For a conference that is all about wooing investors, panellists and the media, TechCrunch40 could really have benefited from the technology demonstrated by WooMe in the last session of the two-day start-up auditions.
WooMe brings speed dating online, allowing users to set up video chat sessions where they can meet five people in five minutes, or other combinations.
Judges, including 80s rap artist MC Hammer, were confronted with the sight of Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström posing on-screen as Nicole from West London. But he spent his minute talking about why he had invested in the company rather than trying to be a hot date from Sweden.
In a pre-TechCrunch demo at our offices, WooMe showed off the high-quality flash video conferencing within a browser and how users could add one-word tags of their impressions as they spoke to potential dates, creating tag clouds for that person.
After accelerating through all the dates, users select “I’m wooed” or “No thanks” for each one. If one of the dates matches their “I’m wooed”, they can connect for a $1 charge, with WooMe providing their email contact details.
In alpha testing, WooMe has encouraged college fraternities to compete with one another in “I’m wooed” league tables and has even used the technology itself to interview prospective staff, with its own team voting on whether they are wowed by the interviewee.
The Techcrunch panelists could equally have used WooMe to vote on the 40 start-ups they have speed-dated for the past two days.
It looks a promising service for everything from dating to finding flatmates or travelling companions, but it does have competition in SpeedDate.com.
Luckily, WooMe wooed the TechCrunch selection panel, who said “No thanks” to SpeedDate – condemning it to the DemoPit at the conference of 100 jilted also-rans.
Overall winner of hearts and minds over the two days, as well as the $50,000 cash prize, was Mint, a personal finance application.
