Youniverse Sort of Launches a Dating Site

Youniverse, a web portal that uses images rather than words to structure quizzes and profiles, has launched a new dating site. At least, that’s what they told us – instead it appears that the site has merely released a dating quiz for now, with plans to upgrade it in the future.

Youniverse has a somewhat confusing history. It initially launched in 2006 as Imagini, which offered personality quizzes that used image-based questions. After raising funding, the site shifted gears, launching a new flagship site called Youniverse, while still licensing the image technology under the Imagini label.

The site currently offers quizzes on subjects including Travel, your “Love Type”, and your general Well-being. Instead of using text to analyze users, Youniverse asks a question and offers a grid of photos as answer choices. For example, the question “My favorite kind of date is..” would be accompanied by photos of a couple eating in a fancy restaurant, dancing in a club, or going on a nature hike. The site compares results with other users, and presents a list of members with similar tastes in a sidebar.

Up until now, the site has mostly been used as a social network, but apparently Youniverse has realized that the system could help make the exhaustive personality quizzes seen on dating sites like eHarmony a bit more fun. The dating service the site promoted in the press release claims that “you’ll be able to discover insights into your own personality while gaining valuable insights into possible mates.”

Unfortunately, the site is missing a few features that seem relativity essential for a dating site. For one, it never asks you your sexual preference – the matches to my “VisualDNA” consisted of both men and women. And by default it doesn’t seem like the site pays attention to a person’s availability – one of my results was a married woman that was looking for “Guys and girls as friends”. Score.