I don’t think most profiles on Shaadi are put up by parents, I think there are a lot of people who put up their own profiles and pretend to be the parent or the friend to get the facts and details in place before they start talking themselves ( I speak from experience to some extent here), mostly because they don’t want to appear as losers.

In the end, I think there should be sites for serious marriage minded people and dating only/hanging out/just looking people and hookup people they should be distinct – that way we are not wasting time on dates and no matter how single you are it is a waste of time.

These days, I don’t think that any “serious” people come to eHarmony now that it is so well known and advertised. Everyone takes the test and gets matches just to see what the deal is, hoping for a perfect match and most of them don’t subscribe.

I think that the culture itself plays a large role in the site’s success because those people are coming to it with their goals, as you state. In other words, if all the accounts on Match.com or even the supposedly more “serious” folks on eHarmony were migrated to a copy of the site that was setup to be more culture neutral, I don’t think that the site’s approach would be more successful with those members.

I think that eHarmony’s approach would work well with the Shaadi population in terms of factoring in personality but you can’t do that if someone else is taking the test for you. The suggestions in NCW’s book how to know if they are a date or soulmate in two dates, also a good thing for the people involved in a matchmaker situation where one would allow for the couple to see how they fit together.

I seem to recall a few of them that were operating under that idea but they aren’t the major players and if you don’t have members, even with a good model, you have a problem (i.e. RewardingLove).

From what I recall when I looked at Shaadi, it has some interesting things going on that may be contributing to its success. It is somewhat centered around a certain culture. From what I recall when I looked at it (now many years ago), parents post profiles on behalf of their children and play matchmaker (I’m not saying that is a bad thing just different than the norm) and it is encouraged/accepted (because it is in that culture). I would think that their involvement and the fact that there is that sort of matchmaking going on, may increase the likelihood to pay for a subscription/etc and have increased success. Basically, a significant number of folks that are serious about forming a relationship are on there and not the flaky bunch that normally are on dating sites…

Recommender systems do not take into account the discovery uncovered by Eastwick and Finkel 2008; also Kurzban and Weeden, 2007; Todd, Penke, Fasolo, and Lenton, 2007 who found that people often report partner preferences that are not compatible with their choices in real life.

Latest Research in Theories of Romantic Relationships Development had shown compatibility is all about a high level on personality* similarity* between prospective mates for long term mating with commitment.
*personality measured with a normative test.
*similarity: there are different ways to calculate similarity, it depends on how mathematically is defined.

eHarmony/eDarling’s personality similarity approach is correct, but how eHarmony/eDarling assesses personality (intoxicated with Big5) and how eHarmony/eDarling calculates similarity (low precision method) is incorrect.

Without offering the 16PF5 (or similar test measuring exactly the 16 personality factors) for serious dating, it will be impossible to innovate and revolutionize the Online Dating Industry.

The only other way would be to take up a collection from the well informed and frustrated online daters, such as those on here and run some sort of commercial to inform them, sort of like the ads that were going up against tobacco in the US. For Match.com, it would be ideal to piggyback that onto the class action suit.

Alternately, create a better dating site and direct people to it. That was what I think some of us had hoped RewardingLove would be but the information you provided appears to shed a new light on it…