Today's Links on online dating: fake profiles, animal love, Google Romance?
"TODAY'S LINKS" September 16, 2006
“Today’s Links” is an eclectic round up pointing to noteworthy news and worthy analysis from all around the World Wide Web.
TODAY'S LINKS September 16, 2006 FOCUS ON ONLINE DATING: The Secrets to Finding Love Online? Even Animals Get the Online Dating Tease, Shopping For Your Soul Mate, And did you catch…
THE SECRETS TO FINDING LOVE ONLINE?
"Online Dating Question: How can you spot a fake online profile?"; American Chronicle, September 6, 2006
There are all kinds of reasons that a real person may not answer your messages and many of them have nothing to do with you personally. Maybe they got really busy, left town on vacation, or decided that online dating is just not their thing. The important thing here is not to get discouraged. There are lots more fish in the sea...
You might also get a wink from a girl who's not actually a paying member of that site. If you join to message her she may not be able to respond unless she pays… and she may not be willing to do that. If she's not willing to pay to talk to you, then she's not worth your time anyway. Move on to the next cute girl on your list.
EVEN ANIMALS GET THE ONLINE DATING TEASE
"Online dating is planned for organgutans": USA Today, August 15, 2006
Zookeepers in the Netherlands are planning to hook up Dutch and Indonesian orangutans over the Internet and believe the link could at some stage be used as an online dating service where apes could get to know one another and keepers could work out whether they would be compatible mates...
"We are going to set up an Internet connection between Indonesia and Apeldoorn so that the apes can see each other and, by means of pressing a button, be able to give one another food, for example," said Anouk Ballot, a spokeswoman for the Apenheul ape park in the central Dutch city of Apeldoorn.
She said the chance of two orangutans actually mating as a result of the online interaction was small due to the problem of transporting them between the Netherlands and Indonesia. "But I wouldn't rule it out completely," she told The Associated Press.
SHOPPING FOR YOUR SOUL MATE
"Online Match-Making with Virtual Dates": HBS Working Knowledge, August 28, 2006
Jeana Frost and Michael Norton: academic look at online dating.
"People spent hours and hours and hours a week online to generate one cup of coffee with one person. That's not a very good system," says Norton.
What's more, users often found that the person they were meeting for the first time was not what they had expected. "By starting online, some people had experiences they wouldn't have had if they had been able to see up front what someone was like," Norton says. "So we wanted to explore ways to improve the experience and help people filter more effectively."
Online daters sitting behind a computer, says Frost, "have a lot of time to ruminate and form ideas about potential partners that may or may not coincide with reality, because they're not getting any social feedback."
Adds Norton: "The other issue is that in online shopping you are searching for product attributes: If you're buying a toaster you may not know exactly what kind of toaster you want, but you know if you want two or four slots. With people, even when we have well-articulated stories about the kind of person we want to meet, we're often wrong."
AND DID YOU CATCH…
In "Google online dating service: Google Romance for real?" I discuss how Google Romance April Fools "joke" may be on a path to realization:
Google Base is amassing a database of “people profiles.” I put forth a Google.com classifieds strategy based on Google Base classifieds listings surfacing in Google.com in my "Google.com 'refinement boxes': future classifieds 'complete solution'?" The same analysis applies to Google Base people profile listings; Google is using the free “people profiles” it obtains from users at Google Base to fuel “refinement box” search queries for online networking and online dating (see also my "Google Base obtains the world's content for free, Google.com capitalizes on it")...
Uploade your profile; possible now at Google Base. Search for love; possible now at Google Base...MORE
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