DuoDater to Offer Online Double-Dating Matches

Now doubles

​San Francisco is a tech-savvy town with a lot of unhappy single people. In addition to boosting the consumption of online pornography, this confluence of factors has another result: A lot of twenty- and thirtysomethings have tried Internet dating at some point.

Outcomes in the online quest to find romance are mixed. While many new marriages are the result of people meeting over the Internet, dating sites also tend to spawn misrepresentation, unwanted solicitations, and downright creepiness. One woman has created an entire blog devoted to posting messages she receives from skeevy dudes on OK Cupid.

Entrepreneurs Michael Parikh and Andrew Flachner launched a San Francisco-based site today that will take a new approach to the dating game: DuoDater, an Internet matchmaker devoted exclusively to double dates.

The idea, Flachner says in an e-mail to SF Weekly, is to make online dating "more social and less awkward" by bringing together pairs of friends instead of solo singles. By allowing each person to bring a friend, the start-up is aiming to defuse the concerns about safety and offline compatibility that tend to plague a first date arranged online. The presence of others is also intended to dilute the intensity -- which, let's face it, can indeed be awkward -- of a one-on-one, face-to-face meetup.

Seems to make sense. We're guessing that San Francisco singles will welcome one more smart option for online dating with open arms.

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