DateMySchool is an

online dating Online dating, also known as Internet dating, Virtual dating, or Mobile app dating, is a relatively recent method used by people with a goal of searching for and interacting with potential romantic or sexual partners, via the internet. An onlin ...

platform targeted toward

university A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

students and

alumni Alumni (singular: alumnus (masculine) or alumna (feminine)) are former students of a school, college, or university who have either attended or graduated in some fashion from the institution. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for grou ...

. It requires a university

email address An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Enginee ...

, and claims that it permits only verified

student A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution. In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school or higher (e.g., college or university); those in primary or elementa ...

s and alumni to join. It allows users to filter by

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compu ...

departments Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

, individuals and other groups from accessing their profiles - subject to the same

security policy Security policy is a definition of what it means to ''be secure'' for a system, organization or other entity. For an organization, it addresses the constraints on behavior of its members as well as constraints imposed on adversaries by mechanism ...

based on university email addresses. The site does not

index Index (or its plural form indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on a Halo megastru ...

profiles on

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. Site registration is free, but members are prompted to sign up for a

subscription The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, and ...

if they visit their inbox.

History

DateMySchool was co-founded by

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

M.B.A. students Balazs Alexa and Jean Meyer on November 8, 2010, after a woman in the School of Social Work complained that there were too few men in her department. DateMySchool first expanded to

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, ...

;

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

;

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, Harvard, and

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

; and then spread to 350

s before launching to more than 1,000 schools nationwide.

Privacy

DateMySchool members may exclude schools,

, and individuals. By default, members will not be seen by their classmates as they are invisible to their department and their department is invisible to them. However, they may change their

privacy settings ByPrivacy settings are "the part of a social networking website, internet browser, piece of software, etc. that allows you to control who sees information about you". With the growing prevalence of social networking services, opportunities for pri ...

to allow members from their department to see them. Alexa and Meyer claim that by enabling users to choose who can and cannot view their profiles the site attempts to minimize the stigma of online dating.

Acquisition tactics

DateMySchool has a campus

ambassador An ambassador is an official envoy, especially a high-ranking diplomat who represents a state and is usually accredited to another sovereign state or to an international organization as the resident representative of their own government or sov ...

program for which they hire students across the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

to promote the website on campus. Students are paid based on the number of signups generated from their respective campuses. DateMySchool also has an anonymous invite module that allows a user to invite their friends and classmates. Users have the option to input an individual

or invite their whole contact list. While users are permitted to send invitations to any email address, the recipient of the invitation must be able to complete the verification process to confirm they are a student or alumni, otherwise, the recipient will be unable to sign up.

References

{{reflist Online dating services of the United States Internet properties established in 2010