Tired of using a dating app but never actually get to the actual date? While most of today’s dating apps do give you an opportunity to go out with somebody potentially interesting, sometimes the actual date is never set up (or delayed needlessly) amidst the endless exchange of chat messages.
But here comes Whim, a dating app that is focused mostly on making the actual date happen, not just facilitating the elaborate pre-dating rituals that people undergo but never actually culminate with a hookup. Thus, with the Whim app, people still get to create their own dating profiles, and then they specify the days they are likely available. Then they can proceed to exploring dating profiles from other users, and then selecting the ones they want to meet.
As soon as two users agree to meet up, the Whim app will go ahead and set up the date, replete with a specific time and place, based on the availability of the two users and their likes, dislikes, and other preferences. Users can still chat with each other of course, especially when exchanging contact information, but it is not required before setting up the actual date.
Eve Peters, the founder and chief executive officer of Whim, stated that when they polled users of online dating apps, it turns out that less than 10 percent of matches actually result to a real date. Now compare this rate with the early users of the Whim app, whose matches resulted in a real date over 90 percent of the time.
Of course, there are no certainties in the world of dating. People who are interesting based on their dating profiles may be douchebags in real life (or vice versa). The creators of Whim do fully understand that dating is inherently a complex thing, but they do hope they can increase the chances of people actually connecting by increasing the number of dates actually materialized.
There there is the issue of security. With most dating apps today, pre-dating rituals such as chat messaging actually serve a purpose -- weeding out the creeps from the crowd. For most people, it is “better safe than sorry” and they would rather not have a date at all than hook up with somebody who turns out to be Freddy Krueger. In Whim’s case, the staff tries to read all dating profiles in order to detect anything weird. Of course, this is not nearly enough. The app also uses a post date feedback process so that any user who is horrible can be flagged, and even removed if necessary.
The Whim dating app is currently a free download (you can get it from iTunes), but Peters says that the company is planning to charge $10 per month, with the first date remaining free.
