It had to happen, especially with LinkedIn’s demographics showing the wealthiest average membership of any of the social networks.
LinkedIn now has a dating service. Actually, the service is Hitch.me (which, unfortunately, sounds more like a horse rental site than a dating service to me, but maybe I don’t know the current dating scene).
Membership is free with access to your LinkedIn credentials. LinkedIn members looking for love (UnLinked Lovers? – lots of possibilities for new LinkedIn group titles here!) can join free, but you need to purchase credits to contact others. You can view LinkedIn profiles before making contact.
No word on keyword or premium searches, or on new dating sections for your LinkedIn profile, yet. Presumably you could create a dating presentation and post on your LinkedIn profile with Google Presentations or Slideshare. And you could post photos of your sexy, premium-gym-sculpted body using the Box.net application.
Nevertheless, either this move is genius or an effort doomed to fail due to excessive geekiness and soon-to-arrive SEO marketing keyword overkill in daters’ profiles. (I hesitate to mention the fact that, even with current LinkedIn head shots, its obvious that many members haven’t been actively working out for a while.)
As Hitch.me says in its FAQ sheet, “It is safe to assume that majority of the members on the site are corporate professionals looking for love. Having said that you should take all the necessary precautionary measures of dating someone online.” (And we all know that corporate professionals never indulge in inappropriate behavior in or out of the workplace.) <Insert your own Herman Cain joke here>
And we just needed one more incentive for establishing fake LinkedIn profiles, didn’t we?
In any case, I’m sure much, much more will be written about the service, serious and tongue-in-cheek.
For Veena Bissram’s original article on Mashable, see
Hitch.me is at http://www.hitch.me/
Kewords: LinkedIn, Love, dating, singles, hitch, SEO
