Ms. Higashi (Photo: GitHub)

If you're not having much luck with traditional dating sites and you're not a hardcore Star Trek fan, what's a smart single gal to do? If you're Noriko Higashi, a programmer at a social gaming company, you post a request for a boyfriend on the social coding platform GitHub. Gotta play to your target audience, right?

Ms. Higashi, a 30-something software engineer living in Tokyo, posted the file "boyfriend_require" to GitHub with the hope that she might be able to find someone who shares her goals and interests. Naturally, as an exacting programmer, she’s listed a fair number of standards that she hopes a potential mate can live up to, a few of which are listed below.

1. Someone who has at least 5 friends from elementary school, high school, or university that they still keep in contact with.
2. Someone who has professional relationships, which have lasted at least one year, with over 20 people (this includes relationships on Facebook).
3. Someone who can speak with his neighbors (regardless of their age or gender) for at least 30 minutes.
4. Someone who enjoys interacting with young children.
5. Someone who likes eating vegetables and natto.
6. Someone who does not become jealous of rich, beautiful or famous people.
7. Someone who does not compare himself to others, gloating or feeling a general sense of superiority.
8. Someone who can tolerate social gaming companies like Zynga, GREE, or Mobage.
9. Someone who prefers Mac/Linux to Windows.
10. Someone who does not compare me to my mother.
11. Someone who sympathizes with the work of Peter Drucker and who has adopted some of his "seven principles".
12. Someone who plays at most only 1 hour of videogames a day, or at most only 30 minutes of TV.

For interested engineers, there are additional caveats:

1. Someone who writes beautiful code--it makes me cry tears of joy. (Required)
2. Someone who maintains their own server (Required, Linux preferred)
3. Someone who will let me help them maintain their own server (Required)
4. Someone with public repos on Github (Required)

Despite the specification that interested partners meet at least 28/30 of her requirements, Ms. Higashi's post has inspired a fair number of responses. (We've reached out to her to ask if she's managed to meet any promising mates due to the post.)

It seems her request may have a few bugs, though. One user filed a pull request to translate the doc into Chinese. Under "issues" with the repo, a number of potential suitors noted Ms. Higashi's lack of profile photo. When she denied the request, one user replied, “wooo~~~~this bug gets no fixes?!”

Another user pointed out that some of her preferences may fundamentally conflict:

(Photo: iTunes)

We've all been there: stuck in the middle of a terrible first date with a boring or psychopathic or worse--luddite!--companion, with no way out. If you're a terrible liar or none of your friends is available to make that fake emergency call to your cell, eHarmony is here to help. The Globe and Mail reports that the online dating service now has a mobile app in the iTunes store called "Bad Date Rescue" that will help you make your getaway, stat.

The whole system is surprisingly detailed. You can choose an interval of time at which to schedule the fake phone call, which purports to actually have a real voice on the other end. You can also specify which emergency you want to fake: your mom calling to say your sister is in labor, your neighbor to tell you your apartment is flooded or your boss to say there's a work emergency.

But our favorite feature is perhaps this one, which will undoubtedly come in handy for the tongue-twisted among us:

Can’t think of what to say to your date in order to excuse yourself? Then choose the “Repeat After Me” script (also available in Spanish) and simply repeat after the speaker!

The whole thing is pretty genius, particularly from a marketing perspective. Of course, what happens if people start using the app because eHarmony continuously serves them terrible matches? The company must be pretty confident in their matching algorithm.

(Getty Images)

Have you ever wondered why there wasn't a Yelp but for people? Neither did we, but apparently there is, and it's called Dirty Bubble. If you're not turned off by the name, just wait until you hear what it does.

Dirty Bubble fancies itself as "a place for people to rate, share and review their previous relationships and hookups," and allows users to make profiles—not for themselves—but for their exes. Then, would-be suitors can read reviews and see how many stars their potential date got in categories like sanity, generosity and hygiene. "Why?" the introductory video rhetorically asks, "Wouldn't you want to know a little about someone's background or personality before dating them?" Actually, no, we wouldn't—or at least we don't want to hear about it the same way we want to read reviews about the Lumia 900 or the new iPad.

Many of today's eligible bachelors are so accustomed to looking up absolutely everything that it now seems to be the exception for two people to go out without at least checking out each other's Facebook profiles. But what happened to the blind date? The intrigue, the mystery? Review and rating sites definitely have their place in this world: we love them. But how did no one in the Dirty Bubble development meeting raise the notion that applying the properties of Yelp and Foursquare to people in the dating scene encourages objectivity and is just flat out creepy? Try this: if you're out with someone that doesn't click—just say goodbye and walk away. Like a normal person.

Dirty Bubble ensures all your reviews are collected in one place by requiring all users to login with Facebook Connect and then find their victim's corresponding profile. If this service has to exist, at least there's a method to it. The problem is that users can only review those that they're already Facebook friends with. So even if you got the first and last name of the sultry barfly you stumbled into the night with, you're not going to be able to dish until that friend request gets approved.

The video, which is so unapologetically sincere, tells us that, "for the record, once you join, your profile is completely private. The only profile of you visible to others is the one that somebody else has created to rate you." How reassuring.

So far there doesn't seem to be a way to opt out of this—so hopefully you're not reading this next to someone you care about. If you are lucky enough to be alone—consider it a dodged bullet—and just hope whoever you end up taking home never, ever hears about Dirty Bubble.

Even though it was very risky and way above our pay grade, Betabeat logged in to bring back this image from the front lines but had to get out of there before things got FUBAR—Dirty Bubble is a battlezone and Betabeat is certainly no war correspondent.

Most profiles on Dirty Bubble, which launched this past January, only have a handful of reviews that say things like, "She wanted to be a pop star and didn't want to be my housewife," or "AWESOME. until it was numbingly boring."

At present, the privately funded $100,000 company does not have a mobile app, so rest assured, if your date is having a staring contest with their phone, at worst they're requesting an "emergency" phone call so you won't feel inadequate when they have to rush home to "take care of" their "roommate" with "food poisoning."

Mr. Altarescu via LinkedIn

Women in the market for a banker boyfriend have a wealth of resources that tell them what they might be in for. The short-lived, but incredibly practical Dating A Banker Anonymous blog, for one, was a valuable recession-era compendium of tips on navigating tricky emotional terrain like what happens when they cut up your credit card or cancel reservations. With New York's nascent tech scene, however,  it's harder to know how to proceed. Thankfully, Page Six magazine is here to help women in search of lasting love who want to "date the next Mark Zuckerberg."

Today, the magazine posted profiles of five bachelors (sample pun: "There's a chapp for that.") from the startup ecosystem: Anoop Ranganath from Foursquare, Dave Altarescu from Spotify, Rob Fishman from Kingfish Labs, Trip Cowin from Basno, and Spencer Lazar from Spontaneously. If parsed correctly, the list also reveals some handy clues as to what your love life might look like if you happen to land one of these "chapps."

1. You'll have competition in the bedroom:

Currently sleeping with: "My phone, my iPad and my computer." -Mr. Lazar

2. They might use their own product to contact you:

First date contact: "A Yoke message? I've Twitter direct-messaged, Foursquare commented...I sort of embrace the multi-platform reach-out."- Mr. Fishman, (whose company makes the Facebook dating app Yoke)

3. You'll probably end up hanging out with his co-workers:

NYC date spots: "I really like the Summit Bar...it's a popular bar among all the Foursquare people." -Mr. Ranganath

4. They're capable of looking up from their keyboard . . . sometimes:

First date contact: "Despite the industry I work in, it's definitely a phone call."-Mr. Cowin

5. They might know more about dating than you:

Pro dater: "There's this awkward moment when you're on a date and you say, 'I'm actually working on a dating website.' "

6. You're gonna have to listen to them brag/humble-brag about their badges.

Badge brag: The former prep-school English teacher boasts a Tough Mudder Finisher badge for the 12-mile obstacle course he's finished twice.-Mr. Cowin

Foursquare cred: "I'm the mayor of my apartment and my parents' house. I'm very proud. They were highly contested."- Mr. Ranganath

Now that you know the rules, see you at The Scratcher?

Miss E. Jean, if you're nasty.

Celebrated Elle advice columnist and former "Saturday Night Live" writer, E. Jean Carroll is kind of a riot. Or so Betabeat discovered when we called up the 69-year-old author and serial Internet entrepreneur last night to talk startups as she was "having my wine." Maybe it's the red hair or the emphatic voice modulation, but she sorta sounded like a sultrier Carol Burnett.

E. Jean's first startup—2002's GreatBoyfriends.com, which let women recommend a good catch they were willing to throw back—was purchased by The Knot in 2005. Then came the ill-fated Facebook spoof called Catch27.com that let you make online trading cards of yourself and trade your friends for hotter friends. Last year there was FLAAB, where users made a bet to see if they could lose weight and paid up if they failed.

A week ago, she launched a new dating venture called Tawkify that forgoes online profiles for a brief questionnaire, photo, and a chance to let E. Jean—personally!—set you up for a blind phone date. No surprise to members of the New York Tech Meetup list-serve who were recently treated to a lively back-and-forth when E. Jean requested help getting good men to sign up.

(In short, a dubious beta-user named Glen declared the site a failure for an automated call system called Mr. Brooks that set up the date... until he found out the girl on the other end was interested in him, at which point Glen invited E. Jean to dinner.)

We talked to Ms. Carroll about her latest venture, Kenneth Shaw (her better tech half), and why men are the new women.

What was the inspiration for Tawkify?

The inspiration, do you live in New York?

I do.

So you know what the situation is. There’s loads and tons and an overrun of beautiful, accomplished, sexy, incredible, incredibly skilled, affluent, athletic women. They love football! They love everything! And there are less men. So what has happened is in a Darwinian sense, women are now competing for the men, instead of [laughs] the two-and-a-half billion year plan where men compete for women. So the men have now become the women.

Tell me about your previous startups.

There was GreatBoyfriends, which Oprah called “the greatest idea she’d ever heard.” That was a site where women recommended their ex-boyfriends.

Oh!

Yes! It was brilliant! Because why would you throw a guy away just because you don’t agree on religion or you didn’t like how he chewed his food? Then there was FLAAB where people made a bet if they could lose the weight and if they did, they got their money back.

What’s the status of that?

We closed it because, you know what, frankly Nitasha you know waaaaay more about this stuff than I do. Because you do this all day long and I’m a moron, I’m a total moron and I hadn’t quite figured out that you needed a huge infusion of cash on something like FLAAB. On Tawkify, the thing just zoomed, we launched seven days ago.

How’s it going?

We have so many beautiful, accomplished, unbelievable women that we are struggling just to keep our heads above water because we can’t see anything because of all the women.

Who is Kenneth? I saw him named on your website as someone who helps with the matches.

Oh Kenneth! Kenneth Shaw is a Stanford computer genius, who graduated a couple years ago. He was one of those brilliant kids who created one of the most popular Facebook apps in 2006 or 2007, which was called My Purity Test. I found him on Facebook, I just thought it was hilarious.

You worked together?

We did something called the Fuk [Ed note: pronounced fook] Book, which was the largest sex survey of college students in history.

Can you spell that?

F-u-k. It was a survey of sexual practices of college kids.

And what happened with that?

I have more data on the sexual habits of college kids than anybody on the planet is what happened! I was going to write a book, but I was so overwhelmed with the data. Sixty percent of college kids have tried anal sex. That threw me for such a loop, I couldn’t write.

Ha. You were expecting a lower percentage?

I don’t know what I expected, BUT MY GOD! Apparently, porn has had a huge influence, so everyone wants to try it, right? By everybody, I mean dudes.

So that’s how you met Kenneth?

He’s one of those Stanford kids that just doesn’t stop. I don’t know when he ever sleeps. He’s in San Francisco. He’s working for One Kings Lane, do you know Alison—

Pincus.

It’s so much fun talking to you! You’re not like my friends! You know what’s going on. Oh my god!

So how does Tawkify work?

First of all, the stunning thing is, the questions are so simple. Age, sex, where you live, what you’re interested in, what you want, what you do for a living. That’s it! I don’t want to know the five sexy things you keep by your bedside, I don’t want to know any of that! Because I can make a match just from what you’re interested in and what you do for a living and what you look like.

How many people have signed up so far?

Let’s say lots of women. And it’s not that we don’t have men signing up, we have not as outstanding... I can’t match these superlative women with these dudes.

It’s a problem.

What are we gonna do?!

Was anyone on the list-serv helpful about that?

Those guys are so hilarious, I don’t even. No, they weren’t.

They seemed to think you were just trying to promote the startup.

Well, I copped to it immediately, of course! But I just thought I’d put a little thing and it was vicious wrangling for 24 hours. But it was so much fun hearing from them. Actually two of them joined and I set them up.

Oh yeah?

Nitasha, this is hilarious. So what was his name? Glen. So Glen is set up and Mr. Brooks —you know we have a robot arranging everything —the robot calls Glen and says I have your match, it’ll be ready tonight at 10 o’clock. So Glen gets on the phone apparently and interviews the girl!  After it’s over, he writes a report for the list-serv and says “This is the worst! This is abominable! This whole thing sucks!” I say, “Glen, shut the fuck up the girl liked you!” She liked him! Nitasha, she went for him. He ended up asking me to dinner [to talk about the startup]. She immediately wanted to talk to him again. Of course now he loves Tawkify.

What were his earlier objections?

He said this is like being in prison and even in prison, they tell people they have one minute left. Because we cut off the conversations after seven minutes. Oh, yeah. We set you up on the phone, but you’ve got seven minutes because Nitasha, you’ve been on the phone with guys, when they abruptly end, what do you want?

What?

What happens when something’s cut short?

It’s better?

You want more! Right?!

So do people send in pictures?

Oh yes, they have to have pictures because I have to see what they look like. But one of the reason why so many women signed up is because they’re protected. Nobody sees their picture. So creeps and jugheads and assholes are not sending them messages.

Is Kenneth involved with picking matches?

[Laughs] Kenneth is building the site and doing all the tech. He’s working on the fly, he goes all night. He doesn’t drink, he just does energy drinks. He’s amazing. But he does help pick. He tells me who he thinks the cutest girls are —from a guy’s point of view. Now he would choose somebody like Amanda, who is adorable, but I would have overlooked her until I went back and really looked at her and she’s a Jane Austen type.

Have you set Kenneth up?

There are two girls on there that I know that Kenneth likes. I know that he likes them! He’s like 25 and adorable. So he’s not gonna last long.

Are all the women in New York?

Oh no, they’re in Chicago and Florida and LA and New York. I’m trampled! They’re everywhere! Make them go away! And by the way, they’re spending a lot of money for this.

What’s the pricing structure?

$8 for a match. $15 for three matches. But we have a special $99 for hand-holding and many women are going for that because I will talk to them on the phone, find out a little bit about their history and really what they want. Basically, I want to know how picky they are. But, you know what, women are really not that picky. They just want someone to love and go to a movie with and go to a hockey game with.

Well, they say they’re not. But then it’s later revealed they might be pickier than they admit.

Exactly [whispers].

If you’re picking the matches, how are you planning on scaling? Say it really takes off?

No, we’re keeping it small and select. This is not gonna be three million people, this is not going to be Match.com. I am not going near people like this guy who emailed —are you ready for this?­­ This is what he wants in a woman: “Not a whore. Not fat. But an intellectual.” [laughs] Now I am not going to match him! I don’t care how much money he pays me, he is not going to get a match. Not a whore, not fat, but an intellectual?

CEO Adam Sachs declined to comment but we can say that Somak Chattopadhyay of Tribeca Ventures and David Cohen of Techstars are listed as directors on the new filing.

Ignighter is  a Techstars grad and has raised $4.2 million to date. It's perhaps most fascinating for finding success in India. Their idea for group dates was a mild success in America, but a huge hit in India, where more modest social norms mean group dates are more common for young, unmarried people. "Here we are, a few Jewish guys sitting in Union Square, and we might have accidentally revolutionized the dating scene in India,” Mr. Sachs told the NY Times. 

Betabeat got Mr. Yagan on the phone to find out what exactly he meant by that, what makes OkCupid Locals any different, a time before smartphones (yes, Virginia, it did exist), and why we may soon see the resurrection of  CrazyBlindDate, a dating service before its time.

Were you trying to imply that other dating apps have poor adoption? Which apps were you referring to there?

So Grindr is obviously the most successful mobile dating app out there. The things that make it so successful—I’m going to terribly stereotype this community—but it’s larger used as a vehicle for short-term, physical relationships. Now it turns out, taking the stereotypical heterosexual case, that the vast majority of women don’t want that. In fact that’s what creeps them out the most about this. They’re worried about stalkers, they’re worried that it’s 10:30 at night on a Friday and you know someone at the bar next to you thinks you want to have sex with them.

How is OkCupid Locals different?

Number one, we’re populating Locals with the OkCupid database. Our entire reputation is built around the fact that we have this data-oriented way to understand people’s personalities. We can actually layer in compatibility. So now, when you make yourself available in Locals, it’s not just, “Oh, who are the people around me who are hot and horny at this moment.” It’s sliced by who are the people around me who are compatible with me. Instead of it being like everyone’s out there in this meat market, it’s more like I can say, “Who wants to go to karaoke.” You can post that not to just everyone in the West Village, but you can say: everyone in the Village who has a compatibility with me over 80 percent.

It sort of cleans the unwashed masses. It’s like, ohhhhh. You’ve been on OkCupid for a couple years, you know that people with high match percentages tend to be people that you could tolerate having a beer with. (Or not—there are creepy people everywhere in every compatibility index.) But in general we’ve got this sort of filter of the users, which I think is super valuable.

What else do you think will get you more adoption than other dating apps?

We come with a user base. It’s just so critical. Mobile requires both synchronicity and proximity—you have to be at the same place at the same time. And that makes it super hard unless you have millions of users already to populate the system with. [Ed. Note: Mr. Yagan emailed us later to say the OkCupid has 1 million downloads, which is an eighth of its 8 million registered users.]

Unless you have massive database, you don’t want to start filtering too much because you’ll take an already small database and make it even smaller.

Are all OkCupid users now going to be in the Locals App?

You’ll be able to turn it on. But a third of our log-ins everyday are on people’s mobile phones. So even if we don’t get 100 percent of our people using it, we’re gonna to instantly have a lot of people, especially in dense populations like New York.

Does this mean you have to ask permission for location? Because I don’t think you were before?

That is right. Oh actually, I think we did ask before?

Now if people log-in at a certain place, will it show on the app that another OkCupid member is there?

Once you’re in Locals, then yeah, you have the ability to show up. The thing that I think is cool is this idea of broadcasting what you want to do for the evening. With Foursquare you check into where you are, but it’s not great for planning events. We allow the ability to post to people of a certain compatibility level or a certain geography and be like, “Hey, I’m going to be at a piano bar in the West Village.” Or better yet! “Me and three of my girlfriends are going to a piano bar in the West Village, let’s find three guys who want to come hang out with us.”

How does that mitigate the idea of being a woman alone in a bar making it known that you’re  . . . available?

There’s a process. You can post the idea of saying, “Hey I want to hang out in the in the West Village,” without necessarily saying where you are at that moment. Then there’s a back-and- forth process where you guys can suggest venues you want to go to. Because you know we’re plugged into the Foursquare venue database, so you can say “How about this place, how about that place, you guys pick.”

Wait! Didn’t you guys do Crazy Blind Date too? [Company description via Crunchbase: “Users fill out a set of questions to help match them to other Crazy Blind Date users, and then indicate at what times and in what neighborhoods they are available for a date. When Crazy Blind Date has a match, they will text you to confirm that you are still available for the date.”]

Yes. We did! But that was pre-Foursquare.

God, that was a long time ago.

I know!

My friend and I would try to use that because we thought it would be really funny, but there were never any dudes who signed up together. Why do you think it’s going to work this time?

First of all the time may come again when Crazy Blind Date will revive itself.

Oh, really?!

Yeah, Crazy Blind Date was pre-smartphone, so we had to have this like bizarre text message relay thing where we had to anonymize your text message. And now you just have an app. It’s so much better now.

Before smartphones it was very, very hard to maintain anonymity across the communication layer, right? You really only had texts as a way to communicate when you’re out on your mobile. And texts obviously reveal a very personally identifiable piece of information, which is your phone number. So there was also this clunky process where OkCupid had to mediate the texting and that was just a pain in the ass.  We had tens of thousands of people, but it was so hard to find overlapping people who wanted to go on dates at the same place at the same time. But if Crazy Blind Date were integrated into the OkCupid app, I think you can imagine it would  be much easier to have blind dates set up all the time. That may be something that we would pursue down the road.

You mentioned Grindr. But you know they’re putting out an app for straights, right?

Sure. But I think their straight user base is probably zero going into it. So they’re going to have this problem of how do you seed it with a million people. I hold Grindr up as a model of success. I’m not disparaging them. But their reputation and their name in many ways is about something that I think the majority of straight women don’t want. It’s one thing to be on an adult dating site and you’re in your home and there’s this fantastical element that it’s not really happening. It’s another thing to be on an app that’s about one-night stands and being in a bar on a Friday night kind of drunk.

I don’t think the folks at Grindr see it that way. But you’re right, it will be a hurdle for them to cross into that market. Say I’m someplace and I don’t want to use the forecasting. Can I just look up who’s nearby?

Yeah.

So that’s like Grindr?

Yeah, but that’s more or less all Grindr is. The very first wave of mobile dating apps were like, “Find out who’s close to you!” And to me that’s like an oh-by-the-way in what we’re doing, to me it’s much more about the filtering by compatability, so you don’t have freakshows hanging out with you.

[Checking app] Oh, I have to answer 25 questions before I can use it??

Yes.

Aw, man.

Up until recently, Snap was a conservative business, relying on its quarterly profits to slowly expand its staff. But when news broke that Goldman Sachs had invested in Facebook at a $50 million valuation, shares of Snap Interactive rose more than 1,000 percent. That allowed Snap to raise $8.5 million through a private placement of stock, providing the funds for an ambitious plan to expand its small team into a global dating empire.

The brainchild of brothers Darrell and Cliff Lerner, Snap was founded in 2005 as a standalone dating site. But in 2007, when Facebook opened its platform for independent developers to create apps, the brothers changed course. They raised $550,000 from friends and family and switched their focus to their Facebook dating app, AreYouInterested.

"It was the Wild West days, just wide open, but still no one gave us much of chance," says Darrell. Snap was competing with established players like Match.com and social dating startups like Zoosk, which raised $40 million venture capital funding. "It was very important to us that we maintain our independence and control," says Darrell. "Even if it meant we had to watch every dime we spent."

AreYouInterested now boasts 14 million active monthly users, more than twice as many as Zoosk, while Match.com has fewer than 5,000 monthly users on its Facebook app. Snap says it is adding more than 50,000 new users a day and has seen its revenue grow 230% since 2009, when it switched from advertising to subscription, reporting $2.7-2.8 million in revenue during the last quarter of 2010.

The company was able to grow so quickly at first because there were few controls on viral marketing —a.k.a. spam invites— in the early days of Facebook apps. That has put it in a unique position. "No new player in the space is going to be able to replicate that with all the restrictions Facebook has in place now," says David Evans, who runs the industry watchdog website, Online Dating Insider. Interestingly, Snap has continued to add users, while major social games like Farmville have seen their numbers decline since spam bans went into effect.

Like Facebook itself, international markets are the next big target for Snap. "We have seen great growth in Europe but with just nine programmers couldn't afford to target our efforts," says Cliff. "Now we're going to be creating unique version of the service in local languages and integrating with the local payment platforms that are popular in each country."

"We've always had to operate very lean, so this recent funding was a real game changer for us," says Darrell. "We're no Zynga yet, but expect us to use this capital to expand AreYouInterested in a big way and begin to work on some new offerings as well."

bpopper at observer dot com - @benpopper