Most features are disabled in this mode. On the search page, the
Demo profile, as well as the search criteria are pre-selected. The Demo mode is
only meant to demonstrate how some main features of the system work. To have
full access to the features in PERSONiO you will need to set up your own user
account. The following table details some things you can do once you're logged
in as a user.
Friends
on PERSONiO
are those people that mutually approve each other as a friend. You are then
able to communicate with other friends and
people
directly linked to these
direct
friends. You can start by inviting
someone to join PERSONiO,
or look for existing members on the Search page and add them to your friends
list.
There are three
ways to include people on your friends list.:
1 You can send them an invitation to join, when they join they will automatically be
put on your friends list
2 You can
include people on your friends list, to express an interest in them, by using a
credit. You receive credits when you become a member and credits can be earned by inviting
others to join or you can also pay for them. After you include someone on your
friends list, that person has to approve you by including you on their list as
well. It helps if you have a
fairly complete profile, as new people will approve your friendship request
based only on your profile.
3 If someone liked your
profile and wants to be your friend by including you on their friends list, you can
accept this without the use of
credits. This requires a well completed profile that someone else will find
intriguing.
Credits (+
To / -
From) You
You invite someone
0
They accept your
invitation
+3
Put someone on friends list
-1
Take someone off friends list
+1
You accept a friendship
0
Erase a friendship
0
Credits are used for listing people on your
friends list. When you include someone you use one credit. When you remove
someone, you get a credit back, as long as they have not yet accepted you as a
friend. After you have both listed each other as friends, you've used up one
credit.
You can check out members profiles and you have to
approve them as friends before they can send you
messages. It makes receiving spam messages virtually impossible. Mutual friends
can communicate
with each other via the internal message system and are allowed to see each
other's Instant Messaging information as well. You can also use the internal
mail system to communicate with people that you have common friends with (your
friends' friends) and have access to their IM addresses if they allow it.
You can get more
credits when you invite a new member that signs up with PERSONiO. For each new
member that signs up, you receive three extra credits. There's a form to
invite new members on the
Friends Page.
What you can do with
Friends
Friend of a friend
Not a friend
Send mail internally to
NO
See their Instant Messengers
If they want you to
NO
See their profile
See a list of their friends
You can also invitepeople to sign up as members, by entering their e-mail into
the space provided. This will send an invitation that includes your e-mail, so
that they will know the letter is from you. When they join,
you will get three credits for each person that signed up and they will be
automatically included on your friends list. They still have to approve you as
a friend to complete the friendship.
You can open and close the different levels and categories by
clicking on the +/- signs on the left side of the categories. You can only
enter your profile on the lowest levels of these categories, so you need to
open levels all the way to enter your profile. After you close a level your
settings are automatically saved in each category.
Where possible, groups are summarized in the upper levels and displayed as
a horizontal bar directly on the level above. These summaries show the
combined strength of the answers below. Your profile will allow you to easily
match and compare yourself to other members, based on any level that has a
value in it.
How is it possible to have a lower score at a higher level than the values
under it? The higher level values assume that there should be enough high
scores in the categories directly underneath. For example, if you are an
expert in tennis, your overall sports score will not be equally high unless
you also score high in other sport areas. Higher levels summarize more
categories and therefore need more of those categories to be highly rated to
achieve a reasonably high value.
Searches are done by selecting the
criteria that you feel are important in your search and by setting filters to
only include members that fit your criteria.
On the search page you can select filters and similarity choices. Simply put, the filters will exclude people from your search and the similarity
choices will rank people based on how similar they are in the categories
you've selected. Remember that filters (choices
in the last column), will reduce the number of
your results.
There may be specific characteristics that you'll
want to include in a match (for example, only those people who speak English
well) and mark the areas as important where you want to
look for similarities. Both of these types of adjustments can be set on
the search page.
The filters can be used for any category and it shows up on the
lowest opened level. If you need to set filters for a category, you should
open up or close the levels in that group until the filter dropdown box shows.
If you select too many filters, your search may not result in enough matches.
In that case you need to reduce the number of filters or one that restricts
your results too much. There are several types of filters, the most simple
matches exactly what you specify. The most common looks for values in a
criteria that is more than the value selected. This could be in categories
such as education level or expertise in something and it's usually has the
term "at least" in the filter description. In the personality area you can
also filter for people that are like you or unlike you.
Importance refers to how much the similarity of others' and your values matters in
a certain category.You can only select the
importance of a criteria if you have a corresponding value in your own
profile. There are
two search settings: normal and advanced. The normal search has check boxes
for selecting something as an important comparison for your search. The
advanced search gives further choices in the form of a dropdown box.
For
example if it matters that you find someone that is close to your age, you
need to select the age category as being "important" or "very important". You select by choosing the level of importance in the
dropdown boxes in the left column. Selecting an importance level will include that
criteria in your match and the level you set will signify how important you
feel a criteria is relative to your other selections in your search. For
example, If you feel that in the overall match your personality is more
important than your art skills, set the importance to “very important” for
personality and to a lower importance level for your art skills.
The available categories are organized on levels,
similar to your profile page. It is possible to search on any level that is
open. If you need to search on a certain level, the category needs to be
opened or closed, so that the level is the lowest opened in that category. The
available search menus will show in every level that's opened.
The search page, as all the pages, work in a "what you see is what you
get" fashion. In your search you will only use what is visible on the
search page when you press the search button. The category that is not open,
visible and selected at the time of search, will not participate even though
you may have set a search criteria for it. Only the levels that are open and
where a criteria was selected, will participate in your search.
For the similarity choices there is a simple and an advanced search.
The default is the simple search where you just select the categories you want
for similarities, using check boxes. The
advanced
search option uses dropdown boxes. These will allow you to specify if a
category is more important than another in your similarity choices(for example, personality may matter more for you than cooking skills).
You can switch between the simple and advanced search modes with the link
at the bottom of the search
table.
Instant Search
options, at the top of the search page, will erase any input that's on the search table.
Existing search settings will be replaced with a basic
search for people similar to you in your geographical area. There are two
simple instant searches that
look for friends or love in your general area. After you see a list of
results, you can go back to the search table and adjust some criteria to get more
specific results.
The more criteria you have marked
as important the more accurate your match will be.
Selecting more categories as important does
not lessen the number of matches you will get.
Only categories that
are possible to compare and where you have a corresponding value, will be
available for selecting as "important" in your search. If on the search area
you see a "no?" instead of a checkbox, that marks a category where
you could have a comparison if only you've entered your own value on the
My
Profile page.
The system is designed to be flexible, so that you don’t need an exact
match in a category to be successful. It’s enough to specify the criteria you
want a match to be based on. PERSONiO will generally look for the closest
match to your values in those criteria, so you don’t miss matches that are
close, but not exactly like yours. The categories are arranged in groups,
where the higher levels have an overall rating based on the groups directly
below. While you can only enter your own data on the lowest level, searches
can be done on any level.
When you want to be more specific in a search, open the lower levels of a
category and select the exact criteria you need. Filtering at the top levels
will give you a more approximate result for your search. You can open and
close all criteria, so that you can see and search the profiles at the level
you want. You should get reasonably accurate results by searching at the
higher levels, but you can be much more accurate about what you're looking for
if you search the lowest levels.
Your search results will be based only on what you specified in your
search settings both in importance and the use of filters. A search with only
a few specific criteria, will give you more results. A search using many
filters will have less, but the accuracy will be greater.
You can also choose the Direct Match option if you know the member
name of someone. Based on the categories you've chosen as important, you can
compare yourself to people directly, without having to set filters. Just enter
the member's name in the direct match area and press enter. Your profiles will
be compared based on how the levels on the search page were openedand what
similarities were chosen.
Your search results will be based only on what you specified in your
search settings both in importance and the use of filters. The list of
successful matches will depend on your search criteria and not just your
profile. The people included in your results depend on the filters you set and
the ranking of your matches are determined by the similarity of attributes
that you select as important. To change the ranking you need to change what is
selected as important. You can see the detail on each of your matches by
clicking on their photo or username.
The profile of a user details the
information they made available through their privacy filter. This page shows
their profile, as well as how their characteristics relate to yours. The
criteria that was marked as important for similarity is shown in relation to
your own data. This assumes that the criteria was chosen as important and that
you and the other user both have a value in this category. The page also
contains the information that was written to describe what this user could not
express through the standard criteria choices.
On the profile pages
of your mutual friends you will see their instant messenger addresses
if they have any and you can use the internal mail system to send them mail.
For people that you have a friend in common with (a friend of a friend) you
can only use the internal mail system to send messages, unless they have made
their instant messenger address public. You can not send messages to the
people that are not your mutual friends, or their friends.
This page will
reflect the way the Search page was opened and the important categories you've
selected. The first column shows the categories you had open on the search page,
without the possibility to open or close these levels
here. The next column details
their information they allow you to see through their privacy options. The
last column graphs how similar each of the chosen categories were to your own.
The longer a green bar is in a category, the closer the similarity is in that
group. If the bar is red it signals that their result is the opposite of your
value. The bottom of the page gives you a chance to send a note to this user.
The page follows the way the Search page was opened. If you want to see a
different layout, you need to open/ close the seach levels.
The level of privacy is in your control. This is true in three main
categories:
1. The amount of
information you enter, You are in complete control of how much information
you want to enter about yourself into the system. Each category is optional and
only the first three
selections (location, age, gender) are required.
In some categories you can be exact or vague about your information. For example
your date of birth can be entered as just the year you were born in, or the
exact day. Your location can also be specified as the city, state, or just the
region you are in. Keep in mind though, that if you enter no information in a
category or not exact information, there is no way for someone else to find you
based on those criteria. Furthermore, you will also not be able to find
similarities between yourself and others.
2. The
profile categoriesyou don't
want others to see, Most of your data can be kept private through the
privacy filters. Here you have three levels of privacy.
In Normal setting other users will see all the details that
you've entered about yourself.
In Medium privacy setting your Relationship information will
be blocked out, but everything else will be visible.
In High privacy only the Basics (first) main group of
attributes will be visible and nothing else.
Keep in mind that the level of privacy works both ways. The
areas that you keep private will not be seen by others, but you will also not
see the same categories, even if others are willing to share their information.
In other words, you can only see the results of a category if you are sharing
your results on the same topic. For example, if you set your privacy level to
medium no one will see your relationship information and you will not see anyone
else's either. If your setting is on normal privacy, you will see others'
relationship info unless they are on a higher privacy setting than you.
Similarly, privacy applies to pictures both ways as
well. If you don't include a photo, you will not see the pictures of others.
3. Your e-mail
and contact information. Your actual e-mail will be kept private. When you
send or receive a message through the internal mail system, your actual email
will not be revealed to other
members, only your PERSONiO member name.
Your email is only shown when you invite a friend to sign up. This way your
friends know that they are not receiving spam, but you have invited them.
This is the only time your email is revealed and only to people that you
invite..
You can send messages to other members with
PERSONiO's internal
mail system, whilekeeping your
actual e-mail address private. You can send
messages from the message area that appears on the bottom of a friend's
profile page.You can
only send mail to your friends, or to a friend of a friend. As long as you have a
common friend (listed on your friends list), communication is possible. This eliminates unwanted messages from
people you don't know, or don't want to know. There's a separate Mail page that
lists the emails you've received. You can manage your messages and send any
replies from the individual message forms. The
internal mail system forwards the messages
you receive to
your outside e-mail,
if you choose.
You can set this on your "My Profile" page in the "Messaging"
area.
Location - Can be searched and entered as a City, State or Region.
If your exact location (city) is not on the dropdown list, you should choose
the state or region level. When you search using a region such as Asia, all
listed countries and cities in that region will come up as a match.
Age - Enter it as your birthday, or just the year you were born in.
Only your age will show or can be searched. When you set the importance level
for age in your search, matches with ages closer to yours will be treated as
better matches. You can also filter people using the two age ranges and the
results will only include those that are within that range.
Education - People with educational levels similar to yours will be
treated as better matches when similarity is important. You can also select
people with a minimum level of education that you want displayed.
College/ University - Similarly to the Location criteria, you can
enter your specific school or the country you went to school in, if your
institution doesn't appear. Searches can be done both at the school or country
level.
Personality - The results of your personality test can be used to
compare your personality and find people that are "just like me", "similar" or
"not like me". The choice "just like me" refers to a value that is exactly or
almost exactly like yours, "similar" will select people that are reasonably
close to your value and "not like me" only picks the people with values that
are significantly different from you. The personality test is based on the
four personality functions originally developed by psychologist Carl Jung, and
measures these traits. After the test is completed you will find your four
letter description of your results in your profile. There's an outside link
for the explanation of your type. You can match the four personality
components individually, or simply on the composite of your results that will
consider all four aspects. If you select a level of importance for this
criteria (recommended), the people that are close to your personality will be
given priority in the list of results.
Relationships - Includes love, family, sexuality, commitment and
similar subjects.
Knowledge - Here different aspects of your knowledge can be matched
with others. The categories are grouped into Social Sciences, Physical
Sciences and Languages. You can enter your choices for your profile in the
bottom of each category on the profile page. A composite score should be
visible for each group where you've made selections. On the search page it is
possible to select filters for search at any level in each criteria. If you
want to be more specific in your search the bottom levels should be opened, or
close a group and you can just select the whole category for an approximate
match.
Languages - Select the languages and the levels of your
proficiency. You can search for people that have a similar level to yours
and/or you can specify the minimum level of proficiency you're looking for in
others.
Beliefs/ Values - Contains various criteria that express core
beliefs for people such as religion or politics. There is no group score in
this case, as they cover a wider range of topics. Religion has two components,
the type and the intensity of one's beliefs (from very liberal to very
conservative). Politics has a similar liberal - conservative scale.
Arts/ Skills - This works similarly to other "Knowledge" areas, but
here different aspects of your creative side can be matched with others. You
can enter your choices for your profile in the bottom of each category on the
profile page. A composite score should be visible for each group where you've
made selections. On the search page it is possible to select filters for
search at any level in each criteria.
Activity/ Sports - Works like other "Knowledge and Skills" groups,
but this area focuses on your expertise in various sports and activities that
are grouped together. Here again, you fill in your profile at the lowest
levels but can search at any available level that you've opened.
Attitudes/ Likes - Has topics on anything that people have a
preference for or against, including music styles, eating, smoking,
entertainment. Covers a wide variety of areas where you may want to express
your like or dislike.
Why can't I choose a criteria for my match ?
- There are two possible reasons. You need to close a level below the one you
want to work with if it is open. You can only match a criteria that is the
lowest open level in the group. The other reason may be that you need to have
a value in your own profile to match or filter some topics. Among these are
personality and all higher level criteria such as education, where you need to
have a value of your own to compare to. In that case you need to have a value
in your own profile both for filtering and for including it in your proximity
(importance) match.
How is importance different from filters
- Setting the importance of a criteria will measure how close your
profile is to others in that topic. You need to have a value in your profile
to be able to use this option. The relative importance of all the criteria
selected, will determine the rank of your matches in the results. Filters
on the other hand are available most of the time and with filters you don't
necessarily have to have a value of your own. Filters will include only those
people that you specify with your restrictions. For example you can choose
only those who are female and have at least a college education. Only those
criteria where a similarity can be established, will have an importance
choice. Choosing them will compare those values and
favor the people that have a value similar to your own. For example age can be
compared to others as we assume that people will look for others that are of a
similar age. On the other hand we will not assume the same for gender, as
people may search for those of the opposite sex or the same as their own.
What combinations can I use for a match
- Any combination will work with the system, as long as
it is displayed on your search criteria page when you hit the "search"
button. It works in a "what you see is what you get" fashion. If you select a
criteria, but close that level before you press "search", that criteria will
not be used. Even though you have a search criteria, it will not play a part
in the search if its level is closed and thus can not be seen. If you want to
use a lower (more specific) level, you need to open the criteria group to that
level.
How can I
link up with more friends?
- You need to have a profile that's filled out enough so
that others can make a decision to meet you. A partially filled out profile
without picture has minimal chance of being approved by your fellow members.
You can become friends with anyone, as long as you and the other person both
agree. You don't need any approval from your or their friends. Of course if
you do have several of these mutual friends, the people that they are friends with
will be available for you to communicate with. Inviting your friends to join is the
easiest way to grow your network. Not only will you be put on the friends list
of the person you invite, but you also receive three additional credits that
you can use to include members on your friends list.
How do
credits work?
- You can get credits two ways. By inviting your friends to
join and by buying credits with PayPal. When you invite a friend and they sign
up, you receive three credits each time. You can use these credits to put
other members on your favorites list, so they can in turn confirm you as a
friend. Accepting a friendship doesn't cost anything. One credit is used for
including a member on your favorites list and if you decide to remove them,
you get a credit back. After they have become your friend, the credit is used
up and is not refunded. When a friendship is deleted, the credit is not
refunded, regardless of who did the deletion, you or your friend.
Why invite a someone?
- Inviting a friend allows you to compare your personalities and place them on
your favorites list for free.. Each time you invite a friend to become a
member of PERSONiO, you also get 3 credits when they join. These
credits can be used to make connections with other members. You can invite as
many people as you wish. Their e-mail will be kept secure. You can never have
too many friends : )
Who are considered
friends?
- Friends on PERSONiO are those people that mutually accept each other
as a friend. Unlike other sites, where your existing friends have to recommend
you to others, the only requirement here is that you approve each other. You
are then able to communicate with these friends and those directly linked to
these friends. You can start by inviting someone to join PERSONiO, or look for
existing members on the Search page and add them to your friends list. Grow
your network through your friends, new and old!
PERSONiO.com uses the following policies to safeguard your personal
information and is committed to protecting its confidentiality. We will notify
all registered users via email of any change to this privacy policy, unless you
have opted-out of receiving all email from us. Possible changes will also be
communicated on the site.
Information Automatically Captured from Visitors
We use your IP address (the series of numbers associated with your
individual computer) to help us maintain our site and identify problems with our
server. Your IP address does not disclose any personally revealing information
about you.
We use cookies to keep you logged in across all the different services on
PERSONiO.com. Cookies are small pieces of information that a website places on
your computer's hard drive so we know it's you when you visit. This helps us to
create a personalized experience for you when you visit our site. The use of
cookies is a very common practice on the Internet.
Personal Information
We use your email address to send your password and login
information. Your email is also used to notify you about messages that other
PERSONiO members may send you. Your email will not be displayed or given to
other members on this site.
When you become a PERSONiO.com member, you will be asked for some general
information which will enable us to provide you with individualized service. We
gather contact information (your email address), demographic information (like
your gender and age), and, if you choose to buy PERSONiO.com Personals
membership, financial information (like your credit card number and expiry
date). We will only use this information in the course of providing our service
to you.
Once you have registered, you will be given the option of creating a profile.
You will be asked for some personal, but non-identifying, information to
complete your personal ad (e.g. your occupation, your favorite music, etc). All
of the profile information is voluntary and not tied to your email address. How
much of this information will be viewable by other members is based on the
privacy setting you choose.
Verification of profile information
The information entered by members on this site has not been
certified and should not be assumed to be correct or complete. The verification
of a profile is up to the individual user and may take time. You should think of
the information presented as a starting point for discussion with other members
and not as reliable facts. Achieving trust may take time and common precautions
should be used in the process.
Use of and Access to this Information
Your demographic (non-identifying) information is used to
personalize your experience on the site, allow other members to find you through
a search result and to compose your personal profile.
The personally identifiable information we collect from you may be used to
improve the content and functionality of our website, customize the content or
layout of our pages for each individual member or to notify members about
updates to our website. Your personally identifiable information is not shared
with other organizations without your consent, except in situations where
required by law.
Online Behavior
PERSONiO members communicate with each other through personal
profiles and mail messages. We reserve the right to suspend or cancel an account
if we suspect users of using our service for the purpose of solicitation,
harassment or any other violation of our terms of service. Message Boards, chat,
personal ads content and member submissions which appear on PERSONiO sites may
be moderated and, if necessary, we reserve the right to edit or delete any
communication on a public area of the site.
