Imagine you are sitting on the couch watching Netflix (which by the way is Now The Largest Single Source of Internet Traffic In North America).
All of a sudden you get a text alerting you that there are 3 women and five men checked in at your local bar, complete with their photos. This is Assisted Serendipity, and this is very, very cool. After using it for a few months, without a doubt, Assisted Serendipity is my favorite dating app.
Assisted Serendipity is a free service that notifies you a soon as the male/female ratio turns in your favor at your favorite local hangouts. Using Foursquare’s check-in data, it monitors the venues you are interested in, and notify you as soon as the ratio “tips”.
Lenny Rachitsky has done something quite brilliant and at the same time avoided many of the problems facing dedicated location-based singles search mobile applications, which tend to have a difficult time getting traction.
Lenny says:
So many successful relationships are based on a serendipitous event that it’s clear that dating sites need to be fostering opportunities for “enhanced meetups” as much as possible. We are coming to rely on matching engines and recommendations engines to expose us to new people and new ideas, but these services cater to what we tell them we (think we) need. It turns out that we we rarely know what we actually need, or what will actually make us happy. We need serendipity to break us out of our bubbles. I see a service like Assisted Serendipity being just the beginning of a trend towards mobile/social/location based services helping you discover new ideas and new people.
Assisted Serendipity goes about finding singles nearby in a very smart way. It uses Foursquare checkins to alert you when people are at your favorite locations. The service pings Foursquare every five minutes to see who’s at the locations you are tracking. Assisted Serendipity is watching tens of of thousands of venues. People can watch up to 10 venues at a time.
As is often the case, talking about mobile-based dating apps is one thing, while using them out in the wild and experiencing the thrill of meeting new people is what this is all about.
Last night, while watching the Bruins at my corner bar, Assisted Serendipity pinged me to let me know that there were several women there checked into Foursquare. I looked around the room and found two of them and introduced myself by showing them their photo on Assisted Serendipity. This, my friends, was one heck of a pickup line. Sadly one was married and the other was just not my type, but we had a fun conversation and it was great to meet neighbors and perhaps new friends.
I will continue my hunt for great mobile dating apps. For now, Assisted Serendipity sets the bar is set pretty high. Imagine when they work with Facebook checkins, that is going to be huge.
Got your eye on any other interesting mobile dating apps? Let me know.
