Looking at dating websites is all in a day’s work.
logo pulled from Junebug's website
We've talked about search engines customizing your results according to what you seem to usually like at work (and here on the blog), so when I heard a very brief mention of a "new" dating website called Junebug this morning on NPR, I thought I should mention it.
It was a really quick story - quick enough that they didn't even list it on their website as something on the show! The story explained Junebug as a dating site that works with a similar algorithm that google and amazon use. They get you go answer some questions, just like every other dating site, but they also track the profiles you look at, extract the "most important" pieces of information from that profile, and find others with the same characteristics to suggest to you.
I'm no expert in online dating sites - not since I found my boyfriend on okcupid two years ago, anyway - but this seems more sophisticated than the usual, "fill these questions out and we'll find people who answered those questions similarly and match you" kind of thing. It's also more robust than simply asking, "Do you think opposites attract?" and then adjusting the results to find your mortal enemies online and pair you with them.
Naturally, there are disclaimers all over the about section about how it takes a while to get a good feel for who Junebug thinks you'd like, but I think that just like every other recommender system it will become very good at figuring out what you find attractive in people.
I'd tell you to to ask the lady in the story who met her husband on the website, but I couldn't find it anywhere on NPR's site. Reference fail!
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July 18th, 2010 - 13:20
Hi Amber,
I'm one of the founders of Junebug, so I thought I'd comment a bit on your post. First off, thanks so much for mentioning us and even more thanks for having so much faith in us. That said, while we'd love to take credit for a marriage, our site's only been online for two weeks now, so we can't claim to be responsible for any marriages yet. I think the woman who met her husband on a dating site must have met him on another site discussed in the NPR story. Hopefully we'll have our own success stories soon, but I wouldn't want to take credit for something we haven't done yet.
Thanks again for the mention!
July 22nd, 2010 - 15:37
Hey John,
That's interesting, I could have sworn that the bit on NPR said that a woman met her husband on your site! Alas! I must have been mistaken, and as the post mentioned, I wasn't actually able to locate the mention on their website. My apologies for jumping the gun on attributing you guys with a marriage already… but it seems to me like you will have that success in the future!
One of the reasons that I've been scouting dating websites stems from an idea we've been kicking around here at my job. I work for the assessement organization that administers the licensing exams that doctors have to take to practice here in the US. We've been thinking how helpful it would be to be able to match a patient with a doctor a la dating website principles. If this concept sounds interesting to you, I'd be happy to set up an exploratory conference call to brainstorm with my group on this idea.
Please email me at amontanano@nbme.org if you'd like to chat. Again, I wish you the best of luck with your site!