Los Angeles/San Francisco based WooMe recently went from private test mode to open to the public.  The concept is basically speed dating, meets video conferencing, meets social networking. Due to their inclusion in the TechCrunch top 40 they have received a good amount of online press (VentureBeat, Mashable,  SomewhatFrank, et all) and this is evident with over 50,000 "speed introductions" in their first two weeks of being live.

The basic premise is that you get to chat with people of the opposite sex for 1 minute and decide on which ones woo'd you. Then for only 1 dollar you can contact them and get your real date on.

The Good:
Testing Woome went very smoothly.  There was never a hiccup, the service was fast and responsive during the stream. I also really liked woome's look, it definitely is a nice update to dating 1.0 sites like match.com or eharmony. In genernal, I think, Woome's concept is well executed, and caters perfectly to the new generation who have short attention spans, gravitate toward speed dating, and are used to Myspace/Facebook.  Also compared to something like eharmony, you can't beat the price.

The Bad:
I've never really used a dating site to find a date but my general impression is that it must suck.  I could elaborate on the guy to girl ratio problem, the question of what kind of people you are me
eting who are using a 60 second webcam slot to figure out who to meetup with, and on and on - but I suppose people already know this.  This is probably why video based speed dating hasn't attracted much interest before.   Sometimes when something new comes out, its because the idea hasn't really been explored before or because the technology isn't ready, in this case I figure the 10 billion dollar dating industry has basically consider video technology and left it in the ring for pornstars and the like.

Conclusion:
Woome is the first to the concept of speed dating 2.0, so you've got to give them credit.  They also have a definate coolness factor that other dating services lack.  Finally you really can't beat the price (1 dollar per person you are interested in) and its a refreshingly different business model.  But at the end of the day I'm not sure that any of this is enough to bring dating to the masses (but hey what do I know, I'm not single).

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