Back in 2003, Michael McCarthy, then a second-year student at Trent University, realized he wasn’t meeting as many people as he had expected at school.
“I found that I was really, really busy,” McCarthy said. “I didn’t have time to engage in social activities. I found that people weren’t taking advantage of meeting other people on campus.”
Inspired by this experience, McCarthy decided to create TrentDating.com, a dating website tailored for students at his alma mater.
Following his success with that creation, McCarthy said the project has snowballed into more than 17 sister sites at different Ontario universities, including QueensUDating.com, one of the latest additions.
Although he started the service as a dating website, McCarthy said he came to the realization that not every student is looking for a relationship.
“When I first started the site, it was geared towards just dating. But what I found over the years [was that] not every student wants a date,” he said. “Sometimes there is a stigma attached with dating online—people don’t like it.”
So he redesigned the website to include features that allow to place themselves in specific categories according to their interests.
McCarthy said his website is different from the many similar sites already on the Internet.
“I could name a dozen dating and friendship websites on the Internet at the time, but they were all catered towards much broader audiences,” McCarthy said. “I found that this particular niche—the student niche—nobody had really started anything similar yet.” After receiving such a positive response, McCarthy said he attempted to create hip fees for his website. But he said he quickly realized students weren’t interested in the service if it came with a price tag.
“I never [planned] to charge students to use it,” he said. “Students aren’t going to pay for it and it’s just not worth my time, either, to try and do that.”
McCarthy, who is a professional website designer, said the commission he makes from those sites allows him to run QueensUDating.com and its s for students to enjoy without fees.
McCarthy said that although QueensUDating.com is designed for Queen’s students only, he has no way of controlling who goes on the sites and who signs up for a hip.
“People are generally respectful of having just students on the site,” McCarthy said. “I have been on several dates myself at Trent and I’ve never encountered someone who wasn’t a student.” Since graduating in 2004, McCarthy has spent most of his time in Ottawa, putting his time and energy into modifying and enhancing his websites.
He said he hopes that as people spend increasing amounts of time online, dating and friendship sites will become more popular, and more commonly accepted as places to meet people.
“I think people’s perceptions are changing, and services like this are becoming more accepted,” he said.
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