Talk about dating apps, and the first name that pops into your mind would be Tinder – unless you belong to an older generation, then it would be OkCupid. Regardless, it’s undeniable that Tinder’s swipe-to-discover methodology has changed the dating game, and at the same time removed a host of potential problems unto unsuspecting men and women.
One of the issues that usually comes up about Tinder’s system is that it relies heavily on looks. Sure, every user gets 500 characters to talk about themselves, but honestly, the game is all about ‘look connections’ and not heart connections. After all, what makes the dating app tick is the simplicity of being able to swipe to approve or discard human beings, and that doesn’t really help a user explore a person’s character in depth.
So Tinder is superficial in that sense, and while it’s perfect for one-night stands, it certainly isn’t the go-to app for someone looking for a soulmate.
Joanna Hayes, co-founder of Australia-based ‘old-fashioned’ dating app Pozee, would no doubt concur strongly on this point. “Many people – especially women – are growing tired of the endless winks, pokes and impersonal correspondence from online and mobile dating,” she says. It was precisely for this reason that she decided to create Pozee as an alternative.
A signal of singlehood
Pozee works on the premise that, if both parties know that each other is single, they would feel more comfortable approaching and talking to each other. This concept occurred to Hayes when she was on holiday in Hawaii.
While attending a traditional luau – a Hawaiian party – she found out that it was customary for the woman to wear a flower behind her right ear, signifying that she is single to others:
This simple custom was said to play an important role in guiding the overtures of the men in attendance at such events for thousands of years. It struck me that there is no modern equivalent of this simple custom, and yet knowing whether a woman is single is the first hurdle a man faces when deciding whether to approach a woman. Sure, there are singles parties and traffic light parties, but singles need a solution that is working for them every moment of the day, whether they are picking up a coffee, grabbing some groceries, or out at a bar. Smartphones provided the perfect medium.
The app’s name, Pozee, also had the same source of inspiration. It was derived from the word ‘posy’ which is used to describe a small bouquet of flowers, or a single stem. “Offering a girl a little posy of flowers was one of my earliest childhood memories of what it meant for a boy to show a girl he liked her, and vice versa,” she explains.
Here’s how it works. By using your phone’s location services, Pozee shows you all the singles who are open to being approached within 50 metres of where you’re standing. A user can ‘announce’ that he/she is single and available to those around him/her by logging in as ‘visible’. If the user is not open to being approached, he or she can log in as ‘private’ instead.
Login as ‘visible’ or ‘private’. Your choice.
According to Hayes, this method does away with the apprehension and fear of rejection that prevents people from approaching one another in real life.
Read: Not Tinder
Hayes is determined to make it clear that Pozee is not Tinder. There is, in fact, an entire section on the app’s site that does a play-by-play breakdown of the differences between Pozee and Tinder.
As such, she was happy to elaborate more on the differences between the two. The first issue I brought up was that Pozee’s interface was in fact very much Tinder’s swipe-to-discover system. Hayes however explains that the application of the technology is very much different in Pozee’s case.
“Tinder shows you profiles of people who are within one to a hundred km of where you’re standing. You may, at some future date, get a chance to see that person in real life. This is the traditional dating site model,” she says.
“By contrast, Pozee only shows you those people that are within 50 meters of where you’re standing. That means that every person that appears on Pozee is within your visible range, right at that moment. Once you see the profile on the app, you can immediately look up to see the real person.”
Match the faces, and you’ve find a winner.
This is key difference number one: the photo, which is the centerpiece of Tinder’s system, merely serves to enable the user to identify the other from the crowd. The emphasis is on the real-life interaction:
Tinder offers you the convenience of browsing profiles of people – as you would a catalogue – from the comfort of your home. Pozee forces you to actually leave the house. The big problem with the convenience of never leaving your house is that you have to be willing to advertise yourself in that same public catalogue. And that’s a price many people do not want to pay.
Oh, and there’s no way to message the other party through Pozee from behind the phone’s screen. This is by design as well.
Then there’s the matter of whether the smiling man in the photo really is who he claims to be. “With Pozee, the user is instantly able to validate the profile photo by looking up to see the real person. That way they can actually observe the person in real life before deciding whether they want to declare any interest,” Hayes explains.
Is he really the man that appears in the picture?
“That is something you can’t do with online dating, and the primary reason why so many people get scammed – they don’t actually know who they are talking to, or worse, who they have just told they are attracted to.”
Safety is key
The visible-private modes are also to help safeguard the safety and privacy of users, especially for women. “While some will be happy to have all the male users in attendance know that they are single, most will prefer to control proceedings,” she says. “Most men, on the other hand, will not hesitate to remain in ‘visible’ mode because they don’t tend to suffer the same concerns about being approached.”
Besides the matter of superficiality, safety is another huge area of concern when it comes to online dating – one that Tinder has continually been struggling with. No one wants to use a dating app that could potentially put them in danger.
Hayes emphasizes that safety is of utmost priority with Pozee. Firstly, there is no profile to fill out, and so no private information that can be disclosed via the app.
Second, the app allows the user to quickly switch between modes, or to simply block other users they are not interested in.
Lastly, Pozee doesn’t reveal any location information, and when the app is inactive, the GPS automatically switches off.
An accessory, and not a dating app
According to Hayes, Pozee is currently a minimum viable product (MVP), and they have only done a soft launch in Australia to gather feedback and test their systems. When it comes to improving a user’s social success offline, she claims that there are no competitors in this space at all.
That said, there are plenty of dating apps out there that rely on showing singles who are nearby. Hayes, however, thinks Pozee is not a dating app, but an accessory:
[Pozee is] a very simple technology that allows the user to canvass the room and signal that you are open to being approached in a very discreet and private manner [...] Dating apps are a substitute for real life – Pozee promotes real human interaction.
The app’s (or accessory’s) official launch will be in November this year. As it is currently an MVP, there are several paid features that are in the works, and Hayes reveals that these will be built once they have acquired a certain number of users.
Currently, operations are running on some seed funding provided by family and close friends, but they do plan to look for investors early next year.
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