>Have you used OkCupid?
Yes. I'd consider it more of a machine-gun approach than a sawed-off shotgun. Potentially more accurate, but by and large you're still using more ammo than should be necessary.
>which is why surveys and "shared values" questionnaires fall flat
Bingo.
Surveys actually provide a way of gaming the scoring system as well, since you can make a reasonable assumption of what your ideal partner would want you to say.
That's the biggest flaw with dating sites, is that you can only trust so much user input - everything needs to be taken in context. Even simple things such as "interests" should be evaluated in their own context, because you can't rely on exact matches or even fuzzy matches - you have to infer what else their might be interested in. Granted, you also get the problem where you don't get enough user input, therefore being able to infer other information becomes ridiculously valuable.
I agree that you can't perform N^2 searches in real-time. A lazy match is fine until a more accurate index is generated. However we still lack a reasonably accurate index. We also have to do all the searching ourselves, instead of the system working harder to provide far greater relevancy than it does now. I think the best analogue is Netflix - I want recommendations based on my interests and behavior. Again, the issue is dating has far more dimensions than movie recommendations.
>which is why surveys and "shared values" questionnaires fall flat Bingo.
Surveys actually provide a way of gaming the scoring system as well, since you can make a reasonable assumption of what your ideal partner would want you to say.
That's the biggest flaw with dating sites, is that you can only trust so much user input - everything needs to be taken in context. Even simple things such as "interests" should be evaluated in their own context, because you can't rely on exact matches or even fuzzy matches - you have to infer what else their might be interested in. Granted, you also get the problem where you don't get enough user input, therefore being able to infer other information becomes ridiculously valuable.
I agree that you can't perform N^2 searches in real-time. A lazy match is fine until a more accurate index is generated. However we still lack a reasonably accurate index. We also have to do all the searching ourselves, instead of the system working harder to provide far greater relevancy than it does now. I think the best analogue is Netflix - I want recommendations based on my interests and behavior. Again, the issue is dating has far more dimensions than movie recommendations.