A few weeks ago, a friend who's known me for years set me up with one of her coworkers. We met for coffee and got along well. Several enjoyable dates later it became apparent that we were not a match, but we had a few lovely meals, a couple of hikes and many long conversations. It was nice getting to know each other.
What's the difference?
Let's just say that the men I've met via dating sites were more comfortable cruising to second base (or stealing third) than men I'd met through friends. Why? Because he knew me from nothing - no connection, no commonalities - if he chose to attempt a homer and then never call again I'd be the only one to know he's an ass. No skin off his back.
The other guy - the one I met through a friend? He's accountable to her. He knows that if he's rude to me or does something unreasonable that it will be reported to our mutual friend. It could make him look bad if he tries to jump bases. He doesn't want to look less than stellar, so he's polite, nice, even chivalrous.
Where does twitter work into this?
I've been on twitter for several years (@berzerkeley) and have built up a wonderful community of friends. (People who don't tweet don't understand this, but those of you who do - and I'll bet there are at least a few of you reading this - get it.) Many are parents. Single moms and single dads. Some are from Berkeley. Most are not. But they all have a presence on twitter. Through this community I've met and dated a few different people. Because we followed each other on twitter we had a base understanding of each other and a connection via a common group of people. In other words, we were both accountable to the twitter community from which we met. If either went "out of bounds" there was a danger of it being reported publicly. In my circle this breeds good behavior. The experiences were excellent. Better than anything I ever found on OKCupid or jDate.
Back in 2008 I made a (fictional) video about just this. In the three years since then, meeting people through social media in general and twitter in particular has become a more acceptable venture. So I'm wondering, why hasn't this been mined.
Developers, coders, app-creators - whatever you're called - could someone please create a dating site from what already exists in the twitterverse? Can you make it easier to search single men my age and geographically near me, so I can stalk - I mean follow - them? And that's just the beginning. Hashtags and lists can be brought into the mix. Come now. It can't be that hard.
Get to work!
Personally I think you're onto something here. There really should be an easy way for like minded people to meet through Twitter. People searches and such. A person could easily opt out of any search they don't want to be a part of. This would make it much easier for a person such as myself to actually know that someone is wanting to meet another. It would be a shame to find out the person of your dreams was right there in front of you, and you had no idea they were looking. ~John
ReplyDeleteThat would be nice to see. The number of stalking victims in my list could go up significantly. Women like when guys show up for a visit randomly don't they? :)
ReplyDeleteHere are the links I mentioned in Twitter:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.luvatfirsttweet.com/
http://plentyoftweeps.com/
Hi Cori,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I'm the co-founder of Luv@FirstTweet (www.luvatfirsttweet.com) which I see Neil came across earlier.
While we work a bit differently than the sort of Twitter dating service you described, we actually do so on purpose and it makes for a better experience.
Creating a profile with Luv@FirstTweet is fun, simple, and quick -- all you need to do is register on our site, follow @luvatfirsttweet, and respond to the daily match question via @reply or direct msg. We collect all of your responses and then match you with similar people in your area.
Once you're matched with someone you're able to see things you have in common like a mutual interest in movies or perhaps that you enjoy similar restaurants in your area, and then you can check out their Twitter history too. Best of all, since there is no browsing profiles, it frees you of the spam you get on other dating services where people just message 100 others hoping to get a response back from even just one.
Definitely check us out and if you'd be interested in learning more, feel free to contact us here http://www.luvatfirsttweet.com/contact and I'll make sure to get back to you.
Thanks,
Jon
co-founder/CEO, Luv@FirstTweet
Great post! I think you're absolutely right about the accountability of having mutual friends. The same principle applies to twitter.
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ReplyDeleteYes, I would love some way of knowing who was single (location is already around and age I could always figure out on my own lol) Great post!
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