Future of Dating Sites
Jasbina Ahluwalia asks Paul Oyer, author of Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Economics I Learned from Online Dating: That’s interesting. You had mentioned that the niche sites, given the thick market, have very small pools that may go extinct.
What do you think the online dating site of the future might look like?
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Paul Oyer
Future of Dating Sites: Better Match People
That’s a really good question. What I’m very hopeful for, although I often wonder if I’m just being unrealistic about this, is that the dating site of the future is the one that figures out how to match people better. They’ll get the algorithm down.
The problem right now with online dating sites is that you go on and the same 20% of the people will get all of the messages.
The dating sites that over time begin to figure out not just “show me everyone and I get to pick,” but really nail it down to “here’s someone who would be good for you.” They would be able to validate that methodology and I think that’s going to be a huge advantage.
Maybe that’s not that possible, and maybe it’s just simple observable things we use now are all we can really get at, but I’m hopeful that someday they’ll figure out ways to gather the right information from people.
Then they can really match people better than they did before. I’m hopeful that that’s where we’re going.
Future of Dating Sites: Degree of Validation
If not, then at least have some sort of degree of validation of statements people make to avoid all the lying that keeps some people from even being involved in dating to begin with.
If we can get rid of that, it would help make the market work a little bit better as another step.
Future of Dating Sites: Market Segmenting
The other thing is the segmenting of the dating market now.
I was older and looking for a serious relationship when I was online dating. I went on Match.com and eventually I met my girlfriend on JDate. These are sites generally for people who are looking for serious relationships.
What we see is that my students are much younger and are on things like Tinder, which is much more oriented to hooking-up types of relationships.
I think that’s a great market. As my students age, they’ll move to Match.com. For now, this segmentation of the market makes a lot of sense.
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Tell Us:
What do you think is the future of dating sites? Share with us below in the comments section.
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The above is an excerpt from Jasbina’s interview with Paul Oyer
The entire interview transcript is at: Dr. Paul Oyer Interview – Everything I Ever Needed to Know about Economics I Learned from Online Dating
Listen to the entire interview on: Intersections Match Talk Radio – Jasbina’s Lifestyle Show
Listen to the entire interview on Blog Talk Radio: Everything I Ever Needed to Know about Economics I Learned from Online Dating
Listen to the entire interview on iTunes
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