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Boston, my home base, has a new social site called heyletsgo. It takes a lot to get me interested in a new site, let alone to sign up and participate, and heyletsgo has me hooked. Planning my fall social calendar just got a whole lot easier.
I recently met with the founders on Boston Common, where we engeged in lively coversation, people watching, soaking up the Puritan urban environment and dodging pigeons.
HLG is at it's heart a social networking site grounded in event planning.
The feature set includes just about everything a social site needs to compete in today's cut-throat social networking scene. Features include profiles, blog, events, restaurants, photos, wish list, people/friend/group lists, favorites and comments.
I'm liking the update feature, a simple blog entry that shows up at the top of my public profile. Perfect for quickly posting what you're up to. The wishlist and group feature have been great for connecting with old friends I haven't seen in a while and being exposed to new friends, activity partners and singles.
There have been many event-based social networking/dating sites, but few come close to heyletsgo. It's local, relevant, easy on the eyes and has all the features that are necessary, without the extra bells and whistles that most people don't use anyway.
There is some patent-pending intellectual property they wouldn't talk about but suffice to say HLG manages it's user-generated event listings well.
I'm bullish on event-driven sites these days. Event/activity planning is going to be a big feature from here on out on dating sites. There is simply no better low-risk way to meet new people. Basing a get-together on ballooning on Boston Common with 4 other people is a lot less stressful for all involved, you're there to have fun and do something new and novel. If you hit it off with someone, great, if not, you met a few people and that's that.
It remains to see if local/niche sites will take off or if Match or Yahoo can figure out how to go local (again) while remaining global brands. Match botched live events once, can it come back again and make it work?
Almost everyone I know that has recently started dating someone met them at adult education classes (cooking, lectures, game nights, interest groups) or group events (sports, concerts, outdoor activities).
Craigslist has had an events category forever, but there was always something sketchy about it, you never really knew who you were dealing with until you were F2F. Now I can check out people, see who their friends are, and get a much better sense of their personality based on their profile, groups they belong to and their comments across the site.
I don't know what's in my coffee this morning but heyletsgo has me all warm and fuzzy. That and 100,000 college students arriving over the weekend to re-take Boston. You can feel the energy in the air, the doldrums of August are over, time to get back to work.
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