Matching guides and visitors with dating

I've noticed that my latest posts are more or less about the appearance of the Travel-profile. What should the guidepage or profile page look like? Drawing from my former posts, I can only conclude one thing: Remove the guidepage and use the principles of dating to match profiles with one another.

Why dating you may ask. Although the travel-site is not a dating site, some very important similarities can be found. In both cases the aim is eventually to meet each other in real-life. In both cases the members have the same goal, the same interest or need something only the other can provide. I've been participating in the Mediamatic Datingsite now for a while and noticed that strangers are continuously contacting each other, and interacting with each other; online as well as offline. We can learn from that. 

So, how does a dating site link people with each other? A dating site requires members to answer fixed questions, so that important features and interests are covered. Fixed questions will thus give us the possibility of linking people with each other based on their interests and demographics. They also provide visitors with relevant information about others. Moreover from the user's point of view it's much easier to answer questions than to find inspiration to write something yourself: The profile looks instantly full.

The questionnaire should have a fill-in form, be relevant, fun and quickly to complete. We should maybe even enable visitors to draw a map where they're going or at least have a question that is concerned with their travel plans. The dating aspect will also enable visitors to get in touch with eachother and link themselves to an event/organisation/place/location. This way guides will be able to see who matches to what they've got to offer. The guides will see who prospect visitors are, instead of waiting for someone to contact them.  This two-way of communication helps constructing a sense of community I spoke about in my earlier posts.

By using dating features in our Mediamatic Travel project we'll help people find others that can mean something to them and lower the barrier of contacting each other. Whether adding dating features to our project will elicit these results, is something we'll have to test.