Love, sex and apps…

I stopped watching the Apprentice years ago because it was the same repetitive format.

But I read a piece on one of the finalists business ideas and I couldn’t help resist giving my opinion when it was revealed that finalist Vana Koutsomitis is a dating app called ‘PlayDate’.

Although the decision was most likely made months and months ago I have to say that this is a very stupid investment.  I won’t tackle this from a business point of view but a male with experience of online dating point of view.

Playdate is described as ‘An online app that gamifies the dating process.’

As if online dating isn’t a big enough game online for men without having to be a master of completing a profile that is not too long, interesting, funny and doesn’t make you sound like a loser.

Adding extra barriers such as having to complete a Sudoku puzzle to determine who your worthy to have sex with is just an annoyance!

It’s barriers that are used by E-Harmony to justify there website.  In the age of pickiness and finding the ‘perfect’ match E-Harmony goes for the finding your soul mate market.

But after wasting a number of hours filling in psychological tests to be given matches I found E-Harmony fails in a very important way.

I couldn’t see any damn pictures!

It doesn’t matter if we have some phony-science testing method to match, if I have no idea what you look like it won’t work.

And Playdate falls into the same trap – it is making the art of dating, socialising, relationships and sex into something more complex than it actually is.

Tinder I like, it is so simple, so shallow.  I hadn’t even filled my profile out and I was talking to a dozen women by the end of the first week.  E-Harmony, OkCupid and Match.com didn’t even give me that number in the many months I had been on.  The shallow system based on the practice of Would you have sex with that person made it much easier because you didn’t need to spend 10 minutes crafting an opening message who doesn’t even find you attractive.

Ideally a good dating app/websites client should be following this project management style process:

Initiation Stage: Plenty of opportunities to communicate with members of the opposite sex who are interested.  The site/app should not restrict by making people pay as this restricts the pool of potential matches.

Engagement: Communication should be ongoing via the app/website.  The aim should be to get off the app/website as soon as possible and meet the person in real life.

Test: Actual meetups should be happening – 1st, 2nd 3rd dates to find whether you like said person in the real world or if they have any irritating habits that are covered up through the digital screen (note for casual relationships and one night stands usually end at this stage).

Development: This stage is what is known as a ‘relationship’, ideally if it is to make it to the next stage the couple should have removed themselves completely from website (either not visiting because they are preoccupied or deactivated profiles)

Live: App/Website is so long forgotten it wouldn’t even show up in the history, we have potential for a long term relationship.

And that is the simple process it should follow – not have silly games to procrastinate over on your mobile phone – overwise you will never meet anyone!

The end result of online dating is that I am sat curled up with my significant other who I met on Tinder, not through interesting profiles or psychological questions or having a game that told us we would be a good match but through a basic premise:

Do you find him attractive?

Yes

Do you find her attractive?

Yes

Good – now feel free to talk to each other!

And we did –  and we haven’t stopped talking since