Dating site connects by the book
Who wrote the book of love? Perhaps Alikewise. com, where you might find someone on same page.
NEW YORK - Chin Ma is 25 and looking for love. He paddles regularly in the dating pools online, paying fees to navigate millions of profiles based on lengthy checklists and compatibility formulas.
So how'd he find his latest prospect? Through a book by Andy Warhol on Alikewise.com, a newcomer looking to connect people free of charge based on their favorite reads. It's a unique approach in a recession-hardy industry that has dozens of niche sites serving potheads to pet owners, millionaires to Mac lovers.
"Alikewise is more subject to your creativity than the larger sites," said Chin, a management consultant from Brooklyn. "There's more of that soft dynamic. You get to know people in a nonsuperficial way."
Hobbies and passions like reading are often included when online daters describe themselves or their dream mates. Site users can search and be searched by the books and book opinions they put up next to their profile pictures. There's also an option to respond to general open-ended conversation starters that include: "Two things I can't live without ... " and "The bravest thing I've done recently ... "
Other users can leave comments about your books, and the site sends notifications when somebody adds the same title or books in the same general interest area.
"There are plenty of niche dating sites, but they struck me as a bit too niche," said the cofounder, Matt Sherman. "They seem to orient themselves over one particular interest or type of person - athletics, religion. Our attitude is that books can be about anything. They're a means to an end to get the conversation going."
Sherman thought up the idea a couple of years ago after breaking up with his girlfriend, wondering if he'd ever find a woman who has read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan or F.A. Hayek's 66-year-old The Road to Serfdom. The site went live in mid-July and has about 1,500 users, split about evenly between genders.
Among the most popular books posted? Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Among the most posted authors of the moment? Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell. Stieg Larsson, Chuck Palahniuk, and Jane Austen also pop up often.
The top subscription dating sites boast millions of users (Match counts 29 million), and the most popular free sites can have many thousands. Sherman and fellow founder Matt Masina aren't looking to compete by that measure. Who's to say what your love match likes to read anyway? What does it really mean if they're paperback people, Kindle lovers, or hardcover fanatics?
Emmaleth, 26, from Fresno, Calif., put up Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss: "Hello?!?! This man wrote the most poetic yet simple explanation of life! I LOVE this book and honestly I CRY sometimes when I read it. Yeah, enjoy knowing that."
The Matts of Alikewise said the draw might be more about the crowd than the love science behind their approach. "We think there's a different caliber of person who reads," Masina said. "You won't go onto our site and find guys with their shirts off."
Other sites exist for the bookish on the prowl. The Passions Network, a less-than-flashy free social media and dating hangout, has separate areas for writers and lovers of comic books, manga, and reading. Company president Michael Carter wouldn't disclose how many users it has.
In the extreme niche department, there's a gathering place for admirers of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged that includes a dating area. Michael Kelley, 50, of Aiken, S.C., thought he'd give it a try after two failed marriages and intensive study of Rand's work years later. He met a fellow devotee who moved to Florida. They're still in touch and plan to take a cross-country trip together.
"I thought I could find somebody there who thinks like I do," Kelley said. "I thought maybe this is why my relationships with my two wives didn't work out. They didn't have the same worldview."
So far so good for the biography-loving Chin, who posted The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and His Way: An Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra by Kitty Kelley, among others. He invited the woman who posted The Philosophy of Andy Warhol to a Warhol exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.
"We had a great time," he said. "Hopefully it will turn out well."