New take on the speed-dating thing. We give you speed introductions, courtesy of WooMe.
Hoping to drag the power of the first impression outside the domain of quick-fix courting, WooMe users join little clusters of users segmented by interest, sex and age — not necessarily for romantic reasons. (There are “ladies’ night” and sports fan groups, for example.)
When the music starts, you’ve got about a minute to video chat each group member, one at a time. After that, you decide which users you dug and click “I’m Woo’d.” If you’re woo’d by somebody who’s been woo’d by you, the pair of you drop a dollar for contact info.
WooMe launched last week and is enjoying major sponsorship interest by an energy drink brand we’re not allowed to name. But if you close your eyes and think of the e-drink brand most fond of pulling guerilla stunts, then ding-ding, you win.
We had a chat with WooMe CEO Stephen Stokols last week and test-ran WooMe for ourselves. The dev and executive team on their own are pretty Woo-worthy. Anyway, here are the associated stats:
Session sizes consist of a minimum of four people and the whole thing vibes like a big online game of musical chairs.
Sponsored sessions are coming, a boon for advertisers hungry to take advantage of the age, interest and other demo segmenting among active WooMe users.
The user base is currently 65 percent male, 35 percent female, with the age group primarily between 18 and 32 — “But we’ve got people up to age 52,” Stokols boasts.
Founded just last year, WooMe’s already enjoyed a couple of million from its Series A, mainly from European investors and the founders of Skype — “they actually have been pretty involved since they left eBay,” Stokols divulges.
Well, guess they need to keep busy considering eBay’s hating on Skype so hard and Joost is getting pwned by Hulu.
WooMe expects to raise another eight million in the next couple months. Keep your eyes open for these guys.
