Flirt With He or She WhoWorksAroundYou

Instead of jostling your way around Lau Pa Sat alone, with WhoWorksAroundYou, you will now able to find a date to help spread your wings to find an empty table. Predicated on working dates into the busy lifestyles of members, WhoWorksAroundYou is a social network that focuses exclusively on allowing you to find suitable dates based on your preferred date criteria and location.

The system’s focus on location is the most interesting aspect of the site, apart from that, it’s just like any other social network which allows people to connect. Albeit in the case of WhoWorksAroundYou, you don’t have to guess at someone else’s intention. Sending flirty messages or ‘nudges’ will not automatically get you blocked or labelled a pervert.

For the moment, their location-based matching is limited to the web. The team is working on a mobile-based, real-time matchmaking system but this will not be available so soon. Venturing into mobile location-based dating services potentially could expand their revenue stream – charging to send messages perhaps?

Originally basic membership to partake in the social networking components was free while members had to pay to get credits to attend events organized by WhoWorksAroundYou. But that was in the past, for even though WhoWorksAroundYou used to organize their own events for members, they abandoned that soon after finding out that members were already organizing their own events using the forum. This was the probably the right direction to take as organizing events drain manpower and resources. Especially in this case, it would be a silly duplication of effort if members were organizing events themselves.

With events gone, WhoWorksAroundYou gets their cashflow through display advertising. Their venture into display advertising is interesting because while a website can’t sustain itself through display ads alone, they can partner companies that provide services dating couples would be interested in. At the moment, I see ads from a flower company and a website dedicated to budget travel. Done right, the ads extend the value of the site as a portal to not just meet someone, but to woo him or her as well and take the relationship forward (with a short getaway together?).

After abandoning events, WhoWorksAroundYou turned to and concentrated on their premium service, Affinity, to bolster their revenue. Affinity offers personalized matchmaking services targeted at busy professionals – similar to what many other dating agencies offer.

What is in their favour is that the main social networking portal and location-based focus of WhoWorksAroundYou is used to attract a substantial base of members (about 2,200 registered users thus far), to which they can now upsell their professional, personal and more lucrative Affinity service. I would think that people attracted to a location focused site would be busy professionals who would love to meet someone in the middle of a workday or drinks after work. Convenience is the word for them.

Time to meet that man or woman you see everyday entering that UOB building?

Photo courtesy of HAMED MASOUMI.

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