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Internet Dating to Get Even More Predetermined (Credit: Bertyhell)

Whatever happened to chemistry? Years from now, when couples are asked, “How did you meet?” will they respond with not only the name of a website but of a computer program, as well?

The undeniably popular practice of online dating is about to get a little more pre-determined, based on a new practice by Match.com, a website already known as one that ranks couples’ compatibility.

The Financial Times has reported that Match.com has been developing “Synapse,” an algorithm that searches for compatible dates. Although Match.com and other websites operate on the principle of finding matches for the users’ preferences, Synapse takes it a bit further by using the algorithm to determine preferences you may not know you have. The Times article uses the example of an age match: say you’re typing in your preferences and you state that you don’t want to date anyone older than 26. Under Synapse, the computer may see that you actually look at the profiles of men/women in their thirties, and will determine that you are open to dating above 26. What’s more, your preferences will also be partially calculated by looking at the behavior of other users similar to yourself. Match.com calls this “triangulation.”

Mandy Ginsberg, the president of Match.com, said she found and married a man from India – a match that was way off from what she was seeking on a dating website at the time. Simply put, the theory is that we may not know ourselves as well as we think, and that that’s especially true in visualizing the ideal mate.

“People are complex,” Ginsberg told the Financial Times. “You’re constantly making trade-offs about who’s too tall, too short, too smart and too dumb. People come in and tell us a bit about what they’re looking for. But what you say and what you do can be different.”

Ginsberg characterized the impetus for Synapse as the data analysis from Match.com’s nearly 2 million users, data that reveals trends such as, on the average, men seem to care more about a woman’s hair color than her income.

Computers choosing our dates? Given how quickly and successfully Internet dating has caught on, the idea of predeterminism in dating could, for the younger generation, eventually be de rigueur.