Time to publish a number of posts that have been sitting in my drafts folder.
Littlehint was covered by TechCrunch back in May.
Littlehint is a new startup which aims to take your Facebook friends and bring in the ones who actually want to potentially go on a date, along with the ones who might help you find one. It sucks in your network via Facebook Connect and asks you to fill out your profile. The difference however is that in the future they plan to offer the ability to submit your DNA as well. Think 23andme for dating.
The founders are Anju Rupal, CEO, who has been involved in various startups as an investor at board level, and Bill Liao, co-founder of XING, Germany’s LinkedIn.
Here’s an interview with Anju back in 2008 at LeWeb when the company was called Sense2love.
Interview: Anju Rupal about Sense2Love.com from thewavingcat on Vimeo.
Anju partnered with GenePartner and sees opportunity in India and Asia. She was early on in the push to get parents involved in the matchmaking process. Like many dating startup entrepreneurs, she wants to be the Google of matchmaking. Pulling friends from facebook to foster matching through 3rd degree of separation.
Unfortunately Littlehint seems to be stagnating, few thousand months visitors at most. Another cautionary tale that mashing up lots of features and trying to topple the top-10 dating sites never works.
In its rawest form, dating site success is based on traffic, nothing else matters. DNA, newfangled matching tests and identity verification are features. If you don’t have the traffic, doesn’t matter whats running on the site. Mate1 is about the only site I’ve seen in recent years able to crack the top-10 from out of nowhere. How they were able to drive all of that traffic early on amazes me.
But don’t confuse the success of the site with the success of its users. There are plenty of middling sites out there like True.com and Singlesnet who have lots of traffic but you’ve never talked to a single person who has ever used either site.
Match, Meetic, eHarmony and a few other international sites are good enough for most people. Match is resting on its heels in terms of offering anything new. It hasn’t added a new feature to the site in two years, preferring to get into bed with Meetics around the world.
Speaking of Meetic, its for sale, or maybe its not.
Maybe someday singles will get frustrated with the status quo, but for now paying $20/month for casual dating is where we’re at.
My hope for 2011 is that we are treated to more Meetcha’s, HowAboutWe’s, OKCupids and Netflix Prize winners creating new matching systems.
