The online dating industry is rife with good ideas that don’t resonate well with singles. Letting people act as Matchmakers for each other on a dating site appears to be one of them. It’s a niche thing, which Engage found out after goring through $6 million dollars of venture capital.
As previously mentioned, Engage was acquired by Spark Networks earlier this year. (Disclaimer: I worked with Engage on their early site, which was notable because the male and female profiles were different.)
From this email, which was sent out this week, It looks like Spark Networks has figured out what it’s going to do with Engage.
On July 8th, engage.com united with kizmeet.com to create a new, fun social dating experience. There are already 500,000 members and new ones joining daily. kizmeet still offers everything you like about engage…and more.
Here are just a few kizmeet features:
- Free to search
(Many sites offer this…keep reading, it gets better.)- Free to post profiles
(Yawn, typical dating site stuff…go to the next point where it gets good.)- Free to respond to messages
(What? Really? Who lets you do that? kizmeet does.)- Invite your friends to help you
(A little like real life, isn’t it?)- No long questionnaires
(You know who we’re talking about…this is way more fun than “them.”)- No monthly fees
(Why pay $30-60 per month for those other sites to support their TV ads?)To celebrate our launch and get you re-acquainted, we’re offering you a limited-time opportunity to send messages for free. Check out kizmeet’s members now. If you see someone you like, send an email. They can read it and respond for free. For a limited time friends you refer can send messages for free too (maybe you can get that cute guy or girl in the office you like to join and ask them out “on the QT”).
This offer won’t last long so visit kizmeet.com today and daily while the offer lasts. If nobody captures your attention today, come back in a few days. You never know when the person you want to meet “comes on the market.” In the meantime, brush up your headlines, add some photos, make some matches, and have some fun. We look forward to seeing you on kizmeet.
Engage.com now redirects to Kizmeet. My Engage login worked but the site is unrecognizable. Engage spent an enormous amount of money redesigning the site several times over, an now it looks like a $5 template site, which is sad. Obviously Spark had to perform some major surgery to shoehorn the site into their infrastructure, but did they have to make it look so bad?
The Engage Facebook application, AwesomeIntros, seems to be down at the moment. I wonder if it will be resurrected.
As always, I’ll be keeping an eye on Kizmeet to see how the site performs.
What do you think is going to happen to the site?
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I wonder why you draw attention to this fact “I worked with Engage on their early site, which was notable because the male and female profiles were different.)” I am a bit new to this industry so pardon me if my question is not very clever. Is it not standard for make and female profile to be different at all dating sites?
“Free to respond and limited time offer to send messages.”
Will they charging for sending messages once offer expires? Or there will be montly fee for premium account? But that would contradict “no monthly fee” statement. Something does not ring the bell here…
Until I saw Engage I had never seen gender-specific profiles.
@mac, I agree, conflicting messaging. Going from free to paid can be disastrous unless your community is passionate about your service.
I think it’ll be absorbed and will eventually become like a vestigial organ of kizmeet.
The idea of friends introducing each other is good – I don’t think that was the problem, it was more due to the implementation by Engage. Trying to differentiate a brand through technical innovation is folly but there is a similar site in the UK doing well with this route – http://www.mysinglefriend.com – particularly in London where a quarter of singles in the UK live.