Jonathan Rogers

A new web site I stumbled across is on the bleeding edge of trendy. It combines facebook social media, and shiny web 2.0 design with match.com networking and dating. iminlikewithyou.com is a dating site with a clever twist – you can’t contact the person until you impress them enough by bidding on ebay style to get their contact information.

At first glance, because you can’t really contact other users directly you feel like you have two hands tied behind your back. It is a bit hard to determine what to do. Here is how it works from a review of the website:

You sign up for the service, by answering very basic questions: email, location, age and gender and what is your flirting preference. It takes about 10 minutes, and you are in the network. You add your photos and some other personal information, and you are rewarded with 500 points. Now this is where the game begins.

You are interested in someone, say a lovely lady from New York, you start the flirting process by basically bidding some of your 500 points on her, say 50 points in order to answer a question she poses in a clever way. The bid indicates your intent to woo the young lady. Unfortunately for you, if you’ve made a wise choice, there will be others who will want to date her as well. They will try to outbid you with better answers and, well, the process goes on, till the young lady is convinced that you are the one to reward with her attentions. You get SMS and MMS alerts all through the bidding process.

This is why you need to be economical about how you bid your points, and judicious in indicating your intent. (Not so different from the triage we men use when doling out dollars in singles a bar, either.) If you lose and aren’t picked you lose the points you’ve acquired. So, how do you get more points after being turned down over and over?

The good news is you can recharge your points by answering random questions that pop-up on the screen. Every time you sign-in you get some points, and you can build up your points-balance.

Each question you answer gets you 5 points, and those questions help the company build a better profile of you, something that can be used for highly targeted advertising. A classic question: do you like gin and tonic?

I think it is kind of fun and clever. Its also very hipster cool, with a ton of people from the cool parts of NY and CA on it. If it all seems kind of cheesy and weird to you to quote McFly from Back to the future, part one: “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that, yet. But your kids are gonna love it.” I have a feeling this will be a huge hit with the myspace generation, but kids my age (can we still call ourselves kids?) are going to think it is too obvious with the bidding process, pointing out how much value we place in others is based on image instead of something more meaningful.

If you want to join, unfortunately it is still in private beta while they continue to test the code and add features. You need an invite to get in. Fortunately, I have a few invites to hand out (I have connections) still if you want to sign and see what the fun is about.

Review 1
Review 2