, which you of course can't read until you pony up the cash.
posted by The Gooch at 4:08 PM on November 8, 2007

I hated the OK Cupid design -- I honestly did not understand the cutesy questions for setting up my account, and I ended up as a woman seeking woman (when I was trying to be a woman seeking man). Then there was no way to change the profile. And I am still listed as having an account, in OK Cupid as well as the spin off described as an FPP, so if I were ever to try to re-join I'd have to use a different email account.

What's the one with all of the questions? Not e-harmony, a free one. I hate that one.

I hated how match dot com would screen out what the bot identified as bad words.

Wow, look at all my hate -- no wonder dating sites don't work for me!
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 4:09 PM on November 8, 2007

Receive = send
posted by The Gooch at 4:13 PM on November 8, 2007

Do you have a link to that eharmony analysis, adamrice? I have a friend who has been considering giving money to those jerks and would like to pass it on.
posted by InnocentBystander at 9:57 PM on November 8, 2007

InnocentBystander—'fraid not. I did some googling for it, but came up dry.
posted by adamrice at 6:05 AM on November 9, 2007

when i was an online dater i was pretty familiar with the interfaces of jdate, nerve, lavalife, craigslist, and friendster. nerve was the best (before they changed it and totally wrecked it in the summer of 2005). lavalife blew chunks as far as my preferences were concerned, although i know several lavalife marriages.

nerve was best for my tastes for a few reasons:

nerve had good essay questions. "the tip of my iceberg:" and "more about what i'm looking for:" are nice, openended titles that allow the user's personality to shine through. lavalife & jdate, on the other hand, had a short essay slot and then a ton of checkboxes defining ridiculous interests that don't actually mean anything. "i own/like cats". WTF? and on the other end of the spectrum, craigslist has no structure, which makes reading it exhausting and full of unpleasant surprises. at least in lavalife, the naked man pictures are segregated.

nerve had some good list questions that allowed you to sort consider specific aesthetic preference, like music/movie aesthetic. "the last great book i read:" "five songs or albums i love right now." this is much more interesting than "i listen to / like the following type(s) of music: country / rock / hiphop / opera".

nerve also had some creative Qs that allowed you to get a little naughty if you were so inclined, but didn't force it. nerve said "in my bedroom you will find:" (allowing for answers as disparate as "3 cats napping" or "just enough wall space to get thrown up against"), and "the best or worst lie i've told:" ("no, that's my sister's MC hammer tape" versus "i'm falling in love with you").
lavalife's "checkboxes of sex" are the grossest, lamest thing i've ever seen. "i like / want to try oral sex." GROSS.

back in the day, nerve's checkboxes were sparing and useful.
i have X kids / i have no kids / i want kids / i don't want kids.
i drink: never / sometimes / often / prefer not to say.
i would be okay with meeting someone who drinks: never / sometimes / often / doesn't matter.
beyond the very basics of substance use, religion & kids, checkboxes are sooo dumb. for hobbies? come on. i don't care if a dude enjoys woodworking- i do care if he can string together a coherent sentence and say something funny. advantage: nerve.

nerve allowed IM chat while surfing the site, but it definitely wasn't the main way to hook a date. jdate and lava almost exclusively relied on IM chat, which i personally find really annoying and distracting. that may just be my thing though. i hated having to politely ignore/reject people when i just wanted to zone out and window-shop.

nerve used to hide who was looking at your profile. one of the crappy things about the 2005 redesign was that everyone could see if you'd viewed them. i hated that. how'm i sposta cyberstalk anyone if they can see me lookin?

finally, and most important, nerve had a demographic i liked. brainy, clever, nerdy, ironic people with art-related interests. nerve.com was, at that time, an excellent, mostly-free, online magazine/website with genuinely entertaining, sexy content, which made a difference, i think, as did the fact that their parent company, spring street personals advertised in interesting publications like the onion & bust.

the people i met on nerve were writers, filmmakers, musicians, and designers- if not professionally, than at least as seriious side projects. lava's demographic was businesspeople with real jobs (to generalize, the men were all lawyers, the women were kindergarten teachers and vet techs), nice stable people- which is good for some people- as i said, i know several lava marriages- but i found lavadates boring. i like my men a little less responsible, i guess. jdate was a bit too homogenous for my tastes- and worse, the profiles tended to be really sincere. and of course, craigslist's demographic seems to be creepy illiterate jerks with their genitals out.

jdate: "i love to laugh and go out dancing, or just stay in and watch TV."
lavalife: "i love travel, and am passionate about my interests."
nerve: "i enjoy nachos, sweeping generalizations, and cute girls who may or may not be able to kick my ass in scrabble."
craigslist: "any sexxxy hott ladies out there 4 fun 2nite?"
i think demographic is ultimately the most important thing.
posted by twistofrhyme at 7:29 AM on November 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

I think there's a subtle distinction between older and newer pay sites in terms of business practices. Older sites seem more concerned about making money than how well it works and will engage in slightly dubious practices such as keeping older profiles and the presenting the site in a "here's what you could have if you paid". Ie the sell you the dream, take your money and then you're on your own. Newer sites seem to avoiding these types of practices.

@missmagenta
Membership size is a double edged sword. One of the biggest UK free sites by members flirtbox I found to be completely useless. Asit uses GET rather than POST in searches I managed to establish that only around 20% of the member base were active at the time. I suspect the other 80% quit because of its uselessness. Plentyoffish also free and large was also fairly useless, imho because of over complexity and information overload. Too much choice in any given instance is a bad thing. So membership needs to be handled appropriately or its more frustrating than useful

@adamrice
Profiles & creativity. Actually I think sites that encourage creativity alienate people who arent naturally creative and from what i've seen there's a lot of them around. A lot of sites go down this route where you're pretty much left to your own devices on what to say. I always struggled with this, I knew when it was dodgy. A lot of other people just had crap profiles.

There's certain questions that you can ask that really define people like music and other that are pointless, like if they own a pet. not owning a pet doesnt mean a person doesnt like them for instance.

there's an underclass of people on dating sites that arent very good at describing themselves and at the same time there's people that hate being forced into defining themselves. its all very difficult to find some middle ground that suits both.

If I had the time, motivation and skill i'd make a free dating site like eharmony that focused on forcing people to define themselves to some degree. Not necessarily in the same way as eharmony. I dont believe in questions with 1 answer. more like pick 3 out of 10. Profiles would list these things, but not show the other choices they didnt make.
Also questions that have no clear right or wrong answer.
But also allow some creativity in questions where you write your own answer. but not describe myself or what am i looking for questions. or maybe a pick 3/10 of these write your own answer questions.


As for other dating sites I been on

girlsdateforfree I like, you've got to smile at the genius business model. Plus it was simple and choice was limited in any given instance. It worked really well for me.

love@lycos. was pretty cool. i like their guestbook feature and the fact it was usable for free. worked but not as much as gdff

flirtbox: not enough visual driven. searches often produced just lists of user names, largely inactive membership, way way to much information in profiles. active users clumped around specific cities because of the way its marketed.

plentyoffish: complex and information overloaded. too much choice at any given time. profiles were basic and write your own thing driven

freenetdating: not too bad. pretty small membership, different angle on profiles

okcupid: I love all the quizes but its way too accurate lol. it makes me sound dead eccentric, which I am but everyone doesnt need to know that lol. And then there's all those write your own thing boxes.

meetyourmessenger: pretty neat idea but it allows under 18 members and some pointless features. there's a global bulletin feature that fills up with stupid myspace bulletin type things and it gets abused by ppl with cock profile pics that you cant avoid seeing.

person.com: chat driven, definately some bot profiles that start random chats. caters for extroverts and the less discerning.

netlog: kind of socialnetworking/dating. I'd give this a go if I was on the scene.
posted by browolf at 2:54 PM on November 9, 2007

this is a fascinating indepth analysis of the behavior of people on dating sites in general

http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~atf/thesis_mit/fiore_thesis_final.pdf

...
posted by browolf at 2:33 PM on November 11, 2007