Excellent PR work by Match.com. Anyone who has actually used Match.com knows that it is, from an engineering and design standpoint, utter crap. The algorithm being pumped here is probably nothing special, but hey, getting PR by hyping your "proprietary algorithm" is a time-tested tactic.<p><a href="http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html</a><p>Similar article from 2008:
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/science/29tier.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/science/29tier.html</a><p>Similar article from 2003:
<a href="http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2003/08/01/346313/index.htm" rel="nofollow">http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2...</a>
Two interesting things the articles blows right past:<p>- That they compare their algo to the ones used by Amazon and Netflix to recommend products, while ignoring that products have much better defined boundaries than people do. (And ignoring how both Amazon and Netflix suffered through some horribly bad recommendations in both their systems, early on).<p>- That they think Facebook (or any big social network) complements them, instead of rendering them irrelevant.<p>A dating service built on a matching you to real world friends-of-friends-of-friends has a much better chance at success than Match.com's "People who dated Alice also dated Mary, Jill, and Bertha. Sign up now for 1-Click Dating!"
This is recycled spam.<p>If you want the reality of online dating, look for the OKCupid blog post about how you're statistically more likely to find a partner and get married by <i>not</i> using online dating. Takeaway: men outnumber women, women are overwhelmed, men get no responses and become increasingly desperate. Of course, after Match.com bought OKCupid, the blog post was removed.