SayHeyHey: Online dating gets video site

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

The latest Internet dating site, recently launched in Palo Alto, 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.

The new site 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 co-founder Soudy Khan's case — utilizing 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.

The two admitted the idea stemmed 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.

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

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 before the site's launch.