There’s a new speeddating site currently in beta. Camlink launched a private beta Feb 5th, and is live today.
Ilya Zatulovskiy co-founder and CEO of Camlink, had this to say about the speed dating patent (U.S. Patent Number 7,203,674) that SpeedDate licensed:
They licensed the patent back in August 2007 – (maybe this was a letter of intent and wasnt finalized until now?), so not sure why the press release months later. The owner of the patent who now resides in Europe did get paid though – he intended to realize this idea himself in early 200x. This business method patent is very easy to design around. There isn’t a need to invalidate the patent as that is a more costly process. Additionally the Supreme Court KSR ruling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleflex) changed the standard of obviousness as applied to patent claims, so invalidation is very likely if ever challenged. If you review the prosecution history the solution is obvious. WooMe and Camlink have done exactly that – and this is the same method that other startups have implemented. 2008 will bring a lot of new players to this exciting space (2 are on my radar to launch). The good thing for the industry and consumer is that this particular patent will not be a barrier to entry for anyone – which is bad news to SpeedDate.
Here’s how we differentiate ourselves from SpeedDate/WooMe:
- White label solution (in development)
- Absolutely no profiles, WooMe and Speeddate both allow browsing of profiles
- WooMe claims that they are are NOT a dating website
- Scheduled Dates based on themes and “On The Fly” dates – Speed Date has only “On The Fly”
- Contact details which are exchanged include email, messenger SNs, phone # (if user chooses)
- Based in New York City – the singles capital of the world – easier to market?
- Non-symmetric connections not allowed. SpeeDate allows someone with a webcam+audio to talk to someone without. From our feedback we allow only text-text, audio-audio and video-video.
- Users are not allowed to end the date early.
- Will not SPAM our users as both WooMe and SpeedDate have done with those ‘WooMe user “XXX” added you to her favorites list, interested?”
- Report Abuse button on the top right of the chat window.Depending on session parameters, you can have anywhere from 5 dates to 20 dates.
- Dates can last from 1-5 minutes. Personally I think five minutes is too long. 2-3 is better.
SpeedDate found Dan Abelon will be our guest this week on CupidCast. I’m speaking with WooMe CEO and founder Stephen Stokols next week. We hope to have him on the show soon.
