TrueDater is a new site offering user-supplied reviews of dating sites members. TrueDater, a funded startup founded by Mark, Geller. I spent some time on the phone with Mark and his PR guy, Jamie Diamond. trueDaters is a free forum is targeted at the masses, allowing people to generate a list or history of reviews about a person to make their own conclusion about a potential dater. [Disclaimer: I explored this idea a few years ago, and after a sobering conversation with my lawyer, I decided against the idea.]
Several others have attempted to launch similar services, to no avail. Why they haven’t succeeded if quite clear. Effective reputation management systems are complex and difficult to administer, and until now, none of the previous sites have had enough funding to market themselves.
TrueDater believes in organic, word-of-mouth growth, which may or may not come back to haunt them. When it comes to driving traffic, money is the only way they are going to get enough traffic to support advertising on the site. In terms of features and functionality, the site is pretty sparse, but then again it’s in Beta, and Beta is the new black.
On Epinions or Amazon reviews, people get a great sense of pride based on the quality and number of their reviews. I have a feeling that Truedater will be used more as a venting forum for disgruntled online daters. If you had a good date with someone, would you bother going to a website and critiquing that person? I don’t think so, unless the value proposition provides you with a tangible positive result. Positive reviews written by well-intentioned ex- boy/girlfriends are more likely to end up on Greatboy/girlfriends.com.
According to Mark, so far on only 2 occasions did TD have to pull something down, otherwise, people are following the intent of the site and providing something truly useful.
How they got to starting TrueDater is an interesting story involving Hollywood, TV scripts and several bad dates.
They don’t seem to know about their competition, but perhaps in this case that’s not so bad. Less baggage to pay attention to.
What are the future plans for the site?
We are very excited about the quick growth of the site from many perspectives. People are flooding in with reviews and feedback and we have been approached by potential partners and advertisers etc. Right now we are fine tuning the site itself, the main pieces are in place, we are really just interested in making some adjustments to provide the ideal forum for our users. The potential for someone like you to detail our service in your own words is invaluable to us, so If at some point you choose to write about us, we would be delighted.
With limited time on the site, my main concern is that there is not a clear path to providing a truly effective service. People with bad behavior or substandard profiles need to be alerted about their rating, behavior and given a way to remedy the situation. Only then will they have a chance at success.
