I went to a launch party for a new website tonight. It was a great mixer for a gay MATCHING service for men looking for a long-term partner. Firstly, big thanks to David Perry & Associates for including me with this launch. Great teamwork guys, wonderful PR.

Now... Partners for Life. Imaging a mix of eHarmony, Vehix, Best Buy and and a well-organized HMO put into one single website for a man who wants a solid relationship with another man. That's about it. It's not a hook-up site. They're very clear with that goal. It's a premium match making site with incredibly complex software programming, demographics and very detailed and flexible matching criteria. Answers aren't yes/no but on a scaled variable, your answers are valued at fine increments to better match who you are and what is is appropriate for you. Sure, it's probably nothing new. Here is the ingenuity. I liked that potential matches can be viewed in a "side by side" comparison, much like shopping online for a car with Vehix, or a camcorder through Best Buy.

The fine engineering? That comes in with the actual matches. Believe me, I was talking to Stuart McFaul from Product Development for a good deal of time. It's not just a site with a search engine for similar matches from most occurring to least occurring key words. This is engineering that's been fine tuned with psychologists, sexologists, statisticians, and an enormous team of gay men who are no strangers to the dating scene. I wanted to know how focused demographics were to relevant regional service. Guys in San Francisco have a different dynamic from guys in Waikiki. It's a different "norm". How will the engineering of the site permit a reliable service (matching based on similarity vs compatibility or "ideals").

The development team has incorporated variables from age preference, race, economics, career, family development, health, and monogamy. It's a brilliant site that has really accepted the complexities of dating and finding a PARTNER. Again, I give them a thumbs up for the brilliance of really establishing a site for searching for long-term relationships, rather than a commercial orgy space on the internet. The site launched today and will expand to Southern California later this year. Projected launch for the major metropolitan cities on the East Coast will be under two years.

Ah, San Francisco, merging high-tech geeks with romance and sustainability...

Are we really so pressured to purchase a service to assist us with finding a mate? Have we been burned beyond repair that a bionic matchmaker is just far easier than healing or learning from our relationships? It's a question that we each have to answer and most likely a process no CPU can fathom, but it's what makes us human.