If you have seen me speak recently, in early 2008, you will have heard me tell the story of the mental model I did about single people and their friends looking for the perfect partner. In the story, I show how some of the mental spaces are not supported well by existing online dating services. "Figure Out What to Do About an Attraction" goes smoothly and instantaneously when done in person, when two people become aware of each other in a room. Being able to talk to that person's friends helps you figure out whether you want to reveal your interest or not. "Find Out More About a Person" benefits from being able to stand on the sidelines and watch how a person behaves among their own friends. Apparently you can tell a lot about a person's level of maturity this way.

I created this mental model for a company called Engage, who wanted to make dating more natural online. A year later, they have just unveiled their new product, incorporating many of the lessons from the mental model. Chief among them is the way they encourage friends to participate in the process, asking them to comment on potential connections a member is thinking about making, and giving them points for suggesting additional people for a friend to meet. There is a "social feed" which lists the activity your friends have done at Engage recently, on your behalf, for other friends, or even for themselves. Engage is a place that "taken" (married, in a relationship) people should feel comfortable contributing on their friends' behalf. The idea is that in real life, a person managing a dating life reaches out to his/her friends for their opinion, no matter what that friends' relationship status is. In fact, the mental model indicated that singles talk to their friends who are in relationships quite a bit, asking for advice from what appears to be a stable font of experience. (Almost everyone remembers warning a friend off from someone they were interested in because "they just couldn't see the signs for themselves," right?)

Some of the other ideas Engage has on their site is the concept of getting points for various kinds of participation, getting your name on the "leader board" for the greatest number of photos uploaded, and having "chit chat" with your friends about potential fix-ups with IM-style balloons of text. You can even include people outside Engage in these conversations, without requiring that they join the site.

So at the moment, I wish I had some single friends to join me on Engage. It would be a lot of fun that way.