Hello Stranger! A Study of Introductory Communication Structure and Social Match Success

Social matching systems recommend people to people. One of the key challenges such systems face is how to build introduction mechanisms that minimize privacy concerns, while maximizing the chance of successful introductions. Another challenge is to design systems that are suitable for mobile devices. We explored the relationship between introduction success and four communication interfaces: 1) a simple chat interface, 2) a restrictive profile exchange interface, 3) a hybrid of the two with temporary profile information, and 4) a hybrid of the two with full profile information. Our findings show that the restrictive profile, which is suitable for mobile devices, supported a comparable level of willingness-to-meet as did the other conditions but it did so in a considerably shorter time. Users preferred the UI of the fourth condition which suggests a future development direction for introduction system user interfaces. We discuss the implications of this finding for design of mobile social-matching applications.