A “bar-like environment”: Those are the words that Suneet Wadhwa, Founder and CEO of Engage, uses to describe traditional dating sites. The 1998 romantic movie “You got mail” has seriously changed Americans’ attitude regarding online dating. Sites like Match.com soon became the next best thing for singles to make romantic encounters in a whole new fashion.
Back to 2008. The rise of online dating has brought yet another dilemma in the mix: Most online daters lie on their profiles to decrease their chances of being rejected. This is why Suneet Wadhwa describes traditional dating sites as “bar-like environment”, i.e. places where the end justifies the means when it comes to attracting others. Engage has been created in response to this dilemma. Engage is an online social dating site. The idea is to invite your friends to help you find the perfect match through recommendations. Most people love to play wingman for their friends. For that purpose, the Engage team has developed a set of social features, like the Matchmaker – you crawl a list of people to recommend some to your friend(s) – or the Cast Your Vote – out of three given profiles, you pick the one you think fits the most to a fourth given person.
Thanks to the presence of your friends:
- You can approach other people with more ease by asking your friends to help you out, just like we often do in the real life;
- You tend to be more honest since you are held socially accountable. Basically, your real life follows you online.
The service is really fun. As Derek Gordon, VP of marketing, adds at the end of the video, the service is not just designed for singles looking for a hot date. Married people can join the fun (if you’re married, you can’t put yourself in the date-me marketplace on Engage) and recommend their buddies to other singles to help them meet the right person.
There is much more to be said about Engage, so read those great articles below:
Engage Introduces Next-Generation Social Dating Community Platform – bnet
San Mateo-Based Engage Publicly Launches Social Dating Community – Silicon Valley Wire
Engage.com’s CEO & VP of Love – CupidCast podcast
Engage: Where Dating gets Social! – Victor Caballero blog