Match Made in Heaven? New Dating App Lets Friends Decide

They even design the user's profile
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 29, 2017 12:05 PM CDT
Match Made in Heaven? New Dating App Lets Friends Decide
   (Wingman)

Tired of the online dating world? Let your friends do the searching and swiping. So says Tina Wilson, a Londoner who found after a breakup that her friends were trying to play matchmaker, but that they didn't have any good tools to find someone for her online, reports Mashable. So she started her own, an app called Wingman, which works much like many dating apps but requires the participation of both the person who will be doing the dating and the friend who will be doing the deciding. The dater can't write his or her own profile or make his or her own connections with other potential daters—only the "wingman" can.

The app has been up and running in the UK for a few years now, but is just being released in the US. In practice, at least so far, mostly women are doing the matchmaking, but there is a pretty even number of men and women daters. And having a friend involved serves as a confidence-booster, too, reports the Verge. Friends tend to write lovely, flattering profiles, and they are the ones to "absorb" the rejections that the person doing the dating will never have to see. One woman describes it being a real help when her mother and sister took the reigns after she moved to a new city and didn't know anyone. (Most of the 4,500 online dating sites and apps are tiny.)

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