One of the most terrifying concepts for a journalist is the notion that one day someone will invent an algorithm that will take a basic set of text inputs and output a complete story in elegant prose.
Well ProfileWiz, launched today, does not actually do this, but it does create a 500-word personal profile of the type required by most online dating services based on a user selecting the most appropriate photographic answer to 22 questions.
Given the target audience, the questions are fairly predictable. For example “What would you do on your ideal date?” and “If you had an extra hour today, what would you do?”
Apparently the two most daunting challenges for the roughly 2m people who sign up to online dating sites each month, are choosing the best photo and presenting the most enticing written profile.
Imagini, the company behind the service which charges $4.75 for a full profile, claims that, when completed, the quiz produces, “a written profile that illuminates the user’s personality, dating preferences and desires.”
I was rather skeptical – at least until I tried the service and found that I actually quite liked the profile of me that it generated although the language was a little more flowery than I am used to. Here is a snippet: “I love being out in the open air. I’ve been called a dreamer and I guess I do like to be alone with my thoughts from time to time. But it’s nice to have someone to share those dreams with too…..”
If you do not like the results it isn’t the end of the world either.Your profile is fully customisable, and ProfileWiz offers interchangeable sentences to describe key attributes which can be selected or modified by the user to reflect their unique tastes, mood, humour and attitude. In fact Imagini claims the site is capable of writing more than 64.1 trillion possible combinations “to ensure the profile is both unique and engaging.” Quite. And just in time for Valentines.
