Common attributes in an unusual context: Predicting the desirability of a social match

Social matching systems recommend people to other people. With the widespread adoption of smartphones, mobile social matching systems could potentially transform our social landscape. However, we have a limited understanding of what makes a good social match in the mobile context. We present a theoretical framework which outlines how a user's context and the rarity of different affinity measures in various contexts (match rarity) can be used to provide valuable social matches. We suggest that if a user attribute is very rare in a particular context, users will generally be more interested in an affinity match. We conducted a survey study to assess this framework with 117 respondents. We found that both context and match rarity significantly influence interest in a social match. These results validate the key aspects of the framework. We discuss the results in terms of implications for social matching system design.