Nerve.com Introduces A Hip Way To Date In The New Year

For years, algorithms have ruled the world of online dating - and the more complicated and inscrutable, the better. eHarmony lured in users with it's 258-question personality test, and sites like PerfectMatch.com and Chemistry.com boasted about the experts - a sociologist and an anthropologist, respectively - who designed their matching algorithms.

Increasingly, finding love online feels a little bit awkward and a lot less personal. It's practically a formula: log on, review a stranger's profile, click through their pictures, send a message that refers to something interesting you found on their profile, ask an intriguing question or two, then hit "send" and hope that your message was witty, unique, and mysterious enough to warrant a response.

But all that is about to change, if Nerve.com has anything to say about it. Introducing Nerve Dating, a new service for singles that calls itself "The first dating site for humans." Nerve Dating isn't the site's first time at the rodeo - Nerve Personals (a home for "literate smut") was popular at the turn of the century, but it slowly faded into obscurity as sites like Match.com and OkCupid gained in popularity.

"The story of online dating has become about algorithms and not about having fun with people online," said Sean Mills, the chief executive of Nerve, in a blurb about Nerve Dating on NYTimes.com. "We're moving away from the algorithm era into the social era. This is a dating site that reflects how the Web has changed."

Nerve's newest dating service takes its inspiration from social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Instead of basing interactions on static profiles and complex matchmaking algorithms, Nerve Dating is based around status updates and minireports about details like concerts attended and favorite meals eaten. Users can click on the "What did you do last night?" page, for example, and see if someone's activities catch their eye, or discover other users' deepest thoughts on culture, sex, and dating in the "Opinions" section.

"We're giving people a reason to get to know each other rather than setting them up on an awkward blind date," Mr. Mills said. Nerve Dating hopes that the unusual tidbits of information the site provides will act as natural icebreakers for members, and that the social networking style of the service will feel familiar to Web-savvy users who are used to the format.

Given that Nerve is already a popular site that receives two million visitors each month, Mills is confident that Nerve Dating has a shot at becoming a major player in the online dating industry in 2012.