friendlylook

We believe something important is missing online.  

Something with an astonishing potential to provide us with more fun than we've ever experienced online. 

Well, that might be rather a stretch.   

Yet the reality is we have no options online today for meeting new people which are remotely interesting or fun.  Nothing connecting us with new people who are like us.  Indeed our options today don't seem like viable options at all.  The inherent potential of the internet to connect us with new people is obvious, yet even today this problem has not been solved in an interesting way.  

Is what we have available to us today really the best we might do?

We don't think so, and have decided it's time to create something completely new.  

Introducing friendlylook.   

We've imagined what we would want if we could create anything we desired online.

What we came up with was the concept of a private online party, where we can mingle and associate with interesting people in an exclusive trust network.  It's an environment that makes meeting new people interesting, entertaining, and fun.  

More normal.  

We've modeled a private party and created something completely natural. A place where you can meet better people faster, discreetly within an extended friends of friends trust network. 

An invisible social graph ties members together in a unique way allowing the network to be both a social and private experience.  Members are not able to view the connections or activities of other members, including their own friends.  Yet they are able to socialize with and connect to others who interest them. 

This new singles social graph serves as a discreet passive social filter, immersing members in a crowd of people who they have a high probability of sharing important things in common.  

Possibly most interesting, the network will soon provide the ability to create private, invitation only, social events.  Imagine the fun of private dinner parties, happy hours, and other social events populated with the specific people you are interested in meeting.

Yeah, that changes everything.     

The world's first exclusive, private online party! 

W believe it's time to put the random online dating environment of e-strangers in the rear view mirror.  

Why support friendlylook, and why crowdfunding?   

Helping a friend meet someone new is good karma, which makes friendlylook good karma on steroids.    

Crowdfunding a consumer internet application with the potential to develop into a prominent social utility is a "cool" thing.  Executing minus obligations of outside venture finance allows us to favor interests of members over profit motive.     

But maybe the best reasons to support friendlylook are selfish. Your early support earns you valuable lifetime benefits. The perks are darn sweet considering the potential impact the network might have on your social life.  

Also other ways you can help!     

The most important thing you can do to help move us forward is to contibute with a "perk", however these actions are just as good! 

Visit friendlylook.com now and setup an account!  And invite your friends once you are in!

Share our story on your facebook and twitter accounts.   

Want to get more involved? We are seeking market lauch leaders  nationwide.  We will provide you with the tools to get us off the ground in your area, which will put you at the head of the party!   Reach out to us by email at support@friendlylook.com with "market leader" in subject line.

(Fair warning, expect some serious fun and ongoing benefits) 

Current status of friendlylook.    

Our beta version is live, check us out!  www.friendlylook.com.   (we love feedback and constructive suggestion, use the support tab on the right hand side of internal site pages to bring issues to our attention)

This is what’s done so far. 

A new "invisible" singles social graph.  The underlying social “intelligence” of the network graph is complete. Say goodbye to the “creepy” and conduct network search up to four degrees removed from you and beyond.  

A new “real time” singles social conversation stream.  We’ve reimagined the online conversation and created a fun interactive feedstream environment to meet new people.  It surfaces people based upon your expressed preferences.     

A deep network people search engine.  Search algorithms to filter friendlylook and discover interesting people on a wide range of filters including network connection distance from you.   

A social broadcast algorithm.  Share your humor and genius in the stream, your messages will reach those who are interested in meeting people exactly like you.   

Broadcast and calendar date ideas.  It’s adventurous and fun to broadcast something you want to do and discover others who might be interested in joining you.    

What makes friendlylook different?  

Friendlylook’s design premise is to help you meet better people faster.     

The friendlylook social model vs. traditional online dating anti- social model.

The traditional model of meeting people online is ridiculous.  

Consider what these sites do to us today is roughly equivalent to expecting you to meet someone randomly at your local mall, or some strange carnival passing through town. A place where you enter alone and are immediately surrounded by the widest cross section of humanity imaginable. 

Unsurprisingly, this isn't much fun. Would you ever consider such an approach when looking to meet new people in real life?  Unlikely. Alone in this place, filtering a random crowd of miscreants gets old fast.  

It’s difficult to imagine something more inefficient and absurd.  

Friendlylook’s natural model.  

Friendlylook is analogous to the fun of attending a friends party. A natural and comfortable environment, where you are immersed in a trusted crowd of people who are more like you.  

Simple, right?  That's basically it.  

Friendlylook’s hard social science truth vs online dating in matching approach. 

An outdated industry based upon dishonest pseudoscience. 

The online dating industry has been selling snake oil all these years. 

Inauthentic and disingenuous at best, none of their matching and relationship “science” has proven valid and real.  It's so much hocus pocus possibly causing more harm than good.  Reprehensible.     

Friendlylook keeps it real and natural. 

Friendlylook provides you with a natural social “filter” of sorts, something we’ve used to great affect since our Paleolithic days. It’s a more efficient and natural social screening mechanism.  

Friendlylook does not presume algorithms provide any genuine help, we simply immerse you in a "better" environment and candidate pool. We provide a low key and social way to start things off with new people and get out of the way.

This authentic approach is conducive to positive outcome. This is a design informed by the multidisciplinary "ground truth" in fields of anthropology, sociology, and psychology.  

Friendlylook’s member centric business model vs the "online dating" profit model.  

Unaligned interests and perverse incentive.  

The online dating industry operates under a business model placing their own financial interest selfishly above the interests of their own members.  A perverse incentive subverts this model to their benefit.    

Maybe worse are the underhanded marketing tactics by which we are induced and manipulated to pay money to message and access others who may or may not be real, active, or capable of receiving our messages. 

That's not cool!    

Innovation to solve the consumer problem.  

Friendlylook’s primary motive is to help our members meet new people as efficiently as possible and to have fun in the process.  

Business Model.   

At this time, we intend to offer approximately 90% of network functionality to members at no cost. That means FREE.  

As an option, we will eventually provide a premium set of “value add” benefits to generate revenue to make the network self sustaining.  (we do not rule out the possibility of raising outside capital in the future, and will do so with due consideration to all stakeholders)   

Use of funds.   

Our initial goal is to develop additional core, basic and required functionality.  We are exceptionally capital efficient, we’ve executed to date with almost no spend and no outside investment.     

Our top initial priorities:      

Software Development.  ($12,500) Improved UI designs, robust notification controls, edit profile controls, improved privacy controls, connection management, conversation stream refinements, enhanced date idea search and calendaring.   

Marketing.  ($12,500) Aggressive market development efforts in select major markets across the US.  Countering the media spend in this industry requires marketing innovation and “out the box” spend to reach minimum viable adoption in various geographies.  

Social event creation function:  

Software Development. ($20,000) Build, test, and release social event creation functionality.  This includes deep functionality related to all areas of invitation and event creation, event management, and post event functions.    

What if we exceed our funding targets?  

Software development.  Deep natural privacy controls, multiple channel conversation stream algorithms, enhanced InMail UI, and enhanced interest typing and search. ($35,000)

iOS & Android mobile apps.  Mobile involves different assumptions than web applications and subsequently requires a different approach.  We intend to deliver a unique, highly differentiated and innovative mobile solution. ($50,000) 

We are just getting started, and intend on "winning" through continuous cycles of focused innovation.    

Who we are:   

We’ve done this before, we understand how to develop and manage complex software projects.  

Trevor Chidester.  Serial social entrepreneur and technology startup executive, previously CEO of enterprise open source software vendor to government, deep experience in sales, payments, telephony, project management, and finance.  

David Patton.  Senior software development leader, Java expert, scalable systems design, developer of search technology acquired by IBM,  PhD in computational physics from University of Alabama. 

Helping us meet new people who are like us is something the world needs, together we can make this happen.       

Media coverage:

Mashable.

 http://mashable.com/2013/01/11/friends-dating-website/

Fueled.

 http://fueled.com/friendlylook-brings-accountability-to-your-mixer/