Match.com and BT change TV forever by bringing internet dating to the small screen

Eastenders, Torchwood, the news and oh, that guy with the centre-parting who likes American Pie 1&2 ‘winked’ at you.

Yes: meet the future.

Match.com and BT are pairing up and bringing internet dating from the quite small screen in your bedroom to the rather larger screen in your sitting room, in an attempt to lure the millions looking for love over the computer back to the television.

Why? To make it “easier” for you to find Mr/Ms Right obviously.

Kate Taylor, relationship expert at match.com, says: “Being able to search for love on the box, from the comfort of your own couch, means that finding love really couldn’t be easier and you don’t even have to take off your slippers.”

Ah! of course, because you *do* have to take your slippers off to go on your lap-top. Other benefits of this move as suggested by BT include: you don’t have to switch on your computer & you can go on match.com from your living room.

Follow on after the jump

I not even going to comment on whether or not you can use your computer in the living room.

This comes across as a WTF? but I can see that BT with their interactive Vision box are trying to move a swathe of customers away from their computer desk and back onto the television. And what better way to tug them back to the original ‘box’ than by their heartstrings? You flick over to channel 955 and there it is, your match.com profile.

Changes
The move onto BT Vision isn’t adding anything to the site: “Members will find all of match.com’s most popular features including winks, email and add to favourites” says the press release.

It’s just putting it onto a bigger screen in the middle of your sitting room. To my mind, there aren’t very many occasions when you’d want your online dating profile on a large screen easily visible to anyone in the sitting-room.

However, the match.com spokeswoman does point out one situation when it could be potentially amusing:

Yes that’s right, beaming the profile pictures of the hapless fool who sent you a message out to a group of your cynical friends.

Kate from Match.com again: “What our friends think about who we date is important to so many of us, so next time the girls or boys are round for a night in front of the box, have a peek and see who has been checking you out. Online dating is so much more fun with a little help from our friends.”

And by fun we mean a cruel bloodsport.

One final swipe before I let this go. Having pictures of prospective dates on television puts them in direct contrast with the likes of David Tennant and news-readers, whose chiselled photogenic faces will be only one click of the remote away. This sort of competition may prove too much for the delicate flower of online love. Until all hot people on television join match.com, I personally won’t be signing up to this scheme.