Pure Launches Sex-on-Demand App, #9 Among Fastest Growing Dating Startups
mattermark.com
mattermark.com
Edit: The great Michel Houellebecq's Platform, a novel of a travel company that revolutionizes the industry by promoting sex tourism, is a recommended read.
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6040/the-art-of-fic...
Sex is the great eradicator of meaning. And we all want our sex to mean something. Hence the difficulty of being a human being.
The developers behind Pure presumably aren't stupid, of course, and know much more about how to solve this problem than I do. The problem most women have is not sex, but finding someone they actually want to have sex with and (who also wants to have sex with them). That's where filtering becomes important.
Men looking for sex drive away women looking for LTRs, that's about it. Women looking for sex having a huge selection just means having their needs met sooner.
You're right in that if you're running a dating site for LTRs NSA men drive away women, but NSA men don't drive away NSA women.
My personal hypotheses are: 1) the subset of women who want to have casual encounters regularly is small; 2) the subset who want to have casual encounters sometimes is very large; 3) if you can reduce friction and stigma significantly then you can activate a modest size subset of women who want a casual encounter now.
--
When I lived in NYC, I found happy casual consensual sex through Nerve / CL / OkCupid on the same day I looked about 50% of the time I was interested (between 5-10 successes and some awkwardness but no failures).
I'm afraid of traveling to somebody's place due to potential hidden cams; thank you very much Mr. Tucker Max. I'm afraid of hosting, because if the guy is a creep, now he's a creep with my address, and with a little digging around, my name, which probably leads to my work. Hotels that I would decide to go to ad-hoc are the best option, but as of now I can't spare hundreds of dollars per encounter. Besides do hotels allow registering with a pseudonym?
So as a woman who might be open to the idea, but has the above concerns, there really is no option for me other than a relationship (as in, vetting the guy myself before any fun) and social contacts (people who've been vetted by my friends).
This sounds like some real corn-fed bullshit.
The rural South is not usually associated with the idea that people want sex to have meaning, and that this is often transient when we find it, so DannoHung's ruminations on the subject must remain mysterious to us.
I'm sorry that I used a colloquialism and muddied my meaning. I thought it was a funny turn of phrase.
I've really got to find a new place to keep up with tech news.
EDIT: The app appears to allow requests only if two profiles have been mutually selected as attractive, which would indicate that men need to spam those attractive buttons quite a lot..
Tom Brady's mistress, or mistresses, are likely to look a lot better than any of the women on Pure.
There is even a joke about it I hear a lot when speaking to online dating startup guys...
"...What do statistics tell us about the rich, good looking guys on an online dating service?
That they are liars..."
And yet, online dating sites do okay, don't they?
"educated" could be a substitute for "rich" - and the educated, good looking, but not very rich people would be ideal for dating sites.
Websites that market themselves as soulmate-finding services haven't solved this, I highly doubt a hookup site is going to do it.
I also don't understand how a non-gender-neutral solution is ironic. I can hardly think of any solution to a gender problem that is "neutral". You don't fix gender imbalance with gender neutral methods.
Actually forbidding men to spam copy and paste messages to every woman could elevate the experience for women.
Maybe by using something like OKCupid data to extrapolate what an attractive man is in general in the context of online hookups/dating.
If they don't want to fall in the same trap, how about promoting it as a service for both genders, but with a man in the ad, or at the very least a couple.
Actually the latest marketing tactic seems to be the extremely classy "Fuck ugly women in your area".
The ad features a heterosexual couple hooking up with another woman. Both of the women appear rather normal, neither magazine-style 'sexy' (no fake breasts, no size 0, no crazy makeup), but both are certainly sensual. It even sensualizes the man.
I'd say their ad is rather spot-on.
it's just that all the women are banging the same 10-20% of guys. the rest of the guys are not getting laid, except on rare occasion, or inside of relationships.
sex is a pareto distributed market.
long-term relationships / marriage are not.
What were her results?
1) She messaged only a few people (small sample size)
2) She messaged only people with older, inactive profiles
3) Her information lacked a picture
4) Her profile lacked key information
5) Her picture(s) were bad
etc
6) All of the profiles for guys who are 9s that she messaged on those dating sites were fake. If a guy is a 9 or a 10, he rarely needs a dating site.
Can we leave those memes on Reddit please?
> it's just that all the women are banging the same 10-20% of guys.
I don't think this is entirely true because most of the 10-20% men also have standards. They will not have sex with a lot of the less attractive women and those women are therefore not in the market for casual sex in any meaningful way (just like everyone who would like to own a Ferrari is not in the "market" for a Ferrari - pardon the dubious analogy).
Furthermore, as someone else pointed out, what you claim would still only be true within the subset of women looking for casual sex which I am sure is smaller then the subset of men looking for casual sex. You don't see many "pickup artist" books on getting laid with the 10% men.
That's not really how the "hook up" site scene works.
It's a lot like swinger parties. 8's are with 8's, and 3's are with 3's.
It's nigh impossible to make a 9 connect with a 3. And this goes both ways. The data testify to this on site after site. So it will be interesting to see if Pure can solve that problem.
Put another way... the top .. say... 10% of men will DEFINITELY not be trying to connect with the bottom 50% of women. Or vice versa. It just hasn't worked that way for any other site. If a "hook up" site could solve that problem... they could make a MINT.
There is a LOT of money in convincing the top 10% of guys to have relations with the bottom 50% of women. As mercenary as that sounds. It's just that no one has figured that out.
Our target audience is sexually active people with smartphones/tablets, who are using dating services, watching porn, buying pleasure products and escort services.
- Where's the Y Axis on that graph? It could be 10 or 1,000 downloads and I wouldn't know the difference.
- #9 fastest growing based on what index? It'd be impressive to say it's #9 in the App Store under the dating category, but there's only one mention of it being #9 fastest growing. It doesn't elaborate futher.
- If you're going to pilot launch this, don't do it in San Francisco. There's a reason why Tinder was launched in LA and Grouper in NYC. Girls in SF will not use this; I talk to a lot of them because I run a dating startup and they're already very hesitant about meeting complete strangers for drinks. If anything, launch this thing in Las Vegas and be the Uber for prostitution.
- There's nothing here that stands out as compelling as a way to overcome the chicken and egg problem. A wait list is not going to solve that problem for you.
(With some nifty features, granted)
That said, there is still plenty of room for innovation even with many competitors to Grindr. Grindr seems more and more overrun with spam, bots, and fake profiles. Hopefully they (or competitors) can create ways to deal with these beyond just "reporting" them.
I would think that safety would be a significant concern in using a service like this.
Interestingly, to request sex you need to buy a 24h pass for e.g. $9.99.
Apparently you need to first select attractive profiles before they can send you a sex request.
1. https://www.dropbox.com/s/hd3f814nsxflnbl/Pure-Invest-ENG.pd...
I don't have any citations handy, but in several gender studies classes back in college, I learned about research that has shown that most women actually have fantasies about hooking up with complete strangers. Where it gets complicated is that these fantasies almost never reflect actual desire, but rather serve as a way to enable certain feelings in the woman: excited, wanted, dominated, etc. This is why romance novels almost never describe the physical traits of the male character and focus overwhelmingly on how he acts and how he makes the female protagonist feel. It's also why men can almost never relate to such novels even when they read them.
But I've heard it described as Grindr for straight people. Seems it's known as a straight-up hookup app.
[une] http://www.gotinder.com/
[deux] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5294253
[trois] http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/jackrivlin/100009761...
EDIT: The link currently returns Server Error (500):
However, if you put in http://getpure.org and let the server redirect you to http://getpure.org/en/, it works. Someone must have misconfigured something.
In any event, this app won't get past the severely disparate interest in casual sex between the sexes.
Unless men just accept that women interested in casual sex might have FAR more conquests than they do. Good luck with that.
A lot of bad experiences on there (at least for straight people) and, after all, this is what Pure is trying to do ("a better casual encounters").
Also this:
"We believe it’s natural for someone to feel a powerful sense of attachment to a long term partner, while experiencing romantic love for somebody else and at the same time, feeling sexually attracted to a diverse range of people."
Sounds like these guys are encouraging cheating on your spouse. There's no way this can pass the App Store's strict policy.
Cheating means "doing something which is not agreed upon". If both partners in a relationship agree to have a possibility of a 'sex-hookup', it's by definition not cheating.
I doubt a bunch of puritan talking heads on CNN complaining about this company will do anything but drive popularity among people who are not as disturbed by it as you. "Weathering that storm" should require nothing more than a "If you don't like it, don't use it" attitude. People who like it will use it anyway; they don't need to court the approval of the staunchly traditional.
I think OP is talking about it not being accepted into the App Store w/ the language used. So if OP is right, people who like it and have an iDevice won't use it because they won't have access to it.
Many people here say things that are purely their belief about how the relationship they are in should function. It's ok, it just means that your not a target of this service. The problem starts when you stigmatize people who are and who would use it. You can't say that people are cheating on each other if all interested parties consent - but you did it anyway.
Yes, you can. But it's a niche, of people who are in open relationships.
Whether it happens enough to sustain a business strategy is another question, and not one that you or I really need to worry about.
> "What I'm pointing out here is a failure in conveying the purpose of this whole venture, you don't cater to people who are searching for quick hookups talking about long-term relationships"
Sure you do. Particularly if you think that people in long-term relationships who are interested in quick hookups are an under-served market. Maybe you don't think that market is under-served, but frankly it doesn't matter much if you approve of them since you are clearly not in their target audience.
Topical bingo seems like a weird thing to target but hey, am I going to tell patio11 that he's wrong? Of course not.
> "Also if you think you can just shrug off media's accusation of moral corruption and whatnot with a smartass attitude you're very naive and you fail to account to a whole series of fiascos that have sunk many a business before."
There are plenty of people who hate Grindr, and they do just fine. Hell, an even better example: Porn. There are countless people who disapprove loudly. It doesn't matter though, that industry does great. Sure, some countries ban porn, but do you really think that there is any danger that first-world countries will ban a service that facilitates consenting adults having sex?
What is the worse case scenario here? CNN and my mother despise this company, while people like myself use it anyway? Broad societal approval is unnecessary in a free society.
Media accusations of moral corruption couldn't be better for a business like that as it will make the demographic they are seeking aware of the site.
About 50% of the populace has had more than one partner at a time, it's not a narrow demo.
In fact, I dare say that this company will likely be disappointed if they don't get the media huffy.
Yeah, that would be a real problem for them. They better be careful that they don't offend old people.
Why would I possibly care that CNN thinks it is a homewrecker? Why would I care if my boss thinks that? Hell, why would I care if my own mother thinks that? I'd use it anyway.
Do you know what happens when I am set up with somebody that I discover I am not interested in (be it by algorithm or a misguided friend, it makes no difference)? I politely let the person know that I am not interested, we finish our meal and then go separate ways. Like adults.
You really sound like you are afraid of just being in one room with the "tranny". You're probably not, but I read your comments as implying that, just FYI.
What you're all missing guys is that if that app hooks you with a man (and in my mind is more of a question of when and not if) it would be way more than an inconvenience. Yes you would politely refuse and move on, but at that point you would've also wasted precious hours of your time. Maybe you drove for miles in traffic only to find that you've been hooked up with a dude, that' my fear.
...and then you proceed to describe an inconvenience...
How is it hooking you up with a man that you are not attracted to any more problematic than it hooking you up with a woman that you are not attracted to? What if I drive miles in traffic only to be hooked up with somebody with long hair!? I prefer short hair, their profile picture was terribly misleading, the horror!
You should seriously consider the possibility that you have some prejudices that are compromising your ability to reason here.
Certainly not. If I am not attracted to the woman I am not going to waste her and my time. I'm not going to try to have sex with her anyway, why would I? If I get hooked up with a woman that I don't find attractive then it is just as much a waste of my time as if it was a man.
It's not. For people who aren't me, that is.
I wouldn't display too much animus about this. It makes you look, well, homophobic. And also like you don't have enough good sense to pre-vent people to make sure they are the gender you are seeking before meeting them, if you are so very concerned that someone might be (gasp, horrors) misleading you online.
Citation needed. Is this backed up by personal experience, someone else's data, or is it just something that you spend a lot of time thinking about?
The word is a slur, and is considered such by many more than just the people it refers to. Though I suppose nobody can make you care.
Weird, that. I hope you are not forgetting that English dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. You are going to continue having trouble using them if you make that mistake.
A natural response is that you can't do this for all words with all people. But you don't need to do that. Once you learn how people respond to a word, you can change. It's how we learned what to say and what not to say in different contexts - surely you didn't check the dictionary every time someone told you "That's not appropriate here."