Divorce births dating service for social networking fans

AFP Global Edition | 2009-09-24 21:00:35

<div><p>Dud dates arranged at traditional online match-making services prompted Steve Odom to create a website for those seeking love in a hyper-connected world.</p><p>Freshly-launched Gelatodating.com breaks from simply matching personal profiles to weaving Twitter comments, Facebook updates and other social networking activities together to capture the online persona.</p><p>"We tried to make it more authentic and real-time," said Odom. "We call it stream dating."</p><p>Odom turned to a gamut of Internet dating websites after getting divorced a few years ago and falling into a string of disappointing encounters.</p><p>Profiles left ample room for people to be less than honest when describing themselves to potential mates, the 41-year-old computer programmer said, echoing a common lament.</p><p>Typical claims by women to being "laid back" or liking dogs and long walks on beaches blurred together in Odom's eyes.</p><p>"It resulted in a lot of dates without much of a connection," he said of the experience.</p><p>"At the same time I started on Twitter and liked the idea of following someone for a lot of weeks; I felt I got to know them."</p><p>Odom built on the concept, designing Gelato profiles that are automatically freshened with what people are sharing online.</p><p>For example, Internet music selections show what tunes a person has listened to in recent days, while updates from popular Internet television service Hulu reveal what shows they have watched recently.</p><p>"I can tell you what my favorite movies are, but if you see my Netflix list you get a much better idea of what I really like," Odom said, referring to a popular US online movie rental service.</p><p>Facebook status updates and Twitter comments fed to Gelato profile pages provide looks at what people are doing and thinking.</p><p>"Gelato sucks in stuff from Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm... it's authentic and what I'm doing on the Web," Odom said.</p><p>"I think Gelato will appeal to that younger, hyper-connected crowd living their lives online. Eventually, it will be a mainstream thing."</p><p>Gelato also assigns profiles confidence ratings based on how strongly details are validated by other information or people on the Internet.</p><p>"It's really hard to fake a profile on Gelato," Odom said. "You are pulling in information from a lot of accounts."</p><p>Gelato is also intended as a community for people in the dating scene.</p><p>"It is sort of lonely being single," Odom said. "We are trying to create a community where you can see what other singles are doing and thinking."</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=59675657&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>


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