You may not have come to TechCrunch looking for love, but we might be able to help you out anyway. SpeedDate, which launched as public beta in the last few days, brings the concept of speed dating to the web.
Rather than asking its users to fill out surveys describing their interests and personalities, SpeedDate gets right to it by throwing you into 3-minute long “dates” with potential matches. All you need to do ahead of time is enter the basics: your zip code, your gender, the gender of the person you are looking for, the age range of that person, and how far you are willing to travel for them.
The dates are conducted by webcam so you can hear and see your date. Curiously, you can also communicate through a chat box. When you’ve made a judgment about whether you like the person, just click “Yes” or “No” to indicate whether you want to follow up with the person after your first three minutes are up.
Since the service has yet to gain a substantial user base, SpeedDate has been organizing “events” in which users are encouraged to come online at the same time. The first one took place this past Thursday while the service was still in private beta. About 230 San Francisco Bay Area singles went on 1,100 dates. The next one is tonight at 8:00pm and doesn’t appear to be meant for a particular region. The company says it has received positive feedback about these events from both men and women.
SpeedDate demoed at the TechCrunch40 conference and will compete with soon-to-be-released WooMe, which presented on stage at TC40.
Last summer we wrote about thirteen Web 2.0 sites to find love.
Wow, I can totally see this being successful. Most flash-video implementations are all alike these days. This is refreshing creativity.
So I don’t need to leave my parent’s basement?
this is a great idea, finally something fresh and new.
dating is so superficial and fake, at least the meet/greet part
but i must say, watching clips is rather intriguing – as opposed to the standard bio page
Love will find a way!!!
http://www.goog...mp;dq=7,203,674
Nice, BUT
http://www.goog...mp;dq=7,069,308
The friendster patent didn’t really stop or toll gate facebook, hi5, or myspace. We still don’t know if they are just waiting but it would seem they are not going to enforce.
Will the speeddate.com people enforce the patent if seesmic, and these other flash-video startups start going all China IP ethics on their butts?
MotherF&#$%, the filter caught it again, trying with regex
#############################################
google_dot_com/patents?id=-K9_AAAAEBAJ&dq=7,203,674
Nice, BUT
google_dot_com/patents?id=aTB4AAAAEBAJ&dq=7,069,308
The friendster patent didn’t really stop or toll gate facebook, hi5, or myspace. We still don’t know if they are just waiting but it would seem they are not going to enforce.
Will the speeddate.com people enforce the patent if seesmic, and these other flash-video startups start going all China IP ethics on their butts?
Online speed dating? While this is a new development in online dating, the simple fact is this: Nothing will ever change the concept of dating for the better. Ever.
how will this help the legions of married men looking for anonymous sex who populate most dating sites?
Everyone knows where to find love- in Bars, why do we need such match making sites.
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
Cool idea.
If you’re too busy to date, you’re probably too busy to be in a working relationship.
A refreshing take on the dating market but alas that market is saturated already!
New fresh ideas may well refresh interest and help convert but is this enough to capture a large audience?
wow…
what a great idea, just when you think nothing new can happen to the online dating sites, we get SpeedDate.com. Great name and concept.
And then if you hit it off, you can even log into second life and have virtual sex.
Idiotic.
Looks interesting, but I’m waiting for WooMe which seems to be a broader application with I hear lets you pick to join specific speed sessions of interest versus forcing you into random blind dates with people you’d never self select to meet.
@14…already done redlightcenter.com
I had a chance to try out SpeedDate recently and found it a refreshing alternative from online dating sites. It takes days (if not weeks) to finally connect with someone over most online dating sites, while on SpeedDate I can immediately tell whether there is any chemistry. Anyone that is familiar with the psychology featured in Blink and other books, now knows that all you need are a few seconds to have a really great read on whether you’ve found a good match or not and I think SpeedDate does a great job in making dating more efficient.
Not everyone has a web cam ..It may take time before it gain traction. Still a breath of fresh air
I just tried it – its awesome.
Couple of problems: People were not ready to turn on their webcams and were very …. reserved (unlike the 3 videos they’ve published). For serious daters this has the same problems as any other online sites – i don’t trust what i see in the virtual world. However, the interface is easy and its well done. Hopefully it succeeds.
They raised $2.8 mil in Series A. That should buy a fair amount of web cams to distribute around the Bay Area…. get a lot of buzz on the tech blogs,…. spike their metrics,…. and sell out quickly to Barry Diller’s company.
Actually, I’m curious to see whether this market takes off, and how they’ll do against competitors. I wish them good luck.
from what i saw of the techcrunch40 video, WooMe may have a more compelling proposition, (still waiting for my alpha invite
) with user generated topics for sessions, people filtering by attributes beyond location and previewing people in joined sessions. i am not personally looking for a “romantic” relationship, but see a lot of value for real time face to face video and audio introductions for all sorts of other reasons. in the past, i have used tools like craigslist for finding a roommate (when i first moved to sf from ny) and think WooMe would have provided a better platform for filtering through all post responses without having to go down to the local starbucks to meet face to face. in fact, i have recently been looking for a yoga partner in san francisco and could really use the WooMe service now. if only they would send me an invite code!
Oh, an online hookup-site? Wait, isn’t that what Facebook was all about, before they decided to “grow up”?
We were thinking of doing this two years ago for an up-and-coming social network. Unfortunately, we never had the manpower to execute. Now that S/N is almost non-existent. Oh well, I’ve got other ideas to thrash around. It’s a great idea for a widget. The main issue is getting everyone online at the same time.
I agree with Sarah (#20), the echo chamber thinks everyone has a webcam and it IS funny (I know mark is new and young).
Anyway, this is a facebook application waiting to happen. One can better justify this if one of your friend’s friend’s friends is talking to you.
I’m sure it could exist on its own too, though I am not part of the target market.
I did a writeup of the first event at http://onlineda...k-speeddatecom/
They have a long way to go until it’s user-friendly but so far I like it.
Fast Flirting on mobile manages to draw thousands of people online 24/7. Same concept but text and pic based. Heard a rumour that their product will be heading to web in the very near future.
Keep your kids away from this type stuff, who knows who some of these “kids” are?
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
Yea true steve
http://www.rajuthan.com/
My friends and I have been playing around with a
service called mebeam
the last couple of weeks, which has a video speed dating feel
to it, without the moderation. Their blog does mention video
speed dating as part of their road map. I haven’t tried speededate,
as yet, but I think, they will be hard pressed achieving the
same quality as these guys.
Interesting idea. Have to watch and see if this is works…
So, I’ve noticed that the majority of people online at tonight’s meet were just the girls in the intro-videos themselves. It seems like a way to test bugs on a few initial users. There weren’t that many people and frankly the site had a LOT of bugs.
Gosh, there it is. Three friends and me had *exactly* this idea a year ago on our way to a barcamp in cologne, germany.
Good luck guys, the idea is awesome!
This is somewhat interesting, and yes, it is new within the online dating space, but I believe it would be hard for some to make a connection this way. The first 3 minutes for many users will be awkward–and even in the sample videos, you can see instances where one person takes over most of the conversation. The plus side to writing information about yourself is to provide more substance behind the initial first impression. I don’t think it would hurt to create space on the profile for the user to at least write a little blurb about themselves. That could also eliminate the time wasted by asking the standard cliche questions within those short 3 minutes.
hey.. i am not here to comment, just looking for guys who have time to chat…
here’ my msn and ym
sophia_venez@hotmail.com
sophia_venez20@yahoo.com
thank you for having me here