Dec 7, 2007

Dating in the age of YouTube

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

Many online dating sites seek to connect soul mates, to bring together those looking for eternal and everlasting love.

The latest Internet dating site, launched in Palo Alto this week, is not one of them.

"It's not about marriage," said Alex Gurevich, co-founder of SayHeyHey.com, the first free all-video online dating site.

"It can be ... if you're from Utah," joked fellow co-founder Soudy Khan, born and raised in Palo Alto.

The new site, which officially launched Tuesday, eschews the typical format of online dating sites, where users carefully word profiles and post photos "from 10 years and 20 pounds ago," Gurevich said.

Instead, users of SayHeyHey post videos of themselves talking, wakeboarding or - in Khan's case - using a beer bong. If a visitor is interested in someone else's clip, he or she can send a video introduction. The goal of the site is to connect with the 18- to 28-year-old audience that's more comfortable with YouTube than with Match.com, Gurevich said.

"If I'm a twenty-something, I don't want to be on a site with old fogeys," said Gurevich, 24, before apologizing to Khan, who described himself as "thirty-something."

"It's OK. I'm good-looking," Khan said.

"Good point," Gurevich said.

The two admitted the idea for the site did stem in part from their collective dating woes.

Gurevich recalled a date he went on with a woman whose profile described her as laid-back and relaxed. After their first date, though, she hit him with a wave of frenzied calls and text messages.

"I was on JDate, and I went on two or three dates, and every single girl turned out to be super-psychotic," Gurevich said.

Video clips provide much greater insight into a person's personality, Khan said.

"Humans are able to perceive so much more by looking at just a few seconds of video," he said.

On the site, users can post as many videos as they want, with each one limited to 10 minutes and most averaging around two minutes, Gurevich said. Nudity and illegal material are not permitted, but so far the site has had to pull only one lewd video.

"Anything that's plain nasty you can't do," Khan summarized.

And those hoping to find a date can click on the "matching" function, which locates a compatible personality using a top-secret but "very deliberate" algorithm.

Gurevich said the matching formula works so well that it keeps trying to set him up with a woman he dated prior to the site's launch.

Even after the site's official debut this week, both men for now are keeping the Silicon Valley jobs that brought them together. Gurevich, a native of Ukraine whose family was smuggled out of the country after the fall of the Berlin Wall, works full time at a Palo Alto startup.

Khan, who grew up with his Afghan-born father, traveled the world and now works as an Internet user-experience consultant. The two met when Khan did consulting work for the startup where Gurevich works.

"We've got a Russian Jew and an Afghan Muslim starting a business about relationships," Gurevich laughed.

Already the site has built up a fan base from its beta phase, including some users with a more personal connection.

"My grandma goes on the site every day to check on it," Gurevich said. "She gives me advice."


E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.