VILLAGE VOICE - Jun 30 - Last November, two Columbia students launched DateMySchool, a dating service exclusively for college students. DateMySchool now serves a total of 350 schools and has upwards of 25K registered users. Marketing director Shreshth Dugar explained how DateMySchool is able to thrive in the overcrowded world of online dating; "DateMySchool has all the people you don't know but automatically trust,because they went to the same school, paid the same tuition, and have the same academic goals as you. It has a sense of security that most dating sites, which filter people by their zip codes, can never have.
by Willis Plummer
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I worked with Jonathan Abrams when he started Friendster in 2003. At that time there was a service named DateMyFriend that was doing well in San Francisco, running parties with Friend-of-friends groups. A great idea.
Students want to date other students. DateMySchool works beautifully to assure students that they can date from within a pool or their peers.
Posted by: Mark Brooks | Jul 03, 2011 at 10:20 AM
Its funny how a simple idea can blossom into a potentially very big community site. DMS can potentially take on both Match and Facebook. First, it must find enough willing singles of college age (more casual) and grad school (more marriage minded). Match has added college attended as an option. Facebook/mySpace has always served as a way to date casually and find singles at your school, although not as easy. eHarmony should probably make college a central point in their profiles as well, since women like to marry educated/rich men.
There is a ceiling for the DatemySchool community, which is that married and committed couples will not use the site. But there is still a large potential marketing vehicle for all singles 25 and under. It will be interesting to see how high revenues can get. OKcupid seemed to survive as a mostly free service.
Posted by: joe | Jul 06, 2011 at 12:54 PM