A dating service with no loyalty to its founder
Gary Kremen, the founder of Match.com, encouraged his girlfriend to join the dating site. She did—and met someone there who became her new partner. The episode is memorable because it makes the service’s purpose unusually personal: Match.com was built to help people meet potential partners, and it did that even when the person looking was the founder’s own girlfriend.
What the site changed
A dating site makes romantic introductions available beyond the people someone happens to encounter at work, through friends, or in daily life. Members create profiles and look for other people who are also open to meeting. That changes the size and shape of the pool: instead of waiting for an introduction, a person can actively search among strangers who have signaled similar intent.
The technology did not decide whom Kremen’s girlfriend should choose. It made a new connection possible, then left the choice to the people involved. The same access that made the service useful to its members also made it impossible for its founder to control whom they met—or what they did next.
