Urban Social is one of
the UK dating sites aimed at a young and urbane crowd.
The
dating profile and sign up reflects the laidback, easy going spirit, of Urban Social. They want you to get out there and start contacting other members ASAP. After completing the core details height, ethnicity etc, you describe via tick boxes the things you like - ‘diet coke’ ‘indie music’, and the things you dislike ‘cherry coke’ ‘RnB music’.
After this you can state your favorite films, books etc via a few short open text boxes, followed by another section to describe yourself. If you really want to get going you could complete your dating profile in 20 minutes. There’s a final section about travel and sports to complete by tick boxes, so you can see your potential match who also dreams of going to Argentina and likes Tai Chi.
There are a few search methods at Urban Social, you can do a basic search just choosing the city you are looking from, and a more advanced search using the criteria from your dating profile e.g. ethnicity, level of education etc. There’s also a new member search and a university search so you can have a 2nd try with that girl you liked from the first year in halls.
I tried a number of different searches from London, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow and got excellent numbers of active members but less so from smaller cities – this is very much a ‘major’ urban site.
Is there an Urban Social type? Difficult to say 100% but if you’re looking for the type of person who works in design, likes snowboarding and spent 6 months backpacking around S.E Asia there’s a good chance you’ll find them on Urban Social.
When you’ve found someone interesting you can email or send a flirt but there’s no chat/IM; a message section allows you to keep check of your email activity.
How does Urban Social try and stand out from other
internet dating sites? In quite a few ways, more than just a click and surf dating site they have built a community for the like minded urban professional. There’s Speed dating, wine tasting events, lock and key parties and their unique ‘dinner in the dark’ parties.
If you’re an ‘urban’ type of person living in London, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow etc looking to date a likeminded young professional then ‘Urban Social’ may just be the site for you. The database isn’t huge but Urban Social isn’t trying to be all things for everyone, it aims for a particular age group and person and in my eyes it does so pretty well.