After months of dormancy in which online campus dating came to a standstill, the third version of WesMatch was re-launched early Thursday morning. A website created to match up Wesleyan students in the Spring of 2002, WesMatch uses a survey to align people with similar interests and opinions.
After running the site for over a year, creators Dan Stillman ’04 and Michael Eaton ’04 have heard the WesMatch experiences of quite a few Wesleyan students. While some people share tales of success, others don’t live quite so happily ever after.
“We generally hear from two groups of people: couples who are happy with us because they’re each other’s top matches, or ex-couples who are pissed at us because, well, they’re each other’s top matches,” said Stillman.
Although the site hadn’t even been available for twenty-four hours, many people were already making plans Thursday to take full advantage of WesMatch.
“I’d go onto WesMatch because the guy I have a crush on seems dorky enough to do the same thing,” said Makenna Goodman ’07. “I’m going to go home and do it right now!’
Some upperclassmen who enjoyed WesMatch in past semesters were especially eager to see what had been added to the site since last fall.
”I’m excited about WesMatch coming back because it’s so funny,“ said Marjorie Cardon ’06. ”I’m looking forward to seeing its new features.“
Beginning this semester, students can put their pictures in their profiles and exclude unwanted answers. Also, there is an adaptive matching engine, which updates percentages as the population’s answers change, and percentile match rankings, that show how good one’s match is compared to the community’s as a whole.
Despite all of these attempts to successfully match up people with common interests, some students feel that WesMatch has not worked so well for them.
”Maybe I just filled out the profile wrong, but I was 0% compatible with basically everyone I was friends with,“ said Dave Perechocky ’05. ”Then, one of the people listed as one of my top four matches was someone that actively disliked me. I guess WesMatch is good if it works for some people.“
Other times the site has been known to accurately match up people who are close to each other.
”My friend did WesMatch, and she got her boyfriend [who she had already been dating] as her first match!“ said Goodman.
Though eager to see the new version of WesMatch, some students are not as excited about it as they were in the past.
”I’m really excited to see what they’re added to it as it goes national this year, but I think it’s kind of lost its way,“ said Andrew Perlgut ’04. ”When it first started, people kept logging on because they kept changing how they scored your compatibility, and so the fun was seeing how much your compatibility changed with people. Last year, it had a lot more features that were better, but it didn’t have the same funness to it.“
Already, Eaton and Stillman have begun to plan for features they want to add to the site in the future. Although some of the projects currently are top secret, they eventually intend to expand WesMatch to include other schools, as well as create a cell-phone-enabled version.
Even freshman that have yet to log onto the site are excited at the chance of meeting new people.
”It’s like everyone’s inner dork! My friend who did it last year spent the first two months of school on it- it’s cheaper than going to parties to meet people!“ said Ashley May ’07.
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