LinkedIn is a professional social network, and you normally expect people to use it to make new contacts, share their resumes and scout for jobs and hires. The developers at LinkedUp, LLC took one look at that and saw it as a potential romantic goldmine though. Their app – LinkedUp is a dating app that promises a “smart new way to date” by… using your LinkedIn account to trawl for dates.
It sounds like a great idea! Take a network which is known for professional interactions and turn it into a dating site, because you will be able to “get the conversation going by already knowing what industry your match works in.”
To use the app, you have to log in with LinkedIn – LinkedUp promises never to post anything to LinkedIn, which is a relief – and asks you to (anonymously) “like” or “pass” your LinkedIn contacts – similar to the Tinder app. If any of those people also use LinkedUp, then they will have to make the same like/ pass choices, and if you liked someone who liked you – congratulations, the app tells you about it and you can exchange resumes at that point?
It’s a strange notion to say the least, given that most people would have professional looking head-shots and CVs on the site, and not personal data. But the app creators apparently believe that your work experience is a better barometer of compatibility that any interests or hobbies.
“What’s so great about the app that we developed is that it pulls from the really quality premium user database that [LinkedIn has] set up, which gives people a true sense of identity of the other person on the other end of the mobile app that we have created,” president and CEO of LinkedUp, Max Fischer, told The Guardian.
It should be pointed out that LinkedUp has no connection to LinkedIn. Like just about every other business these days, LinkedIn has a set of APIs, and if a user authorises an app, it can access his or her profile, contacts, etc. Since the developers weren’t restricted to only LinkedIn, why in the world would they actually make something like this?
Well, for one thing, as Fischer said, “some of my friends, myself included, were able to actually find dates on LinkedIn using their messaging platform. Basically we just thought it was a great idea, so we started working on it after that happened.” He then said that he basically used LinkedIn to send ambiguously worded messages to women, so they would meet him thinking it as a networking opportunity, and not a date.
Based on these facts, the birth of LinkedUp starts to make more sense. It’s the dating app for people who think Facebook is too sexually intimidating. If you don’t have any hobbies or interests to list in the usual dating apps, then searching for people by industry so that you can win their hearts by talking incessantly about your job sounds just about right.
Seriously though – there is one good use for this app. Download LinkedUp, “like” every person on the list, and stay far away from anyone who likes you back!
