Idea for a better dating sevice

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This is kind of brain-storming.

As some people probably already know, I'm comparing scores and even answers to questions between couples in Aspie-quiz right now. I have a little more than 200 couples that I can compare scores between, and about 100 couples that I can compare answers on items between. The goal of this investigation is not only for pure scientific reasons, but also because I want to know optimal ways to pair Aspies. Frankly, the big dating-sites have absolutely no idea how to match-up Aspies with Aspies or Aspies with NTs. Aspie affection is an interesting initiative, but it cannot match Aspies with scientific methods either. I plan to run this investigation for a few months longer, and then to launch a dating service, and match up people based on how existing couples that have done Aspie-quiz match and complement each others. I might also use ordinary questions that dating-services use.

So, what do people think? Would you register on such a dating-service, and would you contact the people that the service proppose to contact?

Things you might try:

1. Before launch, determine the specific information you want to collect from applicants as a foundation for matches. Select it carefully, as your database from which you refine your "matching formulae" will take time to build and will be less useful if the criteria change over time.
2. When you first launch, give a selected number of free memberships to the first N people. You will want an initial pool of prospects in place when you start offering your services for cash.
3. Enlist a mature, experienced people-savvy assistant to personally interview as many of the "free" applicants as practical, to assure the consistency and accuracy of the profile information.
4. Try to target your membership, at least at first. If you have 1,000 members selected totally at random from around the world, then there might be all of three members in your entire population who are within ten years of age and two hours of travel that are of the target gender. Make that 1,000 30-plus Aspies all in Southeast England (for example) and the odds improve dramatically.
5. If your focus is Aspies, the male/female ratio is not in your favour. Tip the balance through incentives, such as "free lifetime membership for females".
6. Make sure that your inter-member communication facilities are up to snuff. Nothing puts people off of an otherwise good site by having primitive chat and messaging facilities that MSN and Google chat veterans simply will not tolerate. (See AspieAffection for a good example of what NOT to do in this regard.)
7. Spice it up! Promotions are good. And even though it is not the Aspie way to frequent social events such as speed-dating, a carefully planned event catering for its expected audience (loud, rushed and crowded probably won't cut it for most spectrum folk) would probably do surprisingly well. Many Aspies are not put off by socialisation in general, only by stressful socialisation - these need not necessarily be one and the same.

Good luck and have fun.

I doubt that even scores would match in regards to the chemistry between the two online if they were to meet live.

But it can't hurt...

Dating services are too useless to be worth my time. There will always be an overwhelming majority of males to females, so my chances wouldn't be any better than in real life.

In fact, I have to wonder... Ever since the creation of dating sites, have there even been enough successful pairings to justify their existence?

The one dating site I would love to see is one that had a forum... that way I could observe how people react to other people... Too many dating sites are obsessed with the pairing you up with someone else, and ignore the third person entirely...

I am certainly interested in the principle, given the caveat that we cannot actually define members into existence through the compatibilty questionnaires; I say that because so often I have found myself imagining members being "generated" or "conjured-up" in that manner! Does anyone else admit to that?

Absolutely. I would let people do Aspie-quiz, and save some kind of reference to their results. Then I would possibly use some already tested matching criteria.



I would probably not charge anything for the service. I'd be content just to pair up more Aspies and let their genes prosper.



I'll keep this in mind.



There doesn't seem to be a very bad male/female ratio in the "broader autism phenotype", which I will target. I probably also want to target borderline Aspies-NTs, and especially females. After all, the successful couples in Aspie-quiz are both Aspie-Aspie pairings and Aspie-NT pairings, in about the same ratios. Perhaps a good idea would be to market it as an "odd person dating service", instead of an Aspie dating service?



I do not have time to develop that, but there might be free alternatives with good messaging facilities. Another idea would be to contact already popular dating services, and ask them about cooperation deals, and show them why they would fail to match odd people.

The site also needs to allow NT's to join. I wouldn't date another AS person if my life depended on it. You need to welcome AS-friendly NTs and also have option for gay and lesbian members. Aspie Affection is no good because guys will respond to lesbian personals. That said I think personals have gone out of style. Everyone I've met through a personal ad has turned out to be psychotic.

Absolutely, because Aspies need some complementary NT traits to thrive as a couple. However, it would not be the "pure-bread" type.



Not. I don't think it is wise to mix in gays and lesbians. They already have other channels. Besides, the complementary and matching traits found in couples in Aspie-quiz are only valid for male-female couples, not for gay or lesbians.



Problem solved. Lesbians will not be allowed.

Sounds like a good idea. Aspie Affection is okay, but it doesn't have a criteria based system like what you're planning. I would join if you allow teens (or at least people who are 16 and up) because I'm only 17. I also like it that you aren't charging anything. I hope to see this get implemented.

I have done research on them for a class and statistics show the success rate of dating sites to be on par with that of other techniques.

Here is one of the articles I found: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 125144.htm

Also I thought it'd be worth noting that I had a lot of success with the sites prior to meeting my husband.