MatchMake.Us: Using the collective intelligence to hook you up
Remember Hot or Not? Not very useful, unless you really want to know what anonymous visitors think about your new hairdo, or, if you want to play a prank on your roommate by submitting his picture. But, what if we could use collective intelligence to decide if two people would be hot together? This is the premise behind the new dating site, MatchMake.Us.
Usually, dating sites involve submitting your profile, then browsing endless listings in hopes of finding that one fish in the sea that is compatible with you. But how likely is it that you’ll find that one profile that matches well? Even with the state of the art matching algorithms, there are still a lot of profiles to weed out. MatchMake.Us aims to turn the whole social dating site paradigm on its head by allowing users to essentially take part in match making other users.
Visitors are presented with two profiles and three buttons: “yes”, “maybe”, or “no”. After contemplating the viability of the two people’s relationship, they cast their vote. After a particular pair gets enough “yes” votes, they will both be contacted about the potential match, in which case they can contact each other. They just launched, so there aren’t that many profiles or voters yet, but I could see this being highly effective with a large user base. Why search through profiles when you can let other people suggest matches for you?
I had the chance to speak to Dale Thoms, founder of MatchMake.Us, at the Stirr Mixer 1.3, and he said that he has been getting great responses from women who love to play matchmaker in real life. Some of the upcoming features include support for matchmaker accounts, which will let matchmakers track how successful they are in making matches, and how they compare to other matchmakers. In a way, this is kind of like digg, instead of being first to find interesting links, you can be the first to suggest a successful couple.
Other new features to look out for are the ability to make lists of friends you may want to try to matchmake, and better searching capabilities. They’re really trying to be user-driven, and keep things simple and fun, which is a great philosophy.
When they get more votes in, it would be interesting to see on the front page lists of the most compatible couples, and most uncompatible couples, as voted by visitors. Another idea is for match seekers to message successful matchmakers to request to find a match for them. Matchmakers could either do this pro bono, or even charge a fee for doing it (if they’re good enough). There are numerous variants on matchmaking that could be done.
Overall, MatchMake.Us is a simple idea that could go a long way. I haven’t seen any service like this in the dating space as of yet, so it looks like they have a really original idea here.
