At new dating site, love is in the MacBook Air
June 17, 2010 Called Cupidtino, an homage to Apple's home base in Cupertino,
Calif., the site aims to connect Apple aficionados with like-minded
"Machearts." The idea is that if you love the iPhone and Mac
maker's products you might be best suited to date a fellow Apple
fan.
Profile pages on the site reveal such intimate details as
earliest Apple product purchases and lists of favorite iPhone apps.
Cupidtino is the brainchild of Mel Sampat, a former Microsoft
employee, who came up with the idea during an argument with his
girlfriend over whether he should use his iPad during dinner.
Sampat told her that if they ever broke up he would date someone
who likes Apple products. That got him thinking about creating a
site to help connect those who do.
"The more I thought about it, the more I realized people that
are true Apple fans might actually have a lot more in common than
they realize," he said.
The site's styling is unmistakably Apple-inspired, with a crisp,
clean layout, copious use of black, white and gray and text
presented in a bold, sans-serif font.
So far, Apple hasn't taken issue with the similarities. Sampat
said he received an e-mail from Apple's business development team
in San Francisco, which basically said it was aware of Cupidtino
and to let the group know if he needed any help. Apple spokeswoman
Kristin Shuguet said the company had no comment.
The site, which was initially available in a free "beta"
version but starting Wednesday will charge users about $5 a month
to read messages they've been sent, has snagged 16,000 Apple
fanboys and fangirls since it launched in early June. It's usable
only on a Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, naturally. Your browser
lets Cupidtino know what operating system your computer uses, so if
you try to access it on a PC it will lead you to a page that apes
Apple's popular "I'm a Mac" ads and lets you know Cupidtino is
off-limits from Windows.
And you can only sign up on a Mac or iPad; Cupidtino quickly
disabled iPhone signups because users can't upload photos from the
device.
For now, it can be tricky to find anyone near you. The site only
lets you filter users by country and, in the U.S., by state. Sampat
said he and two unpaid stakeholders are working on more features,
as well as Cupidtino iPhone and iPad applications.
Andrew Fiore, a doctoral candidate at the University of
California, Berkeley, who studies how people form relationships
through dating sites, thinks Cupidtino cleverly capitalizes on the
excitement surrounding the iPad and iPhone.
"As those things become more and more integrated into life, I
can see why people want somebody that might share their preference
in that area," he said, "even if it is just one dimension of what
someone likes about you."