An underlying theme throughout the study of networks has been the importance of expectations about other people’s behavior and how its affects how one chooses to behave. In a era where social and dating networks often refers to ones group of friends on facebook.com or potential love interests on match.com, recruiting as many people as possible to join is the only way to insure success. So how does one assure a positive self-fulfilling expectations equilibria? CNN Business followed the efforts of Ray Doustdar, creator of  TeamDating.com, in an article titled “Helping Dating Sites Stand Out In Crowds,” to try to uncover what it takes to make a dating site successful amongst hundreds. 

Foremost, for the site to be prosperous for the long term it must provide a good and reliable service. This implies that the site must truly be helping people meet others who they are interested in. The greatest challenge is getting initial member to join, if there are no members then there are so romantic connections to be made. This is where self-fulfilling expectations becomes a great factor. Somehow the creator must generate excitement about the site in order for people to believe that others are joining, and thus join themselves.  This brings in positive externality effects, in which the actions of one individual create a positive effect on others payoffs. The more individuals who join, the greater likelihood there is for each member to meet someone they could be romantically interested in. An upside to joining a dating network site is that presumably everyone joining it has the same information about its payoffs, thus there is symmetric information, making this process less complicated. In the specific situation of TeamDating.com, Doustdar was able to strategically get his site featured on shows such as NBC’s “Today Show” CBS’ “The Early Show” and ABC’s “Good Morning America. A technique he classified as “intense outreach.” Each time the site was featured hundreds of thousands of viewers would log on and a few thousand would subscribe. With this initial member base, other network effects are likely to take place such as those of cascades, in which member will tell their friends to join and so on, until people feel that they are missing out if they do not join. 

Overall, the concept of creating a successful dating site employs many of the basic network theories such as self-fulfilling expectations, symmetric information, positive externality effects, and cascades. Although it is ultimately necessary to have a good and indispensable product in order to ensure long term success, also having and understanding of the mechanisms of networks is crucial for “helping a dating site stand out in crowds.”  

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/IBD-0001-24618704.htm