why not4dating?

You know those people that feel comfortable walking into a room full of strangers? They can talk to anyone and not feel a hint of awkwardness. While I admire those people greatly, I am not one of those people. I’m uncomfortable in huge crowds of people I don’t know and I’m not very good at small talk, and I don’t particularly like it. Of course, when I’m with friends, I’m the opposite; completely comfortable and as chatty as can be.

But what happens when I’m in a new city and my friends are thousands of miles away? If I were the type of person that could talk to anybody, I imagine it would be easy for me to meet people, I could strike up a conversation with any of the millions of people I pass on any given day. But that’s not me, and I’m old enough to be okay with that. But, that leaves me with one predicament, how do I make friends in a new city when I don’t like to walk up to randoms? Many activities for meeting friends in a city are group events like meetups or joining teams. I prefer a one-on-one method and I couldn’t find anything to meet my needs.

As I pondered my options, I got to thinking that its weird you can meet a significant other online one-on-one, but there isn’t something out there where you can meet platonic friends in the same way. I complained about this to my sister; she shared a similar sentiment (she’s only slightly more comfortable in masses of people), so we decided to do something about it. We started a website called www.not4dating.com. It’s like an online dating site in that you can put up a profile and browse other profiles in your area, but as the name suggests, its not for dating.

When we were putting our idea together and telling others, we soon learned there are others like us. Okay, maybe not exactly like us, but they also were looking for an outlet to find platonic friends. We figured if some of our friends in other cities saw a need for it, odds are there are people in our very cities that would be interested in this type of service. And if we got this website going, we would get to meet them. Yay! Problem solved.

We are still in the early phases but new users are signing up everyday and we’re optimistic that there are plenty of people looking for a more personal way to meet people online, but more importantly that those online connections can become real-life friends. This blog will be a little bit about our journey of starting a new business and a little bit about our philosophy on friends and friendships.