Company: Overview:
Consumating is dating 2.0. Yes, it’s dating with tags. They also use a bit of Ajax in their interface.
After registering (it’s free), you create an online profile. The key difference between this and other dating sites is that you write tags for what you are looking for, and how you describe yourself.
I registered (purely for research purposes, of course :-)), and used a number of fetching tags to describe myself, such as “web 2.0” and “RSS” (hey, I am who I am). My profile can be viewed here:
I am…
TechCrunch is a 34-year old boy located in Palo Alto, CA who is taken and looking for for friends, and consumating fun!Popularity
1 people would do TechCrunch, and 0 people would not, which means TechCrunch is ranked 1512th amongst all consumating users.
Once you are a member there are a number of interesting features. You can add people to your hotlist, or just say “you’d do them” or “you wouldn’t do them”. They do tend to get to the point. They have a recommendation engine that takes your reviews and recommends other people you might like as well.
Consumating also has a nice sense of humor to help offset the brutal effects of honest tagging and comments. For instance, they refer to everyone you might meet on their site as “prospective ex-partners”. Nice.
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You can also add tags for other people, and leave comments. Of course, you can send private messages to people as well. This uses up points, and I’m not entirely clear how to get them back. I’ve pinged the founders and will hopefully have more information soon.
From their About information:
About Consumating
Consumating was created by Ben Brown and Adam Mathes. It began its life as a joke about online dating, but when people started using it to actually find dates, we got serious.We are the first dating site to use the ideas of taxonomy and user-created tags to help people find one another. We use a lot of Ajax.
Many thanks to our friends at Mule Design and Lane Becker of adaptive path for their enormous amount of help and support.
You can contact us by sending an e-mail to support@consumating.com.
Consumating can power a co-branded personals site for you. If you’re interested in having personals.yoursite.com, e-mail partners@consumating.com.
Given our competitiveness, we hope you’ll sign up and give the thumbs up to Techcrunch. Email me if you do and I’ll send the first 5 a TechCrunch Tshirt or bumper sticker, your choice.
Founders:
Additional Links:
Consumating Blog, Saurier Duval, Pietro Speroni (mentions consummating in one of the best and most comprehensive tagging essays written), You’re It, 27 Degrees, Naked Condo, Cristian Contini, anarkystic (calls consumating “facebook for the rest of us”), TheFreshness
Update: In a mail exchange with Ben Brown, he sent me the following information:
Hey. You got most of the answers to these right. The site started in 2002, I think, but we ran it as a joke called Uber Personals. It didn’t have tags or anything like that – it was just snarky profiles and a basic search engine. I decided to make a run for the money in early 2005 and rebuild the software into a more modern application and add some of the more game-like elements because a) I was interested in the technology and b) I thought dating sites needed a kick in the patoot. So far, so good.
