Why Dating Sites Are Broken | paidContent

I met my current boyfriend four years ago in the elevator of our Georgetown dorm.? Our friendship slowly grew until we went on our first date, more than two years after we first met. I like becoming friends with a guy I?m interested in first ? it?s the only way to know if you might enjoy spending time together or not, and you just can?t do that on a dating site. That?s why they?re broken.

A recent study published last week found that online dating sites were deficient at determining whether people would have chemistry and make a match. The study, published in the journal of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, found that online dating sites encourage a shopping mindset, which is not compatible with two people finding a strong connection. The lead author of the study, Eli J. Finkel, Ph.D., even told CNN: ?Not only is there no scientific evidence, despite the claims, [but] my team of co-authors have become pessimistic that there could ever be in principle an algorithm that could match people well based on the approaches these sites take.?

We found a very similar result in a recent survey of 4,000 myYearbook members. Overwhelmingly, people prefer to start out as friends before jumping into a romantic relationship. Friendship is the filter to finding a compatible match with 89 percent of men and 96 percent of women preferring to be friends before lovers. Sure, it may well be that girls are cultivating friendships and guys are cultivating future options, but it?s a critically important part of the courting process.

This really shouldn?t surprise anyone. If you don?t enjoy someone?s company, if you don?t like their jokes, if you can?t stand their conversation, you shouldn?t be with them. Starting out as friends is obviously the better way to do relationships. I for one would trust a conversation over an algorithm any day, and that?s the existential problem facing the dating site.

Of course, I?m not suggesting that traditional dating sites become obsolete overnight?far from it. One out of five people, some studies suggest have dated someone that they met online. No one could possibly argue that dating sites aren?t an efficient and pervasive way to meet people, but what I would argue is that they are no better at determining chemistry than picking people out of a list, and they don?t encourage friendships. And I think that is the writing on the wall for the dating industry at large.

Dating sites may be making more money than ever before, but it was only in 1999 that the music business peaked ? years after the medium that would kill it first emerged. The rise of social networks and the ubiquity of mobile devices have given way to a new crop of mobile social networks ? the Meeting Networks ? which threaten to eat the dating industry?s $4 billion lunch by making them a subset of a larger ?meet new people? space. (Full disclosure: I am both biased and wildly optimistic as a founder of myYearbook ? one such meeting network.)

Posted In: Social Media, Community, myyearbook

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-why-dating-sites-are-broken/

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