Reality Check: MatchActivity

It’s Saturday night in California, and if you’re reading my blog, you need help. MatchActivity is a new dating site that enables people to find others who are interested in attending a particular event or activity.

For example, these are men and women listing activities within fifty miles of Palo Alto. Activities that are shown on the guest search page are public, but you can also post activities privately to your approved buddies.

There is a time element to MatchActivity—for example, a concert on a particular day—as opposed to searching through online profiles. The theory is that a call-to-action for an upcoming event is an effective point of differentiation.

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Comments

[online shopping]

I have never had any luck with the online matching sites. I have tried a few but they always matched me with people that I had NOTHING in common with. One even matched me with another girl. What is up with that one? So what makes yours so much better and different than the other ones? What makes yours the one to go to on a Saturday night when I have nothing to do and at home alone? I am curious, but at the same time I am worried about having the same thing happen again. You could put up some testimonials from other people that have used and liked your site. I peeked at it but was not able to find any on it anywhere. Could it be that I just missed them somewhere? If not, I think that they would be a good thing so I could get a better feel for your site.

[OMG]

OMG it's so interesting and amazing??

u don;t know how exactly i would like to join it ,could u plz leave more details?

such as address ,phone NO ,email?or anything could make me get in touch with u.

Thank u

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[Ryan]

The concept is great... like the site that started it all much better though :)

http://www.pursudo.com

[Dave]

Did'nt have problem to register.

[D]

Update: I tried to register, and it doesn't even work under Firefox! Guys, 1999 called. They want their IE-only web site back!

[D]

It would help if the site didn't look like crap in Firefox...

[Andy Arnott]

Wow Guy you actually mentioned a site in the same market as mine :) It's a decent Idea but why not match it with being able to meet on or offline?! That is our approach with the upcoming launch of Collaboradate V1.0. Catalin makes a great observation that some of the big guys could easily step in and use their huge online presence. All these single's sites are really just a play on a different kind of niche, but lack any REAL innovation. That's where we come in...

Any site, any user, all free. Now that's innovation ;)

[Jim T.]

I really don't get it - wrapping the site around transient events with possibly transient people is very silly - is this about dates or about events? What leads? It's like their granularity starts at atoms.

As of this date, I only count 8 "events", one of which is using Hillary Duff's headshot looking for chat friends and another, an open solicitation from Africa.

On a dating model, it's very flat and cold - and unrealistic. I get the idea most of these photos are stock-art, otherwise all the pretty people have great photo and lighting skills. I find that most people in dating sites (I've built a few) want serious vetting abilities before even meeting, so this is really like juts lopping off the tip of the iceberg and throwing the rest away.

I much prefer the group model like at meetin.com and their idea of breaking it down to cities and then events in the cities. It's not about dating, but of course it happens - we are talking about adults who put up events in clubs and pub crawls. It's more indirect, where you meet for larger events, check each other out, make friends within the system, and then good things can happen.

MatchActivity is just..blah.

[jen]

I love this idea. I just checked out the site and there are some good looking people on there. I love how you can really see what kind of person they are by the activities they suggest. Everyone says they love music but since they're inviting you to a specific concert you can get a better idea if you're going to click with them.

[Roz]

I think that the idea behind Match Activity is great. Finding people that are interested in similar activities is a fantastic way of getting to know new people, finding new friends, and possibly starting new relationships. :)

[Untitled Subscription]

Could you found smaller niche?

[Allison]

I think this is a cool idea. I am newish to my area and have no clue what things are going on. I will more than likely use it...

[John P.]

There's no obvious "remarkable" hook and the target is too broad.

[Aaron M. Potts]

The idea of local search is valid, and in the right flavor, it would work. I don't think that MatchActivity will work without some serious efforts to generate a very large amount of traffic.

Between the niche needs that were discussed earlier and the time factor, I see roadblocks. Some sort of mechanism to keep people informed about things that matched a niche and/or geographic area would be critical for any possible success.

[corey thomas]

wow some great info here. It makes me think what the world would be today without this kind of action you know,lol. If anyone here is struggling with self confidence issues I set up a new website that can help many. www.gainselfconfidence.info

[John C. Randolph]

I agree with Catalin. Their differentiation is trivial. Their only chance to make any money on this is salaries paid by a gullible VC.

-jcr

[Catalin]

It’s a nice concept but I think it will be very hard to reach the critical mass:
1. The “expiration period” of an announcement will make obsolete a lot of profiles. I don't think there will be a lot of users that will enter each week a new call-to-action
2. The big boys like Match.com, Yahoo, MySpace can add a similar social feature anytime, and they’ll have lot more success given the huge number of users they have

Also there are two types of activities: mainstream (like dancing, going to the movies and so on) and niches (like reading Italian poetry, going to see some folk music band from Peru and so). I think MatchActivity will work better for the niches, but for this you need a lot of active users. Plus some notification mechanisms. For example if I went to the X band concert, and Y band concert, to be notified when there are some related events that might be interesting for me (some collaborative filtering, similar to the Amazon feature).

[Ewok]

@Harry Chong
I think when the world was young (or at least the Internet) this was what was happening. However in a world where kids who spend all day in school together still check out each other's MySpace pages every night, the original objectives/intentions of the Internet may be being perverted.

This is a good thing. It means it is becoming part of their lives.

It seems to me that this is an extension of the social networking back into the real world.

Interesting twist. I'll give it a thumbs up!

[Harry Chong]

I think this is a unique twist on an old idea; however I doubt its efficacy and audience reach. The notion of the internet is catered toward globalization and meeting people from across the globe, rather than localization.

Then again I could be (probably are) wrong. There is a strong trend towards the localization of the internet (as opposed to globalization), wherein websites are targeted towards a very specific area. Such as that of Craig's list.

In other words I have no idea how well it would do...but it is interesting.