If You Liked This Date, Here's Another To Try

from the taking-the-Amazon-model-to-dating dept

Over at Amazon and other e-commerce sites, they've found that recommendations work quite well. "Others who liked this book also liked..." Now, Yahoo Personals is taking that approach towards expanding their online dating service. If you click on a profile, they're going to say, "others who liked so-and-so, also liked so-and-so". It's questionable how well this actually works - since liking a person (or, just their online profile) is quite different than liking a book or a CD. However, this appears to be the trend. Various other dating sites claim they're experimenting with similar suggestion features. Yahoo claims their system works by watching how many times people view, save, or forward certain ads to determine how much they're "liked". I also wonder if this is something of a response to the "new" brand of dating sites like Friendster, that rely more on recommendations from friends.