I’ve been videoconferencing since 1994, in fact, the original Connectix Quick Cam right here, next to my original Apple Newton and a hard drive the size of an end table.
For me, text chat in an instant message window is fine for friends, but for business and meeting new people, I prefer the additional emotive bandwidth that videoconferencing provides.
Since speed dating sites are popping up all over the place, I decided to spend part of last night speed dating at Woome and SpeedDate. My unscientific seat of the pants review follows.
A huge barrier to entry for most people is the fact that not many people have webcams. New Mac laptops have cameras, and some PC’s do as well, but we’re a long way from webcams being ubiquitous.
Several speed dating sites offer the ability to chat without audio or video. That is not speed dating, thats an IM session, which I think is much easier on a dating site with a chat application. No need to create new profile and much larger pool of potential matches.
This begs the question, why don’t people use the chat feature on dating sites more?
Simple, because men tend to lapse into neanderthal-like behavior when proper checks and balances are not put in place to monitor their behavior. I’m willing to bet that dating sites that have well-behaved men get more people in the chat rooms.
Women who join video dating and speed dating sites and put up photos of themselves in their underwear (the majority on some of the sites), have no one but themselves to blame when men stalk them online and send disturbing emails and videos.
The two services I tried out are WooMe and SpeedDate. Previous speed dating articles include First Look: SpeedDate.com , SpeedDate interview notes.
Woome
The amount of semi-naked women’s profiles is enough to make me blush, and that is saying something. If the women are one iota as hot as their photos, this site has Myspace beat hands down for R-rated voyeurism.
There were nine people over 30 in the US on Woome when I stopped by to kick the tires. The majority seem to be 18-27.
The ability to schedule sessions puts WooMe far out in front of the competition in terms of features.
A few years ago I developed a plan for a similar feature for a company than never launched. I spoke with someone at an anonymous calling company this week who are rolling out a similar idea.
Speed dating events should be scheduled based on time (I want to talk from 8-9pm), topic (I want to talk about American muscle cars of the 60’s) and location (I want to talk to people in Brussels.)
WooMe is close to nailing it, what they need is a directory of topics to discuss.
Skype broke the 12 million users online mark last week. Think about a virtual bar in Skype that allows you to meet people based on time, topic and location. That’s what I worked on back in the day. Marketing to 12 million people is a lot easier than building up a database of users from scratch.
There is a lot to do at WooMe. Create profile, upload photos, see who’s online, schedule sessions and most of the usual dating-site features.
Scheduling a session is straightforward. Name it, add some keywords to make it easy to find, general demographic information and interestingly, orientation, as in “anyone meet anyone” or in my case “girl meets guy.”
Set a start time, format: voice and video or voice only. Notice the lack of text-only chat as opposed to SpeedDate.
Paticipants can be 2-on-2 or 3-on-3.
Duration: 60 seconds to two minutes.
After seeing this, I realize that WooMe is not going for the longer topical conversations. Unless you are a fast talker, it’s all about the initial chemistry and level of interest.
What do you do after that? WooMe should have a section of the site dedicated to longer-format discussions.
Inviting people is an interesting experience. Do I invite guys or just women?
The selection process is smooth. Now we sit back and wait. Nine minutes to go. Wait, now it says 1 minute to go, what happened? I am confused, it says it starts in 40 seconds in one place and 9 minutes in another. Something is wrong here. Oh well, let’s see what happens.
Screen refreshes, funky background music is playing, makes me smile, the anticipation!
“looks like there’s no one for you to WOO in this session… please try again with another session and be sure to invite some people!”
Denied. That was my first time, I’ll try again and see what happens. Turns out I need to wait for Woome to get their webcam setup working properly, then I can actually participate.
The sortable list of most popular, recently joined, favorites and online now give you several different ways to check out people.
The list of upcoming sessions is nice, mouse over the session name to learn more.
I like the nudge concept, kind of like a Facebook poke or a dating site wink to show someone you are interested in them. Sites need to start limiting the number of winks or woos that can be sent each day. I can imagine women are deluged with them every day.
The video setup process is nicely done, if your system is one of the ones they work with.
WooMe may do well in the college market. If they add an adult area for “webcam girls” they could take a lot of market share away from various adult webcam sites.
SpeedDate
Speed Date licensed an online speed dating patent, U.S. Patent Number 7,203,674 covering key aspects of online speed dating.
This makes me wonder if WooMe and the others could be shut down if they don’t license the intellectual property.
Dan at SpeedDate emailed to let me know that they performed a significant upgrade to the site last week. I’m glad, because the old version of the site left a lot to be desired.
A brand new version of SpeedDate has arrived! We’ve added lots of new features, including:
-Faster dates
-Send messages in between dates
-Delete matches from your chat list
-More profile info about your dates, and lots more…
Please send your feedback on our new design to info@speeddate.com to be entered into a drawing for a free webcam.
Much better. The awkward pop-up windows are gone. You can now Flirt, Wink or Skip people that come up in your searches.
The abrupt joining of speed dates is still there, but overall the interface is much easier to navigate. Profiles remain a weak spot, every single one I’ve browsed says “Meet me to find out.” WooMe clearly is the winner when it comes to profiles.
Every single enounter so far has been with a static photo, with no one on the other end, so I report them all as “not responding.” It feels like the system is setting up these dates with fake people, wheather or not that is true I don’t know yet.
This is a total turnoff. With WooMe, you only meet up with people in a scheduled session, although you can create sessions as a host and not participate, which probably not a great idea.
A while back I had a good conversation with Dan Ableson, one of the SpeedDate founders. He said all the right things during the interview and I was impressed with their pedigree. That was before I tried WooMe. I know nothing about the founders except that they have a super site and SpeedDate has a some catching up to do. The site refresh is a good start, now they just need some live humans on the site.
Conclusion
Both sites cater to the under 30 crowd, featuring few of us older folks.
WooMe is a better experience overall, the clear winner, even though I haven’t been able to use the entire site. It’s well thought out for the most part, looks good, although it loads slowly at times.
This was a brief evaluation of the two speed dating sites. I’ll have more to say when I can actually get into WooMe conversations and spend a few more nights in front of the webcam.
During the review period, I was emailed or winked by five women on Match and set up two dates. That was unexpected, I guess my new photos and profile headline are working.
When it comes to meeting someone online, speed dating services have a long way to go to even begin to compete with dating sites. They need many more people on the sites for them to be a true alternative to traditional dating sites.
Next up, a look at Camlink.
