July 10, 2006
VoIP Dating Becomes Reality
A few posts back, I made a prediction that VoIP with video (WoIP) could be used to set up a new type of online dating. It's actually a prediction that pretty much anyone with an understanding of VoIP or Skype could have made. Verbdate, however, has made it come true (at least for audio VoIP), vying for a piece of the billion-dollar online dating business. [via GigaOm]
Verbdate works pretty much like any other online dating service, except that they've mashed up quite the variety of "web 2.0" Internet services. They've used AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) coding to speed up the search process. As well, provided a member has approved it, you can VoIP them for free via Skype. If you prefer to just IM chat, you can specify that in your profile. You can decide whether or not to display your Skype status - online or offline - and even allow people to Skype you directly from your Verbdate profile.
They've also coupled verbdate with Flickr, so that you can post photos of interest. Then there's the Google Maps, whereby you can specify your location. I'm not so sure that it's necessarily a good idea to be too specific. Fortunately, it only goes down to the city level. Surprisingly, despite Verbdate being a Canadian startup, they were unable to display my own city in their list. To top it all off, after you enter your search criteria, you can subscribe to the results using its custom RSS feed.
Verbdate is a fascinating idea that appears to be rather well thought out. Other web 2.0-ish features not commonly found in older online dating services includes a "tag cloud", which gives you a visual weighted list of keywords from a member's profile. For example, one member's tag cloud shows "dancing" to be of importance to her.
In all, an interesting mashup of existing online services, but the navigation could be improved somewhat. If you've been lamenting, like I have, that none of your friends or relatives will download tools like Skype, or even understand it, Verbdate might interest you. It takes chat rooms to the next level, allowing actual chatting. It'll be interesting to see how long it is before someone offers a similar service for Sightspeed, incorporating video VoIP as well.
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