Quick Pitch: Coffee Meets Bagel provides you one match each day and takes the hassel out of searching.
Genius Idea: Rather than make users sift through dozens of potential matches, Coffee Meets Bagel sends them one match each day to either accept or pass on.
Online dating site Coffee Meets Bagel attempts to take the work out of Internet dating, while letting its users have some fun.
Similar to the excitement of timed shopping sites, every day at noon users are sent one match, or "bagel." Users can see that person's picture and profile and have 24 hours to decide if they want to go on a date with them or not by clicking "yes" or "pass." This puts the focus on quality, not quantity, said Arum Kang, one of the founders of Coffee Meets Bagel.
If both people answer "yes," they go on a first date and get a daily-deal type offer for free or discounted cocktails, appetizers or other date activities.
With typical online dating sites, users fill out a profile and search for matches within a certain age range, height, religion and other characteristics. Sure, this method's worked for some, but many people who do online dating say it's because they don't have enough time to meet people in their daily lives.
With Coffee Meets Bagel, users can see their match's picture and some details about them on their profile. Arum tells Mashable that they created it so members learn just enough to get interested and then can learn more about their date in person.
"Our model is unique in that the match is exclusive to one another," she said. "So if you are matched with Ed, let's say, you see his profile for 24 hours while Ed sees your profile for 24 hours. And after the 24th hour, the match disappears and you might never connect with this person again! I think there's something very serendipitous and powerful to that. It gets people to engage more."
So why call it Coffee Meets Bagel? "We asked ourselves, 'what is one thing that people interact with everyday and look forward to?'" Arum said. The coffee break ended up being that thing.
Users can say yes to as many dates as they want. If schedules gets too hectic, or perhaps things are going well with one person, users can place themselves on a temporary hold. Coffee Meets Bagel sends six matches each week (with a break on Sunday).
"Online dating space gets a bad reputation — and rightfully so — because products out there are time-consuming, blatantly public, and expensive," Arum said. "For us, it didn't make sense to have members spend that much time searching and browsing for profiles and spend so many hours sending emails. With Coffee Meets Bagel, after a two minute sign up process, we do the work and deliver one curated match a day at noon for our members.
"And everything happens very fast–you basically find out if you connect with the person within 24 hours. A lot of our users tell us how much they look forward to noon time to get their 'bagels,'" she adds.
Founded by three sisters — Arum Kang, Dawoon Kang and Soo Kang. Right now, the site's only available in New York City and Boston. And just like daily deal sites, this site is free.
Online dating services are always popping up. In fact, the online dating industry has doubled since 2007. There are currently 40 million users and $1.9 billion in annual revenue, according Match.com. But there is always room for more dating sites. Why? As smart as the algorithms behind these sites are, no one has yet figured out the formula for love.
In an article about online dating in the New York Times, Eli Finkel, a professor of social psychology at Northwestern University, is quoted as saying, "Technology is not the way to figure out who is compatible and will never be. At the end of the day, the human algorithm — neural tissue in our cranium called a brain — has evolved over a long period of time to size up people efficiently. On a blind date, a person arrives and in that instant I can say I'm glad I did this or regret it."
That's not to say it's unlikely to meet your soul mate online. In 2010, 17% of couples who got married met online. To further back that up, there are various surveys pointing to online dating as a likely place to meet someone special. One study says online dating is the second most common place to meet singles, second to meeting through a mutual friend. Another says "marriage minded" people have better luck online than in the bars.
Would you use Coffee Meets Bagel? Tell us in the comments.
Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Spanishalex
Series presented by Microsoft BizSpark
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