In the past decade, online dating has soared. Yet, despite the perception that dating services are ubiquitous, there is a lot more room for growth in that sector. At least, that’s what Cherrypick founders Sophie-Charlotte Moatti and Michel Vidal-Naquet predict.
They have built the Cherrypick dating service based on several observations: their believe that less than 40% of singles actually use an online dating service. That may be because they don’t want to date “strangers”, or may be because they feel that they are overpriced, there may also be some stigma associated to using a dating service.
Cherrypick is a free service that uses your Facebook profile to instantly build a dating profile that you can tune manually. That is different from regular dating sites that often ask you to write much longer descriptions. Cherrypick also uses a combination of computer vision and natural language processing to figure out what you like and if you have things in common with other users. Before you ask: Cherrypick does not post information back to Facebook, especially on your wall. “User privacy is extremely important to us”, says Ms. Moatti.
Your friends (singles or not) can contribute to your dating life by playing “matchmakers” and suggest who you should date. After all, being introduced by friends is usually a good thing, right? Of course, you can also pick matches yourself if you want to. Cherrypick just launched its iOS application, and Android users can access a mobile website. Eventually, there will be a “desktop” web version as well.
Once your match accepts to meet for a date, Cherrypick goes further and proposes possible places and activities based on your respective profiles. In the real world, a Judo and Yoga fans have attended an mixed-martial arts (MMA) event, and they apparently loved it! But beyond the service given to the users, this is also a potential revenue generator for Cherrypick, which can cut deals with restaurants and bars for sending customers. In the meantime, the company is funded and advised by successful silicon valley angel investors who previously worked at Facebook, or Zynga just to name a couple.
Cherrypick is easy to setup, easy to use, and it’s free. These are huge advantages for a new player, but the service will have to quickly attract users if it is to succeed and eventually reach its goal of reaching 60% of singles who don’t currently use a dating service. By using Facebook as an identity provider, Cherrypick also gets the benefit of having (mostly) “real people” with real profiles. We’ll keep an eye on them, but one thing is for sure: online or not, dating is not going away anytime soon.
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