via Flickr, by MrHayata
Alikewise.com is a brand spankin’ new dating site still in beta. Your profile is comprised of books you’ve read, and “what this book means to you. Make it personal!” Not a bad concept, reading lists are very important, especially if you’re a big reader.
Unfortunately, Alikewise has some shortcomings. Foremost among them: there’s nobody there, yet. The nearest guy is an hour away. And he’s the only one. If I change my ZIP code to the two nearest big cities, I find ONE in Philadelphia, and New York has a grand total of 30 (11 in my preferred age range). Erm? I know the site is a baby, but this is really tiny. New York is the home of the founders, so it’s to be assumed that it would have the most profiles when starting up. The number of women is roughly equally, but it’s a dauntingly tiny pool.
Lets look ahead to when the site has a decent userbase.
You can upload a few pictures, a tagline, some basic attributes (height, hair, eyes, body type), and “Your Story,” which is made up of six prompt questions. So, assuming someone puts in the time to write something nice about all the books they list, you can come up with a pretty good idea of who they are.
I’m not sure if they’ve got their sorting tools in place, though. If you click on a book, you’ll see other users who also listed that book. (This is a bit challenging while the site is still small. Try “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”) It looks like this list is sorted by proximity, but it’s hard to be sure. What if I want to look for people in a specific city who like this book? How do I do that?
The site is currently free, though they say they may charge for some features in the future. It may be worth putting up a profile now, and seeing what you get as people discover it.
Subterfuge 