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Dating by numbers
Technology
Dating by numbers Some sites use algorithms to match people looking for love – “metadating” goes a step further and lets you pore over a potential suitor’s data, finds Aviva Rutkin
REX/Shutterstock
ONE Saturday night last year, 11 people went looking for love. Like countless speed daters before them, they met in a room draped with curtains, the lights on low. In one hand they held traditional glasses of bubbly, but in the other were sheets of paper they had filled with their personal data. This twist on speed-dating was part of an experiment run by a team at Newcastle University in the UK. They wanted to know what would happen in a world where instead of vetting potential dates by their artfully posed selfies or carefully crafted datingsite profiles, we looked at data gathered by their computers and phones. As use of data-gathering devices increases, it’s a world that’s just round the corner. The team calls it “metadating”. “There’s a bit of a mismatch between a data led view of the world – which is very dry and
22 | NewScientist | 23 April 2016
mechanical – and how we view they spent time looking over ourselves,” says Chris Elsden, who one another’s anonymised data headed up the project. Elsden and profiles, discussing who they his colleagues want to explore might like in groups. The event other ways we can use data that then took the form of traditional gets collected as we go about our speed-dating, with four minutes modern lives. “Can we give people for pairs to get to know each other. more control over it, make it more The researchers listened as ambiguous or playful?” people described themselves The team recruited their speed using the “language of data”. They daters on social media and via read out their numbers, compared posters around their university stats and even complimented one campus. A week before the event, another on their data. Where the participants were sent a form people had been allowed to list to fill out. It asked for a host of “One dater graphed their specific numbers: shoe size, the Fitbit steps, another drew farthest distance they had a pie chart of the furniture travelled from home, the earliest in their house” and latest times of day they had sent an email in the past month, their heart rate as they filled out whatever they liked, they had the form. It also left blank spaces picked very different types of for people to add whatever data information to portray themselves. they wanted. One scrupulously graphed their Seven men and four women Fitbit steps. Another recorded took part. To kick off the evening, what they ate for breakfast, lunch
and dinner. Others chose to be playful. One drew a pie chart of the different types of furniture in their house. Someone added: “Miles run this week: 0”. The team will present a review of the project next month at the ComputerHuman Interaction conference in San Jose, California. So much of our data is in the hands of large companies that it can make people feel powerless, says Jessa Lingel at the University of Pennsylvania. Elsden’s event flips that on its head. “Offering a way for people to feel like they have some control, or can be creative or thoughtful about the data they’re producing, is really important,” Lingel says. She also thinks metadating plays with an idea we have about what romance in the future might be like. Data-driven algorithms already match people on dating sites like OkCupid. Other dating start-ups like Genepartner try to push the envelope by matching people according to genetics. It’s not hard to envision a site that digests numbers from your self-tracking apps and search history, then spits out people it thinks you might be attracted to. But Elsden doesn’t think metadating should replace popular dating apps. “We’re not suggesting your ideal match would be somebody who gets up at the same time,” he says. He thinks it might open the door to a new sort of social media – an “Instagram for data” that lets you collect your stats, manage them with editing tools or filters and share them with your friends. Still, at least one couple hit it off swapping stats that Saturday in Newcastle. As far as Elsden is –Likes walks on the beach, and stats– aware, they’re still together. n
Dating by numbers Some sites use algorithms to match people looking for love – “metadating” goes a step further and lets you pore over a potential suitor’s data, finds Aviva Rutkin
REX/Shutterstock
ONE Saturday night last year, 11 people went looking for love. Like countless speed daters before them, they met in a room draped with curtains, the lights on low. In one hand they held traditional glasses of bubbly, but in the other were sheets of paper they had filled with their personal data. This twist on speed-dating was part of an experiment run by a team at Newcastle University in the UK. They wanted to know what would happen in a world where instead of vetting potential dates by their artfully posed selfies or carefully crafted datingsite profiles, we looked at data gathered by their computers and phones. As use of data-gathering devices increases, it’s a world that’s just round the corner. The team calls it “metadating”. “There’s a bit of a mismatch between a data led view of the world – which is very dry and
22 | NewScientist | 23 April 2016
mechanical – and how we view they spent time looking over ourselves,” says Chris Elsden, who one another’s anonymised data headed up the project. Elsden and profiles, discussing who they his colleagues want to explore might like in groups. The event other ways we can use data that then took the form of traditional gets collected as we go about our speed-dating, with four minutes modern lives. “Can we give people for pairs to get to know each other. more control over it, make it more The researchers listened as ambiguous or playful?” people described themselves The team recruited their speed using the “language of data”. They daters on social media and via read out their numbers, compared posters around their university stats and even complimented one campus. A week before the event, another on their data. Where the participants were sent a form people had been allowed to list to fill out. It asked for a host of “One dater graphed their specific numbers: shoe size, the Fitbit steps, another drew farthest distance they had a pie chart of the furniture travelled from home, the earliest in their house” and latest times of day they had sent an email in the past month, their heart rate as they filled out whatever they liked, they had the form. It also left blank spaces picked very different types of for people to add whatever data information to portray themselves. they wanted. One scrupulously graphed their Seven men and four women Fitbit steps. Another recorded took part. To kick off the evening, what they ate for breakfast, lunch
and dinner. Others chose to be playful. One drew a pie chart of the different types of furniture in their house. Someone added: “Miles run this week: 0”. The team will present a review of the project next month at the ComputerHuman Interaction conference in San Jose, California. So much of our data is in the hands of large companies that it can make people feel powerless, says Jessa Lingel at the University of Pennsylvania. Elsden’s event flips that on its head. “Offering a way for people to feel like they have some control, or can be creative or thoughtful about the data they’re producing, is really important,” Lingel says. She also thinks metadating plays with an idea we have about what romance in the future might be like. Data-driven algorithms already match people on dating sites like OkCupid. Other dating start-ups like Genepartner try to push the envelope by matching people according to genetics. It’s not hard to envision a site that digests numbers from your self-tracking apps and search history, then spits out people it thinks you might be attracted to. But Elsden doesn’t think metadating should replace popular dating apps. “We’re not suggesting your ideal match would be somebody who gets up at the same time,” he says. He thinks it might open the door to a new sort of social media – an “Instagram for data” that lets you collect your stats, manage them with editing tools or filters and share them with your friends. Still, at least one couple hit it off swapping stats that Saturday in Newcastle. As far as Elsden is –Likes walks on the beach, and stats– aware, they’re still together. n