Urban Signals is a new mobile social networking startup that lets you see who is around you, if they are available and interested, and whether or not they are ready to meet up.
This is a great app for urban men. I just don’t see women using these apps.
Urban Signals is an example of a concept that doesn’t really work out in reality as a standalone app. To be useful, these apps need massive amounts of users. Which means being integrated with dating sites.
In the gay world, Grindr rules because it’s built for one thing, hooking up. Getting that sort of adoption rate is difficult and expensive in the casual dating market.
The company is funded and will have to burn through a serious pile of cash to approach enough density of users to avoid the “nobody in your area” issue. Foursquare, BrightKite and Gowalla have punched past this barrier fairly quickly, but they are incredibly viral, in that I have turned at least 25 people onto Foursquare myself and installed the app on the spot. Also, for these types of services the value proposition is only getting stronger and easier to monetize.
The benefit of flirting-on-the-fly on the street is remarkable, but the value proposition for these services needs to be stronger for people to really want to use them, and stick with the service.
If I was Urban Signals I would strongly consider white-labeling the service to dating sites.
All new users are given a 1-month trial of unlimited Signals to learn how to navigate the application. After 30 days, ‘Unlimited Signals’ packs can be purchased monthly for $4.99 per month.
