At the dawn of social media most of us were in a tizzy about the “About Me” field. Spending inordinate amount of time pondering, obsessing over how best to sell ourselves! And in the end, we’d write a lame I am just me or simply leave the field blank.
Words are futile when you have a celebrity or an anime character as your profile photo, offering no real clue as to who you are. Kindred.ly is convinced that the best way to really show who you are is through meaningful photos of your life — not through a pouty selfie. And it wants people to more than just share them but also possibly find love over pixels that pull on your heartstrings!
About the Startup
“Most online dating sites are text-focused and I think many people are ineffective communicators when it comes to writing”, explains Kindred.ly founder Nick Ferris. “It’s exhausting and boring having to write a paragraph about yourself, then answer a hundred questions, and then put up few of your best mugshots. There are lots of people out there who would like to bypass this traditional online dating model.”
The company has a small but very experienced team of three. The designer is the founder and creative director of the design studio The Workshop which created campaigns for the likes of Twitter, LVMH and Nike. Their main developer has built sites and applications for over 11 years, working for clients such as Beyonce and Warner Music. The CEO of Kindred.ly was previously the Director of Sales for a successful startup and has been an avid online dater!
Kindred.ly is an online dating site with a different profile model providing better ways of connecting people looking for love online. It aims to create a different way for serious daters to communicate who they are. A user’s profile is their album and they can fill it with photos or images that describe their personality, interests, and passions.
About their Plans
Everyone and their dorky cousin have installed Tinder on their phone. Says Nick, “There are thousands of online dating sites out there today, so standing out among them and enticing people to come check ours out has probably been one of our foremost challenges. Once people come to our site and see our different approach to finding love, they will be convinced in being a regular user of our service.” The way Kindred.ly plans to differentiate is through the unique quality-photos-only requirement for love match. “Most of us are not very strong writers and Kindred.ly is aimed at changing the game. A picture’s worth a thousand words so why not let your photos say it all?”
Like most online dating sites, monetization would involve moving to a monthly subscription model, but that’s further down the road. Right now, in its beta version, Kindred.ly is focused on getting users to the site and offers free account. They are targeting the picture taking, dating crowd of NYC first but they’d be expanding to San Francisco and Boston soon.
There is no shame in expressing and finding love online. Not in 2015. It is the feelings behind those three words (I♥U) that matter. Or in case of Kindred.ly, the feelings behind those three (RGB) pixels that matter!
http://kindred.ly/