I really enjoyed your article. Two of my favourite topics to talk about - love and match-making. Ever since I can remember, I've always been intrigued by the concept of matchmaking. Have you seen the reality tv series called "The Indian Matchmaking"? It's on Netflix and I watched the first season. This lady is legit because she picks up a lot of the nuances in people - even before they know themselves. And I think that's the beauty of it - the invisible signs that we display that have not yet been codified. Things like - how they interact with the world, how they stand up for themselves and people around them, how polite, considerate, have integrity (like you mentioned 'flakey' with dates for example) - I guess that's the 'not online' part of ourselves that can only be experienced in person.
Also, love... I just did some pieces on it so I'm still feeling high from this topic. The challenge with human beings and all the flaws and biases that we have, we don't know what's good for us even if it slaps us in the face. For real love, you kinda need to work hard to get it, maintain it, and grow it. Dating apps have made this part so much harder because we are now 'spoilt for choice'. We don't appreciate what comes easy to us. And sometimes, it's those 'easy love' that turns into your forever love.
What about if we start a dating app that has access to all of the user data from Apple and Google. Then we just run an ai that looks for similarities.
It might come back with: “You read the same kind of books and listen to the same podcasts as this person” or “you hike as much as this person,” “you’re both learning Spanish,” and “you spend similar amounts of time traveling” etc etc……
Yes, great idea! Knowing what two people have in common (rather than just a raw similarity score) could be used to suggest first date ideas too.
What I'm most curious about: in many senses we want partners that are similar to us, but in what traits do "opposites attract"? How do we run experiments to improve matchmaking algorithms?
Right, that’s a very good point. My own husband probably wouldn’t be matched with me based on similarity 😆 Though I bet we could find through lines— similar family backgrounds, we do both like to get outside and travel. Both read philosophy etc…. Those kinds of similarities might be able to be picked up?
Common hobbies and values are definitely important and I agree that we could probably see that in match data.
I also think couples get value from having complimentary traits e.g. I often see couples where one person takes more of the responsibility for making social plans or one person is more organized. Or it's very common to see people split up chores based on what they don't mind doing rather than do everything 50/50. Some of this might show up in the data as anticorrelated traits, e.g. couples where one person is an introvert and the other is an extrovert.
"In practice, it would be hard to get users for such an auction and the similarity to prostitution would likely make it illegal. Sigh. One non-monetary approach would be to “bid” a certain number of future matches (or a short ban from the market) in order to signal interest."
Could digital tokens be used instead? The tokens issued to the user via the app. I suppose that is probably essentially what you suggested here.
I really enjoyed your article. Two of my favourite topics to talk about - love and match-making. Ever since I can remember, I've always been intrigued by the concept of matchmaking. Have you seen the reality tv series called "The Indian Matchmaking"? It's on Netflix and I watched the first season. This lady is legit because she picks up a lot of the nuances in people - even before they know themselves. And I think that's the beauty of it - the invisible signs that we display that have not yet been codified. Things like - how they interact with the world, how they stand up for themselves and people around them, how polite, considerate, have integrity (like you mentioned 'flakey' with dates for example) - I guess that's the 'not online' part of ourselves that can only be experienced in person.
Also, love... I just did some pieces on it so I'm still feeling high from this topic. The challenge with human beings and all the flaws and biases that we have, we don't know what's good for us even if it slaps us in the face. For real love, you kinda need to work hard to get it, maintain it, and grow it. Dating apps have made this part so much harder because we are now 'spoilt for choice'. We don't appreciate what comes easy to us. And sometimes, it's those 'easy love' that turns into your forever love.
What about if we start a dating app that has access to all of the user data from Apple and Google. Then we just run an ai that looks for similarities.
It might come back with: “You read the same kind of books and listen to the same podcasts as this person” or “you hike as much as this person,” “you’re both learning Spanish,” and “you spend similar amounts of time traveling” etc etc……
Yes, great idea! Knowing what two people have in common (rather than just a raw similarity score) could be used to suggest first date ideas too.
What I'm most curious about: in many senses we want partners that are similar to us, but in what traits do "opposites attract"? How do we run experiments to improve matchmaking algorithms?
Right, that’s a very good point. My own husband probably wouldn’t be matched with me based on similarity 😆 Though I bet we could find through lines— similar family backgrounds, we do both like to get outside and travel. Both read philosophy etc…. Those kinds of similarities might be able to be picked up?
Common hobbies and values are definitely important and I agree that we could probably see that in match data.
I also think couples get value from having complimentary traits e.g. I often see couples where one person takes more of the responsibility for making social plans or one person is more organized. Or it's very common to see people split up chores based on what they don't mind doing rather than do everything 50/50. Some of this might show up in the data as anticorrelated traits, e.g. couples where one person is an introvert and the other is an extrovert.
"In practice, it would be hard to get users for such an auction and the similarity to prostitution would likely make it illegal. Sigh. One non-monetary approach would be to “bid” a certain number of future matches (or a short ban from the market) in order to signal interest."
Could digital tokens be used instead? The tokens issued to the user via the app. I suppose that is probably essentially what you suggested here.