In The Emode For Love

from the the-real-strategy-comes-out dept

As new studies are showing that people will pay for online dating services, Emode.com has unveiled their new strategy. If you aren't familiar with Emode then you don't have friends like some of mine who obsessively like to analyze their own personality through those (yes, somewhat annoying) online tests. Emode has been around for quite some time trying to build an ad-based revenue model, but now they've switched gears. They realized that they've been collecting all this personality information about people who have been taking their tests for years, so they might as well start matching up compatible singles. The dating part of the site, without any advertising, is apparently signing up half as many users as Match.com does each day (and Match.com is spending millions on advertising). Match.com says they're going to start offering similar personality matching quizzes, but Emode seems to have a huge headstart in building up a useful database. Of course, I wonder how useful that data really is? People who "match" on such random quizzes as "what kind of dog are you?" don't necessarily match as a romantic couple.