May 31, 2016

New Dating Site Lets Users Select Who Reviews Them — Coye Cheshire Comments

From California Magazine

Sphere of Influence: New Dating Site Lets Users Select Who Reviews Them

By Krissy Eliot

People aren’t products. Or are they? We’re in the age of the “personal brand,” after all—where your online persona effects your reputation, the bonds you form with others, your career. And now, your dating life.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Peeple, also known as Yelp for People, where you can rate a human being with a number of stars. And there was once something called the Lulu app, where women could rate men with a series of hashtags so that other women could decide whether to date them. Lulu has since been sold and dismantled, having endured a lot of criticism before its demise.

And now, there’s DatingSphere—a web app created by Ming J. Li , a UC Berkeley alum who majored in political economy and minored in business administration....

But can a curated list of reviewers really provide that much verification?

“Curated public endorsements of a person skew positive and do not tend to reflect an even picture of a person,” says Berkeley School of Information professor Coye Cheshire. “LinkedIn, for example, allows people to endorse people for skills and to write endorsement statements about their experiences working with that person. Obviously, this is great for the person who is looking for a job, but as any hiring manager knows, when everyone looks perfect and has stellar letters of recommendation that only say positive things, we start looking for what is not there: Who didn’t write an endorsement and what might that mean?”

If curated reviews in general aren’t realistic, that could be particularly true when it comes to romantic relationships, as Cheshire makes clear. “Few would provide a well-rounded, realistic review that says, ‘Yeah, Chris is really a great person and a ton of fun to hang out with! He did break his college girlfriend’s heart when he cheated on her, but that was years ago.’”

Cheshire notes that endorsements could be a positive addition to online dating, but curated endorsements or reviews are still just another way to self-present....

Read more...

Last updated:

October 4, 2016