Andrew Conru
10 Quick Questions with Andrew Conru: Andrew Conru 1. Back in 1994 when you started up WebPersonals, did you ever think that the industry would be this huge?
I knew that the Internet was going to be revolutionary the first time I saw how it enabled people worldwide to see postings instantaneously. It was clear to me that it was easier, faster, and cheaper to use a central online database than to hookupdate.net/nl/flirthookup-overzicht/ go to a niche matchmaker or use phone-based newspaper personals. While I understood that online dating would change the way people meet, I didn’t fully grasp the extent that it would change the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
2. Is there any new technology that you see getting incorporated into online dating that will revolutionize it? Mobile, GPS, Apps, Video, VOIP, Matching
Two challenges facing online dating sites is the increasing expectations of members and imbalances in gender dynamics
Online dating can mean many things to different people – mostly related to how filtering done by the “system” (how do members obtain validation or credibility?), access restrictions (how do members prove their intentions?), are people interacting in realtime, and the dating process being facilitated (introduction verses matchmaking).
There are four elements to online dating: access, member profiles, searching/matching, and member interaction. While technology can often improve the experience, the benefits are more evolutionary than revolutionary. For example, the trend of “always-on” access via mobile devices does open members to more spontaneous meetings especially when coupled with GPS technology.
As far as member profiles, most people are comfortable only with uploading photos and creating text profiles. That being said, we’ve always tried to find ways for people to be more expressive in their profiles – adding voice profiles, video profiles, and other ways for people to differentiate themselves. There seems to be a natural inhibition in people that limits about 5% of people to add more than a photo to their profile.
I think one of the last areas open to the biggest gains in innovation is in matching technology. Matching technology includes searching, filtering, access control, privacy, and automatic agent-based services. When I started the first online dating service in 1994, there was an immediate benefit for members… as people’s expectations of their dates stayed constant while the number of candidates soared. After a few years, however, people become much more selective of their ideal match and now often feel less satisfied with the online dating experience. They report that online dating sites have tons of profiles but it gets harder and harder to find a good match (while actually, the matches are better than before just that they have become more picky).
Imbalances in gender dynamics also currently results in a suboptimal suboptimal. In most mainstream dating sites, men send 50 times more emails than women… this happens in part to the hunter nature of men as well as the fact that faced by an avalanche of emails, women respond to a tiny fraction of them which results in men having to send even more to get a single reply. This in turn, makes men unhappy with their response rate and women unhappy with the quality and selectivity of the men.
I believe that the next wave of online personal services will be less dependent of gee-whiz technology but on the ability for people (mostly women) to select, filter, and challenge their suitors. That is, users will start embracing software agents to dynamically interview each other prior to allowing human contact.