I think matchmaking for couples is a great idea in theory, but wouldn’t really work in practice. Several years ago I started an online matchmaking service called Romantic Planet. Romantic Planet did (does) allow you to say you’re just looking for friendship. In fact our original vision emphasized friendship as much as it did romantic relationships (we originally were going to call it “The People Connection,” and offer matches for romance, friendship, business, shared interests, etc.).

In addition to having menu options like “looking for friends,” we put a lot of effort into building a community area where people could share ideas and interests, and also a double dating section where friends could accompany each other on dates for mutual support. The features were barely used. In fact, despite a lot of marketing efforts and a lot of people giving us positive verbal feedback, the double dating feature was used so little that we evetually dropped it entirely.

What we discovered was that, regardless of what everyone will tell you in surveys, 1) people, in general, won’t pay a membership fee to meet friends online, and 2) a matchmaking site that emphasizes friendship too much will have trouble drawing people who want romance (and who do pay).

Another issue that you have to deal with, to offer this kind of service, is that people look for different things in a romantic match versus a friendship match. Romantic Planet has this complex system for matching you with people by weighting your smoking and drinking preferences, pets, interests, etc. But, say you’re allergic to cats. If a potential date has a cat that will probably be a deal killer. On the other hand, you can have lots of friends with cats; you just won’t go to their houses to hang out. So a system which truly matches for both dating and friendship will have to store different data, and have different questionnaires, for romantic vs. friendship matches. That’s a lot of extra work to put in for a feature that, again, people won’t generally pay for.

In the offline world, friendships tend to grow out of shared interests, shared experiences, or shared friends. So really, I think the best way to meet friends online is through a shared interest group, like Yahoo Groups, a journaling community (aka bulletin board) like Let’s Just Talk, or a friends network like MySpace or Friendster. But even Friendster, the original “meet friends online” service, has turned more or less into a “romantic personals” site. That says it all.

Holly, you have to make time … you still have to manage the relationship you have with your spouse. Parents are grown-ups and need to also have grown-up activities. If you only do things with your kids, it could lead to resentment … things like “I gave up my life for you ungrateful kids” (think: teenage years).

We do find friends through our activities, but that can be hit-or-miss. The idea was to use deeper personality profiling to find people who share common interests AND would be compatible, personality-wise.

“[...] go back and barcode your movie collection while our wives chat. ”

You know my wife would love that. We could finally replace the pile of little Post-It sticky notes that she uses to manage her lending system (who she’s loaned stuff out to).

This weekend we’re not doing anything in particular. We’ll be around the house, grilling food and if the weather improves, swimming in the pool … it’s remained a solid 82F-86F with the solar cover on. If you don’t have plans, maybe you could come join us.