Norton goes further, suggesting that prospective dates should not be searched for "as though they were shoes online." Simple demographic variables such as height and religion have poor relevance to whether a romantic pairing will be successful, he says. Better predictors of relationship success are concepts such as humor and rapport. Unfortunately, these are highly subjective. A startup called Omnidate hopes to profit from technologies that help users gather and evaluate this kind of subjective information. The company's solution is an add-on for existing dating sites that allows users to interact as avatars in a 3-D virtual space. Rather than waste time with pages of matches with meaningless information, users can evaluate qualities that are only revealed during a meeting. "As people chat, their characters respond naturally, providing a realistic dating experience," says Omnidate's president Igor Kotlyar. - × × ×