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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!hao!hplabs!hpda!fortune!wdl1!jbn
From: jbn@wdl1.UUCP (John B. Nagle)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: On-line computer dating
Message-ID: <112@wdl1.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Dec-83 22:58:06 EST
Article-I.D.: wdl1.112
Posted: Wed Dec  7 22:58:06 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Dec-83 02:29:34 EST
Lines: 28


    Yellow-Phone, a company in the Bay Area, offers a dating service
accessable through a Touch-Tone telephone.  For $25 one can sign up,
submit a profile of yourself and what you are looking for, and then
dial in and listen to the profiles of others; after each profile one
has the option of waiting for a phone number or keying a digit and
continuing on to the next profile.  Each phone number you hear 
costs $1.25; each call to the system costs $0.25, and with each call 
you get 3 first names (spelled out) and profiles (spoken word by word
by a recorded-speech type voice output device).  
    It sounds like a good idea, but the outfit has a few problems.
The big one is that the male subscribers outnumber the female 
subscribers by about five to one, even with free memberships for any
female under 30.  This is expected, but they don't make any effort to
purge the database of old free subscribers, so there are a large number
of women on file who aren't looking.
    Technically the system leaves a lot to be desired; pauses of a
minute or two are common.  You can change your own profile and what
you are looking for through the keypad, but the manual for the system
is terrible and it is possible to get into states where no matches
can be found but you have no idea why.  Worse, if you make some
criterion less restrictive (such as geographical area) all the names
you have already heard will be heard again at three names per phone call.
    One amusing feature - once in a while when listening to a
profile, you hear something like ``Others say - the person exaggerates -
their - height''.  One can tag the profiles of others with such
remarks if desired; this tends to keep profiles realistic.
    It's cheap, it's fun, but it isn't very effective.  A cute idea, though.