From cyberspace to face-to-face
FED UP WITH online relationship sites that are impersonal and rife with dishonest profiles, some are moving back to live, in-person matchmaking
Can you find love in six minutes? That’s how long bachelors or bachelorettes are allowed to stand onstage narrating a Powerpoint presentation about themselves to nearly 75 eligible singles at Me So Far, a new monthly event in Chicago. Some speak of a song that changed their life. Others reveal a time when they felt as if they had failed. There are slides of their living rooms, the insides of their refrigerators, even their debit-card statements.
Beginning with these mini-monologues and ending with a happy hour, Me So Far is one in a spate of recently founded dating services that are spurning that purported fount of modern romance, the Internet.
After all, while the Web does broaden the dating pool, it has also disappointed scores of people. Sitting home at night scrolling through online profiles can sometimes feel like the 21st-century equivalent of sitting and Kenneth Shaw, 27, formerly a product planner for Microsoft and the principal “imagineer” for the design-sale website One Kings Lane. The two met years ago, when Carroll sought out Shaw, known for creating a Facebook app called My Purity Test, to help her design her own app.
Shaw said his yen for a girlfriend, coupled with his fear of encountering colleagues on Match and OkCupid, inspired him to design a dating site without online profiles.
Instead, Tawkify applicants submit photos and answer 10 questions about themselves. If they are accepted, Carroll and a team of matchmakers interview them over the phone (no algorithms!) then set them up on a telephone date the following Monday at 10 p.m. Matches are told almost nothing about each other before the call, which is automated through a service that the Tawkify founders refer to as “Mr. Brooks,” because it seemed like a fine name for a dating butler.
Once the couple is connected, their phone call lasts 10 minutes
“I think it’s really important that we build spaces and places for people to meet that don’t feel so data-driven or impersonal.”
ME SO FAR FOUNDER LAKSHMI RENGARAJAN
in a bar alone, hoping to score.
Is there a middle ground? The founders of these startups think so. They’re trying to combine the power of the Internet with the best of retro dating, with singles parties so big they are organized through websites, and real-life matchmakers.
Desire for face-to-face introductions is also spurring the proliferation of geo-location dating apps like Grindr and Blendr, Singles around-Me and Skout. And it’s inspiring nascent sites like Friendlylook, Hitch.me and Coffee Meets Bagel, all of which try to make Internet dating more like small-town dating by enabling singles to meet through friends and colleagues.
“People were just sort of battleweary from online dating,” said Lakshmi Rengarajan, 36, an advertising professional who said she founded Me So Far so that single people like herself could skip automated questions and create strong “dating ecosystems” instead. “I think it’s really important that we build spaces and places for people to meet that don’t feel so data-driven or impersonal.”
Another dating concept being tested is Tawkify, the May-december brainchild of the Elle magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, 69, before the line goes dead, to stoke intrigue. To speak longer, the couple must exchange phone numbers before the clock runs out or else request that Mr. Brooks connect them again the following Monday.
Carroll said she speaks with almost every male applicant, screening out the ones she thinks are merely looking for sex. Though this might evoke the era of Yenta the Matchmaker, some of Tawkify’s other tactics are more of-the-moment.
The company is billing itself as the first to use Klout scores, a measure of one’s digital influence, as a matchmaking metric. The higher your score, the more likely you are to be matched with someone of similar status. And Tawkify has matched people with some impressive digital status, like the lingerie designer and burlesque connoisseur Dita Von Teese (the ex-wife of Marilyn Manson). Klout score: 69 of a possible 100 (the average score is 20).
Carroll said Von Teese was looking for a man who wanted to date the real her, not her public persona, so she was matched with a Scandinavian novelist. The two hit it off during their Tawkify call and decided to meet for cocktails, then dinner, in Paris, where they both have residences. Von Tease had to leave France to fly to Los Angeles, but she and the novelist are still talking.
“I will use whatever tool I can use to help my instincts and my gut,” said Carroll.
While startups like Tawkify are focusing on real-world dating, new sites are trying to fix the pitfalls of online dating.
“The profiles themselves, they’re not credible,” said Naveed Nadir, 29, an Internet technology consultant in Canada, referring to the embellishment that many online daters do. “They fake their names. They fake their credentials.”
Nadir turned to a place he thinks people are likely to be more honest: the professional networking database Linkedin. Recently, Nadir introduced Hitch.me, a dating site for Linkedin members. Unlike most online dating sites, where users spend hours scrolling through profiles of strangers, on Hitch.me they can swiftly find someone – even someone who is in their business or social circle – then get off the site and meet.
When someone signs up, Hitch.me automatically imports their Linkedin information, then asks for some personal details, including height, education and ethnicity. Privacy filters enable members to make their profiles invisible to all of their Linkedin connections or to all of their colleagues.
But for some, even such a low-key online approach cannot compete with meeting people at live social events, even those that recall the speed-dating gimmicks of yore.
Phillip Barker, 34, who is studying for a Master’s degree in social work, was recently a presenter in Chicago at a Me So Far lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender night at the Den Theater. Initially skeptical, he said, he ultimately found it exhilarating.
“It was a great journey,” Barker said, adding that he learned that people he might typically dismiss as not his type could very well be worth engaging. “Everyone has a really good story to share, if you listen.”
Among the slides he shared were a photo of himself playing volleyball (his childhood dream), the country codes of the 26 countries he has visited and the inside of his refrigerator, which included eggs, vegetables, Red Bull and Dom Pérignon.
“I wanted to show myself in a positive way but in a very realistic way,” said Barker.
“This is what dating should be like,” he said. “Let’s take the small talk out of it and get to the heart of who we are. No one’s getting any younger.”