Blog Matchmaking

What does 'social networking' mean, anyway? My definition is that it's any activity online that people pursue expressly in order to interact with each other. Blogging, posting photos on flickr or videos on YouTube, podcasting, and building personal websites are all part of it.

What's usually left out of the 'social networking' discussion however are the dating and matchmaking sites. Yet here more than anywhere people are getting together in order to get together.

So why not combine the two?

Here's what I'd like to see: a dating site that pulls in content from people's 'social media' activities online in order to round out profiles. Everything people post to their blogs, photo streams, video uploads, etc. can be tagged. I would like to see a dating site where peoples' profiles are complemented by what they've tagged to be included. Likewise, this tagging would allow people to determine not just who is commenting on some of the same issues (like they can through technorati and other engines) but which of these people is in the market.

Would-be daters would give up their anonymity in some ways - it's easier to track back a blog or personal site to an actual person than it is a personal profile on Match.com (whose very business and revenue model requires anonymity and the site as an intermediary). But they would also end up providing a lot more information about who they are, what they think, how they interact, and what's important to them than most are able to reveal through the 20-questions that drive dating profiles. Plus, what would be augmenting their profile would not be content designed expressly for an audience of prospective suitors. This might make profiles richer, more authentic, less postured.

Maybe the site plays to this concept directly. Instead of "Favorite movies" a profile question could be "Which photo on Flickr that you posted be represents how you feel about your family?" The whole profile could be comprised of content already created and distributed.

What's the revenue model then, if the site is no longer the intermediary? I guess it depends on who owns it. There is undoubtedly a way for Match.com to incorporate some of this functionality and still preserve their role. But I think the opportunity is greater for someone that has the social networking in place to add this functionality, which would then increase their opportunity to monetize their existing social networking business - through advertising, sponsorships, etc.

I'm not a big fan of most of the new sites that hope to make money through online advertising - it's growing, but not nearly as fast as would be necessary to support all the ventures purporting to rely on it. But I do think this dating feature would give the right personal publishing platform a point of differentiation, create higher switching costs for its users (which is vital), and some new appeal for advertisers. Trouble is, I don't own one of those, so I'm giving this idea to you.