From technology to politics to video games; these are the random thoughts of a geek with too much time on his hands
Geek 2 Geek fails to live up to potential, staff ignores/misreads comments and questions, no sign of improvement in sight
Published on July 12, 2005 By Zoomba In Dating
So, a month ago I wrote about the website Geek 2 Geek, a personals sight targeted at geeks of all sorts. Well, it's been a month, I've spent some time fiddling around with the search and match systems and I've even tried to get ahold of the site operators directly with some questions. Here are my final thoughts on the site:


  • Search
    Ok, the search just flat-out stinks. You can specify gender, age range and distance from your zip code. Unfortunately something is seriously broken in the code and the results you receive from a search are incredibly inconsistent. For example if I search for women within 50mi of my zip code, I get 2 results. Fine, maybe there aren't many around me... However, if I expand the distance out to 100mi, I get about 6 results back that are WITHIN 50mi of me. There's something either broken with the search code or how it's displaying results. I get the same inconsistencies when it comes to selecting age ranges. I've found the only way to get any results is to basically search the entire available age set. Searching just 21 to 26 fails to list many people that are actually in that range.

  • Matching
    I say I want to match against women within a certain age range. I'd prefer 21 to 26 to avoid most age issues. Well, I get results back for 17yr olds (I thought they weren't allowed to register at the site) and 40yr olds. Hardly within 21 to 26. The search problems above exist in the matching system. I'm not getting matches I should be since the "matching" code just looks to try and generate the same list the search does. Matching is inconsistent to say the least.

  • Site Staff
    I don't know what it is, but it strikes me that the person (people) running the site either aren't native english speakers or intentionally misread comments sent to them, and then ignore further follow-ups. I sent a note to them with my feedback on the search results (not matching, I figured search was a big enough issue), listing how I found inconsistencies based on widening my search criteria. I get a dismissive note back saying "People say they like our matching system better than eHarmony. We've had no complaints" and that was it. I said nothing of matching, just the simple search. I sent a follow-up email to clarify my point and never heard back

  • Improvements?
    I have no idea if they're even working on improvements/additions to the site. There's been no visible change and there's no news page or anything indicating there's any forward movement on the site. It seems like they built it, tossed it out there and have since abandoned it. I'm not asking for anything like a daily code journal, but something to let users know that there is life behind the curtain... that maybe some of these problems will get fixed. No word. No signs of life. Nothing


So, my final words on Geek 2 Geek are this:
Until significant improvements are made to the search and matching systems, and the site operators pull their heads out of their butts and try actually reading and responding to the comments sent to them, Geek 2 Geek is another site with a ton of potential but yet fails to deliver. Maybe in a few months time it'll improve, but somehow I doubt it.

Comments
on Jul 12, 2005
What?  No match for the mighty Zoomba?  It must be Broken!
on Jul 12, 2005
Once again I've had to resort to going out under the Daystar and finding dates the old-fashioned way... By going up to women and talking to them

I've actually always had a pretty strong distrust for the idea of online dating services. I've been online long enough to have seen most forms of deception and con artistry, so I'm really skeptical of online stuff like that. I guess despite my geek tendencies, there's still a smidge, burried somewhere deep deep deep down of normal sane person who wants to date normally.

Ah well, if I could find a good spoon I'd dig that part out and toss it away
on Jul 12, 2005
Huh, you'd think a site like that wouldn't have any problems finding a geek to fix their code.

The site I really liked for finding geeks (or geek friendly girls) was www.craigslist.org. They only have sites in major metropolitan areas, but if you're near one it might be good. That's actually the site where I met my wife (and found a job, three apartments, a motorcycle helmet, a couch, etc.) Now, it does have a large population of freaks, but my wife is still convinced that it's the absolutely best site for girls looking for geeks to date.

1.) It's free. Most intelligent guys won't pay for personals when there's free ones.
2.) In the bay area at least, it's the de facto source for job & apartment hunting for most techies. After a newly arrived geek secures their job & housing, they're just a click away from looking for a girlfriend.

Girls tend to get 100's of emails per listing, so as a geek guy it's probably better to post your own listing. Depending on your writing ability (and what you have to offer, of course) you might recieve only a handful a responses. But they do get read all day long from bored girls at work, many of them geeks themselves. It doesn't do any matching though, just some minor search capabilities. But I've never been enamored with artificial matching anyway, they never guarantee that a girl will "smell right" to you