Archive for March, 2012
Did Match.com, JDate and eHarmony go far enough with predator screening?
0As we look at how to best protect singles, has anyone stopped to question the business model of Match.com, JDate and eHarmony, which requires members to be 100% anonymous? Their sites are devoid of all the social checks and balances that help singles make good dating decisions in the real world, and fosters dishonesty, exaggeration and occasional criminal behaviors. While the rest of the Internet has opened up to a social experience with real identities, all the leading dating sites have shored up their second-skin, anonymous communities so they can continue to control the information singles get about each other—ultimately allowing their pay-to-communicate model to thrive.
We just launched http://www.theComplete.me, a social dating network that allows singles to maintain their anonymity while also choosing how and when to share their real identity as they curate a dating profile from the images, friends and interests they already share on 8 social networks (including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Goodreads, etc.). We have introduced user-defined anonymity to online dating and our aim is to fundamentally change the dating industry and the business model.
We do not require anonymity like other dating sites today, instead we trust our members and empower them with privacy controls and a .Me Score to measure the authenticity of information provided. Members always control the privacy of their information, and decide what they want to share, when and with whom. People using the site can see the other dating sites our members are using, but talk to them at no cost, on theComplete.me. Because we have access to real social identities, we also screen out married people and stop them from joining our service.
For some, real identities may feel a little “funny” at first, if you’ve been used to dating on closed, anonymous sites like eHarmony or Match.com, but the Internet has changed a lot since online dating was introduced in 1995, and user-defined anonymity is one of its better changes.
Can you imagine an anonymous Facebook, Linkedin or Google+—oh wait, that was called MySpace and we all know what happened there.
Remember there can always be more love in the world.
Great write up from Scarlet Mom
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I really like this write up from Scarlet Mom.
CNN Money
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theComplete.me is a social dating network that lets people find one another through their interests, aspirations and friends.
theComplete.me Social Dating Network Launches Beta Site, Introduces “Interest Matching”
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theComplete.me Social Dating Network Launches Beta Site, Introduces “Interest Matching”
San Francisco, CA – Mar 12, 2012—theComplete.me™ (www.theComplete.me), the Internet’s first social dating network, announced today the launch of a free Beta service. Singles can now tap eight social sites to create a visually-representative dating profile from the updates, photos, interests and friends they are already sharing. The site’s users also have Pinterest-like control over the personalization of their profile with content from around the Web. Rather than relying on matching algorithms to analyze a check list of a user’s traits, singles on theComplete.me connect, and begin conversations, based on shared interests and mutual friends.
theComplete.me is the first dating site to leverage Facebook’s social and interest graph, and also allow users to pull in interests from around the Web, to create a visually richer, more open and reciprocal online dating experience. The site’s users customize a FraME™—a collage for each of their interests, affiliations, aspirations and people connections—to demonstrate who they really are. While theComplete.me has an environment of openness and sharing, users are offered complete control over what, and with whom, they share. Each member earns a .Me Score™, based on the degree to which they have shared, and the likeliness of authenticity. This unique combination of interest matching and identity auditing helps singles make more meaningful and informed connections.
As the Internet moves towards hyper-personalization, theComplete.me is poised to let singles tell the complete story of who they are, with all the aspirational subtleties and interest nuances that can’t be captured on a check list. While anyone can check a box on a dating site that says they have a great sense of humor, it doesn’t mean that other singles will find them funny. With interest matching, singles can connect with someone who enjoys “nice” funny, like Ellen DeGeneres,” ice “funny, like Ann Coulter, “class-clown” funny, like Jim Belushi, or “edgy” funny, like Chris Rock.
How It Works:
- In less than five minutes, users create a visual rich dating profile from the social media they already use, including: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Photobucket, Flickr, Foursquare, Goodreads and Instagram.
- FraMEs give singles Pinterest-like control over profile personalization.
- Profiles automatically evolve as users add interests and comments, or update social media feeds.
- Like a Friend™ feature allows singles to express interest and invite members’ friends to join.
- Members can see the other dating sites being used by people in the Me Network™, including Match.com, Zoosk, eHarmony and Badoo, and can communicate with them for free on theComplete.me.
- Communication is 100% free.
Contact: Trish McDermott, theComplete.me
Email: trish@ thecomplete.me
Cell: 707-529-1509
Gigaom: theComplete.me Wants To Be The Pinterest Of Dating
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Gigaom (Ryan Kim, Mar 7, 2012)theComplete.me Wants To Be The Pinterest Of Dating
At a time when people are increasingly expressing themselves through curation services like Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram and comfortable connecting via social networks, most dating sites still rely on anonymity. That’s opened up a big opportunity that start-up TheComplete.me is looking to exploit.
The service, formed by former Match.com executives, hopes to leverage social networking and hyper-personalization to create a social network that’s akin to the Pinterest of dating. It works to connect people through their interests using their real identity and encourages users to express themselves through Pinterest-like pinning of objects. The result is a Facebook app that looks very different from Match, which is exactly the point, said CEO and founder Brian Bowman, former VP of product at Match.com.
Fast Company – Inside The Online Matchmaking Industry’s Giant Blind Date
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Fast Company (Dan Slater, Jan 26, 2012)Brian Bowman used to be a VP of product development at Match. Now he’s taking them on with a new dating application called 
TheComplete.me. According to Bowman, the pay-to-communicate format established by Match in the mid 90′s resulted in a lack of innovation. Why? Because the business model Match spawned required anonymity. By limiting the amount of “real-world personal information” in profiles–i.e. Twitter handles, Facebook pages, etc.–a dating site can keep users on for longer. “Anonymity is a good thing when a person wants it,” Bowman said. “It’s not a good thing when it prevents someone who that person might like from understanding who that person really is.” Personhood can’t be captured in a simple database. You’re more interesting than that. You’re richer. You deserve better.
Rather than a static profile, TheComplete.me will “tap into the sites that consumers use every day”–such as Netflix and Amazon–to create “a more dynamic interest graph.” It’s one thing to say you “like comedies,” “love to read,” “live for travel.” It’s another to show potential mates that your Netflix queue is full of Chevy Chase films, that you just bought you and your father copies of the latest Stephen King novel, or that your Picasa album has been updated with pictures from Peru. In Bowman’s vision, as Internet use rises, and people define themselves increasingly by where they go and who they talk to and what they post and buy–online–their dating profile evolves with them. “The first version of the Internet,” recalls Bowman, “was based around ‘It’–an index of linked websites that were interesting to most people, like Yahoo directories. Web 2.0 was based around ‘We’–me and my human relationships, my social graph. Facebook won that round. The next iteration will be about ‘Me’–who I am, my interests at this time, based not on what I say but on what I do.” As daters navigate the date-o-sphere, they’ll take their identities with them.
It’s a big change from the days of Gary Kremen. And the sort of transparency that TheComplete.me contemplates (slogan: “It’s okay, be yourself.”) may make people uncomfortable. But that’s okay. Privacy, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has said, is a social norm that evolves. It also bears mentioning that many of online-dating’s problems–such as deception, and the time that an honest dater wastes by chatting up someone who turns out to be married, or twenty years older than their photo–stem from the privacy norm.
VentureBeat – 6 Promising Startups Spotted at the Launch Festival
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VentureBeat (Rocky Agrwal Mar 9, 2012)
6 Promising startups spotted at the Launch Festival
changed very much, despite big advances in the rest of how we communicate online. TheComplete.Me tries to integrate data from social networks and friend graphs to mimic some off how offline dating works. The big challenge here will be getting liquidity. The reason online daters go to match is that’s where everyone else is.New York Times – theComplete.me PR Coverage
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Dating Start-Up Uses Social Network Data
TheComplete.me uses data from a range of social networks to create a Pinterest-like experience that is supposed to help people find love, GigaOm writes.
ReadWriteWeb – Match.com Founder, Former Executives, Launch Pinterest-Like Dating Site
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ReadWriteWeb (Dave Copeland, Mar 8, 2012)
Among the features the group is implementing in the theComplete.me is the ability for users to quickly create dating profiles by accessing information from their existing Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ profiles. The site will also undercut competitors like Match.com and eHarmony by allowing users to communicate for free.
Instead of charging for users for subscriptions, the site will instead charge users for premium placement in search results, or to sponsor a category so they’ll appear higher in search results to users with similar interests. A spokeswoman also said the company plans to ad video services and would offer users unlimited video services if they were willing to pay a premium over the free service.
The site is the brainchild of former Match.com vice president Brian Bowman and Shashikant Joshi, former founder and former CTO of Perfode. Trish McDermott, former VP Public Relations Match.com and Match.com co-founder Fran Maier are also part of the startup.
