[antareus]

I've been thinking about this for awhile. Current dating sites make it easy to meet lots of people, but then there's the issue of how well you actually mesh in real life. Thus, some sort of hybrid approach might be better.

I'm imagining some sort of OkCupid/augmented reality mashup. I think there might be something to some level of algorithmic matching, but it doesn't mean much until you actually meet the person. Matching systems can, for instance, prevent people with totally incompatible different values systems from even wasting time with each other. Augmented reality would let you pick someone out of a crowd (via the inevitable smartphone) and pull up their profile. It could even provide the "similar users" ability among people that were present if you happen to meet your type, but they're not physically attractive to you.

Lots of work can be done here. I'm trying to get the number of awkward first dates down, and I believe it to be possible if we meld the best aspects of online and offline personas.

[rhizome]

OKCupid seems to have been making changes that would allow something like that to become a factor in their compatibility ratings. Their "Special Blend" ranking algorithm is multivariate secret sauce, and it's easy to imagine them offering the option of sorting on proximity.