You're probably familiar with the website Craigslist.Org. Craigslist gets a bad rap for being only for sex hookups or having a lower caliber or quality of person than more serious dating sites but one of the cool things about Craigslist.Org is the now factor.
Though some posts on Craigslist are looking to hang out down the road or looking for a relationship in the same way someone would look for a relationship on a dating site like Match or OKCupid, many if not most of the ads on Craigslist are things like "My Friday Night Plans Fell Through, Anyone Wanna Catch A Movie?"
That is one of the neat things about Craigslist, you can find an activity partner or date or just someone to hang out with last minute on the fly. I have yet to find an online dating site that offers this same factor.
A few sites have sort of billed themselves as having the now factor. The website / App Skout was billed as being a location based now type of dating ie. your out at a bar or baseball game or other event by yourself. You can look at your Skout Android App and see others in your area in a list depending upon how close they are. You could then message someone instantly and say hey I'm also at Summerfest, wanna meet up by the beer tent for a beer?
Despite being billed as this type of experience this is not what Skout really is.
People want to do things last minute for a variety of reasons. Could be someone has a busy or hectic schedule or job where they are on call and cannot plan things a ways out as plans often fall through or things come up. With an instant factor to online dating or in the case of Craigslist someone can decide hey it's Thursday night, I don't have to work tomorrow, I wanna see if anyone is available to grab a beer in the next half hour.
Sure sites like Plenty Of Fish and OKCupid as well as others have a feature where you can see other users online currently however not all people are comfortable with an immediate meeting, some people like to correspond for a few days if not weeks before meeting.
Most women would probably be caught off guard if a guy messaged them and asked to hangout right off the bat.
However, if dating sites had a let's do something tonight type of feature people could do something like put in their location and a radius of how far there willing to travel to hangout as well as a time frame. That way like minded people who are looking for plans asap can find others looking for the same.
OkCupid has rolled out a feature somewhat similar to this. I tested it out prior to writing this post and it seems as if it could use a bit of work as well as there just not being people using it. I suppose OkCupid is offering it they can't be blamed if people aren't using the feature but I myself as well as others I've spoken with anticipate a better version of this comming out on some dating site.
Whether your busy and can't plan, whether plans fell through, or whether your just having one of those nights where last minute you feel like going out and grabbing a drink and some good conversation a feature like this or even dating site strictly devoted to now hangouts could be a nice niche.
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