What is it that you like about Tinder and the plethora of dating apps that have followed its successful model? The swiping game? The part where you get a confidence boost by how many of them have right swiped you too? Whether or not you like the game-like model, you can’t escape its influence. But, how many of these right swipes actually turn into a date in the real world? Very few, I’d wager.
This endless swiping is a problem, says Keisuke Kamijo, CEO of Tokyo-based Mrk & Co. To address this problem and make the online dating experience offline, the company has launched a new dating app Dine.
Dine dating app home page
Image source: Dine
The purpose of Dine is to get you offline on that first dinner or drinks date with your match as soon as possible. This way, there are no endless back and forth texts where you carefully craft each and every message and think through everything you type. By getting you to that first date in your favorite restaurant quickly, you both can figure out if you have the chemistry to take it further.
Dine dating app page showing a user’s profile and their restaurant choices
Image source: Dine
Suggested read: Zoosk’s Lively dating app brings pictures and videos to user profiles
Here’s how Dine works.
A user signs up using their Facebook profile, which is a way to ensure that all users are real people and not bots. But the app doesn’t post anything on a user’s profile or wall, ever. Then, the app asks the user to pick three restaurants or bars, which is achieved through Yelp integration. These places are where you’d want to go on a date. Then, Dine shows the user 2 to 5 matches per day, along with the places they chose. When a user requests to go on a date there, the app opens up the in-app chat window, which allows the matched users to further communicate and set up the date. The chat window opens up only when both users have accepted a date request, which is a way of giving power to the user to accept or decline a date.
Dine dating app page showing a user picking a restaurant for a date
Image source: Dine
Speaking about the app and its features, Kamijo said,
“Mainly speaking, all of the trending dating apps currently out there have an extremely low date rate (number of matches to actual date’s ratio). People match and then spend hours if not days conversing about weather, work, etc., People who matched through Dine usually open up their initial conversation with ‘when can you meet?’ According to user records from our limited launch (beta testing) in Vancouver, Dine fixes this issue with more than 50 percent of users who connected with their matches on the app actually met in person within two weeks.”
Dine dating app page showing two user’s matched profiles
Image source: Dine
Currently, the app is free to use, but also offers a premium membership plan for $30 a month, which allows a user to send and accept Dine requests from the app’s most popular users. The “popular users” are those who receive a large number of dine requests. While the app is currently available in the US and Canada in its iOS version, the Android version is expected to be launched soon.
What do you think of this new Dine dating app? Would it solve the problem that Tinder and its ilk pose to online dating? Sound off in the comments below.
Featured image source: Dine
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