"Instant Relationship Advice" Will Decode Your Most Indecipherable Online Dating Messages

Anyone who has waded into the murky waters of online dating knows the stress of trying to interpret a match’s messages. You analyze (make that over-analyze) every punctuation mark and emoticon, searching for secret meanings and signs of interest. Was that “Hey” a cut and paste sent to dozens of other daters, or was it a special “Hey” just for you?

Instant Relationship Advice (formerly called WittyThumbs) is here to make translating online dating messages a little easier. The website is the inaugural product from Hermes, a Y Combinator-backed startup that wants to help singles improve their online dating conversations via educational content and expert help.

Founders Liron Shapira and Lior Gotesman started the company on the premise that using a website or an app to find dates is no longer the hard part - instead, the greatest challenge singles face is figuring out what to say to catch someone’s attention.

“We spent years dissecting dating and learning the skills piece by piece, like it was an engineering problem,” they wrote on Hacker News. “The skills and confidence eventually clicked for us. We discovered rules we could follow to help us navigate the messy world of modern dating.”

Shapira and Gotesman earned a reputation amongst their social network for being “dating and texting gurus.” They became go-to sources of advice, and eventually wrote custom chat software to organize all the shared texts and screenshots sent by friends.“

"Suddenly we were all hanging out in these chatrooms and analyzing one another’s texts,” they explained. “So we’ve seen signs that many people really need this kind of dating advice.”

Their large-scale solution invites users to take screenshots of their messages, then anonymously upload them to the Instant Relationship Advice site so a team of experts (as well as fellow users) can give feedback. Privacy is protected by blurring identifying information like real names, profile pictures, or numbers.

For even more tailored guidance, there’s a premium option to receive one-on-one feedback in an instant chat with a dating expert. Chats are billed by the minute, and start at $30 for 30 minutes of advice. With a team of 15 experts around the world, Instant Relationship Advice has someone available for live relationship advice at any time of day.

Instant Relationship Advice says it has helped a wide range of users so far. Customer demographics vary in terms of age and gender - someone in their early 20s who is just starting to date is an ideal candidate, as is someone in their 50s who is recently divorced and exploring online dating for the first time.

Instant Relationship Advice reportedly plans to launch more products down the line, continuing their mission to demystify the modern dating process and, according to Y Combinator, help users “open up emotionally, be more comfortable being authentic, spend their time effectively, reduce anxiety, and set clear expectations for themselves and others.”