No Plans Friday Night? Brave SF Singles Turn to CrazyBlindDate.com
In the interest of full disclosure, I will begin by saying I am not a big blind dater.
Maybe I’m not adventurous enough but I find the idea of forced mingling with a complete stranger seriously anxiety-inducing. Nonetheless, I have to admit that I’m intrigued by the recent birth of various blind dating websites– and when I heard that a friend had given CrazyBlindDate.com a try I immediately tracked her down to get the details.
“Ok, I admit, it’s a little scary,” she prefaced her account of the evening’s events. “But I was feeling gutsy so I thought ‘why not?’”
Gutsy indeed.
CrazyBlindDate.com coordinates dates for users on “extremely short notice” in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Austin. Users log into the site, create a profile and are given a description of their “match”– that description being a blurry picture and summary of their interests. Users are then given a place and time for their meeting and in the case that they can’t find each other amongst the anxious throngs CrazyBlindDate provides an anonymous number through which to text message.
The site makes it very clear that a “Yes” response to a date is absolutely binding, going so far as to say that “being late is mean.” CrazyBlindDate also instructs users to “stick around for at least 20 minutes (less is rude) and be nice.” The site even allows the most skittish customers to go on double dates with a friend and assures safety by only allowing dates to take place in public settings ie. a local coffee shop or bar.
Clearly the site is generating interest among lonely/bored/excitement-craving urban dwellers and coverage of the site’s launch in November has appeared in publications and blogs including TechCrunch, WebWare, the Stanford Daily, Cnet News and KillerStartups.com.
My guinea pig friend ended up enjoying the experience– a quick after-work drink at a bar in Cow Hollow– although she was disappointed that her date wasn’t quite as magical as she might have hoped. She even admitted she might use the site again the next time her social calendar was looking glaringly open– certainly a positive review and one that led me to create a profile on the site though I have yet to schedule an actual “meeting.”
One week later I haven’t yet felt the need to “go out immediately, with reckless abandon”, but hey, you never know.
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