Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2012, when the service launched. It describes Hitch.me’s credits instead of a monthly fee, 250-character messages, smiles and video messages as they were then; none of this has been checked against the service’s current state.
A new dating site has been born that promises to be a profitable startup, at least judging by its pitch and strategy. Until now, anyone could sign up to various dating platforms, open a profile and lie on it, and then, once you actually met the other person, they turned out not to be what you expected. Hitch.me has reached an agreement with the professional network LinkedIn to use its database.
With this new platform you can browse millions of LinkedIn professional profiles and send a smile, a 250-character private message or even a video. It’s a very good idea, since LinkedIn is probably the network where people lie the least, given that the profiles are explicitly professional.
That way, we can even avoid asking “What do you do? Where do you work?” on a first date, because your date will already know about your professional life and every single company you’ve worked for.
Even so, once you’re interested in using Hitch.me, you can decide what information to show, who can see your profile and which parts of it you want to display. The dating site says it wants to protect users’ privacy and security as much as possible.
This new dating site won’t charge a monthly fee, but it will run on credits, so to earn access to the professional profiles registered on Hitch.me you’ll need to use a credit card.
It’s certainly a new way to meet people, and something innovative compared with other dating sites.
Featured image: Rawpixel Ltd, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
