More and more we’re getting used to sharing and viewing videos online—Facebook reported that it gets 8 billion video views a day. According to the Financial Times, Snapchat is growing fast with 6 billion daily video views. And YouTube continues to dominate with hundreds of millions of views and over a billion users. (That’s almost one-third of the entire internet.) With so many of us already sharing and viewing videos online, when are we going to see videos in online dating too?
The answer is now.
Lively, a social dating app that launched today, helps daters get to know each other through short videos that create a moving story of who they are. But we’re not talking about old-school video dating, where someone pops in a VHS tape and sees a potential match talking to the screen. Lively helps daters create dynamic dating profiles using video editing tools that lets them quickly create, review, and save their videos to their dating profile or phone.
So why is this good news for online daters?
1. No more agonizing over what to write in your dating profile.
You heard right, video profiles mean no more long descriptions, lists of hobbies, or nights spent trying to come up with something witty or clever to get some attention. On Lively, daters ‘show not tell’ who they are. Instead of reading that someone likes basketball, music, or hiking; you can actually watch the other person sink a basket, play a new song, or reach the top of a summit.
2. A new way to get to know someone better, faster.
Video is a great way to get a quick glimpse into someone’s life, without learning so much that all the magic is gone. In a survey of online daters on the popular dating site Zoosk, 90% of both men and women ages 18-34 said they were more likely to reach out to someone with more pictures or videos on their dating profile. Lively’s collages of photos of videos help you get a clear sense of who someone is, since each video story tells a little bit about an area of their life and interests.
3. There are fewer surprises when you meet in person.
One complaint from online daters is that members don’t always look like their photos when they meet in person. Some dating apps ask members to verify their photos, while Lively uses video to solve this problem. There are certain things that video captures—the way a person moves, laughs, or even how they look from multiple angles—that help you get a good idea of what they’ll be like in real life.
4. It’s fun!
Let’s face it, part of the reason online video is growing in popularity on apps like Facebook and Snapchat is because it’s just plain fun. We like sharing videos, having an excuse to be silly, showing off the last concert we went to, or catching our friends in an unguarded moment. Video is one of the ways we tell our stories and express who we are.
And now, thanks to the Lively dating app, it may even be the way we catch the eye of someone special.
Lively launches for use in the San Francisco Bay Area today, but is available nation-wide in the App Store for download now. If you’d like to learn more about the app, check out their site at http://www.golivelyapp.com/.
