DoYouDo
Encyclopedia
DoYouDo, Inc. is a Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...

 company that owns the patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

 to an anonymous matching
Anonymous matching
Anonymous matching is a matchmaking method facilitated by computer databases, in which each user confidentially selects people they are interested in dating and the computer identifies and reports matches to pairs of users who share a mutual attraction...

 service designed to detect mutual attraction between friends or acquaintances based on confidential lists they create of people they are interested in. On September 7, 1999, Israeli businessmen Gil S. Sudai and David J. Blumberg patented the methodology, which represented a departure from the approaches employed by other online dating service
Online dating service
Online dating or Internet dating is a dating system which allows individuals, couples and groups to make contact and communicate with each other over the Internet, usually with the objective of developing a personal, romantic, or sexual relationship...

s and dating systems. It focused on matching up people who already had a non-romantic relationship offline, rather than matching up strangers, and was designed to help solve the problems associated with unwanted romantic overtures on the one hand, and inhibition resulting from fears of unrequited love
Unrequited love
Unrequited love is love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such, even though reciprocation is usually deeply desired. The beloved may or may not be aware of the admirer's deep affections...

 on the other.

Several websites have implemented similar anonymous matching systems, including eCRUSH
Ecrush
The eCRUSH network comprises two major sites: eCRUSH.com and eSPIN.com. The network was acquired by Hearst Media on December 31, 2006 . The original eCRUSH site was launched on Valentine's Day, 1999 in Chicago by Clark Benson and Karen DeMars Pillsbury...

 (claiming 350,000 legitimate matches).

History

DoYouDo, Inc. was incorporated on September 23, 1999, with Sudai serving as chief executive officer
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...

 and (Spark Networks
Spark Networks
Spark Networks owns many special-interest online personal sites, such as JDate.com, BlackSingles.com, ChristianMingle.com and LDSMingle.com; it also owns the general-interest site Spark.com. Spark was started in 1997 by Joe Y. Shapira. David Siminoff formerly served as Chief Executive Officer...

 founder and current CEO) Joe Y. Shapira and (Spark co-founder and former co-chairman) Alon Carmel serving on the board of directors
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...

. A 2000 Business Wire article noted:
DoYou2.com's failure to catch on widely may have been due to the implementation of the scheme. Its marketing focused on the teen market to the exclusion of the adult market, had a high cheese
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...

 factor, and concentrated on promoting a viral e-mail
Viral marketing
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...

 system instead of the matching system. The viral e-mail system allowed users to email anonymous DoYOUs through the website, asking, for instance, "doYOU Miss me?" with the recipient having to guess who sent it. If the recipient guessed incorrectly as to whom sent it, they would send their reply to the wrong person (perhaps one of their friends who hadn’t used the system yet); the recipient of the misdirected reply would in turn try to guess who sent it (or, perhaps, delete the email). The theory behind it was that this would lead to users introducing the system to their friends, expanding the customer base in the same way a virus spreads. This system was shut down in late 2001.

The firm was acquired by Matchnet.com in September 2000 for an undisclosed sum, dependent on certain success parameters, to be paid completely in MatchNet shares. The item "Acquisition of DoYouDo, Inc. $ − $ 1,820,000" appeared on the company's 2001 financial statement
Financial statement
A financial statement is a formal record of the financial activities of a business, person, or other entity. In British English—including United Kingdom company law—a financial statement is often referred to as an account, although the term financial statement is also used, particularly by...

s. Matchnet's 2002 Annual Report disclosed, "The purchase price was contingent upon the Company acquiring a separate entity, eCrush, before May 30, 2001, and was to range from $1,820,000 to $1,820,000 plus 70% of the difference between $5,000,000 and the actual purchase price of eCrush, if it was less than $5,000,000." eCRUSH, a company providing essentially the same service, had entered the market on Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day
Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496...

, 1999; today eCRUSH claims to have over 1.6 million users and to have legitimately matched over 350,000 people "through a proprietary and patented database process." The company never actually acquired eCRUSH.com.

MatchNet's 2004 Second Quarter Report claimed that its strategic rationale for the DoYouDo purchase was to "leverage the positioning and membership database of an existing online personals service" and "enhance and extend existing brands." An August 4, 2004, SEC filing
SEC filing
An SEC filing is a financial statement or other formal document submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission . Public companies, certain insiders, and broker-dealers are required to make regular SEC filings. Investors and financial professionals rely on these filings for information...

 said that the rationale was to "leverage acquired intellectual property."

MatchNet's 2003 annual report noted:

"Love detector" methodology

The patent's description notes:
Demand for the system is based on the fact that there are many situations in which asking a person out might have negative consequences if the feelings are not mutual. For instance, many people may be reluctant to ask out a good friend, for fear that if the answer is No, it will ruin the friendship once the other person knows how they feel. Co-workers may face a similar situation; if the co-worker rejects the romantic overtures, the work situation may become awkward.

In Sudai and Blumberg's "Love Detector" system described in their patent, users log in and enter a confidential list of friends and acquaintances who they are attracted to. The system periodically searches for pairs who have indicated a mutual attraction and notifies them, so that they can initiate a romantic relationship without fear of rejection. In the event that a person's feelings are unrequited, the object of their affection is never the wiser. As the patent abstract points out, "No notification occurs unless the system determines that a match in attraction or interests exists. If a first person's feelings or interests are not mirrored by a second person, the system will not notify either person and only the computer system will be aware of the first person's feelings for the second person."

The patent described several variations of the system, including one in which a user can choose to be notified 24 hours later; e.g., to allow time for the man to make the first move. It also provided for different types of attraction, e.g. "love," "like," and "desire." The system could be configured to only match users who shared the same type of attraction.
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