Visit here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Lionheart%20Pumbaa/128/128/15
metaMatch "Real friendhips Real romance"
metaMatch Matchmaking and Dating Service
"Whether looking for friends, romance, a casual date, or true love, metaMatch is the premier matchmaking and dating service for your Second Life."
My friend Will Burns introduced me to metaMatch and it's brainchild, owner and builder/scripter, MikeD Panache. Will gets around SL and has plenty of friends, but he sounded excited about this new social group and invited me over. He seems to really be on top of all the new cool stuff in SL. Soon I understood his excitement. Mike built and scripted the place and together with Molly Elisabeth, events coordinator, and MISTY DeMure, hostess, they have grown to 120 members in just 4 short weeks since opening. Mike continues to work on things to enhance metaMatch. He humbly attributed it's success to all the support of Molly, MISTY and others already involved.
I think this place is unlike anything I've seen in SL before. While it IS a dating agency, it's also so much more, even for those who are not in the dating market. MikeD told me it's for everyone, but especially "the brokenhearted, the being with RL issues that need someone.. thats who we want. We want to help those people. To be here, to join the community, use the facility.. hang out.. its free. I don't want your money I want you to be part of regrowing what we've lost in SL" Mike only charges 25L a week in order to use the date/information exchange boards. This will help with just a fraction of the cost of sim space and business expenses I'm sure. The build not only has dating boards, that I will get to shortly, but the social aspect is even greater. He said, "We host events every week, social mixers, themed parties, and we hope to grow attendance. Events are free to the public. People are welcome here, members or not, as long as they adhere to respectable standards."
I sat and chatted with a small group of people who were hanging out there and had Mike in IM asking him a few things about the place for my blog. He said, "The target goal is to have 400-500 panels up in this location. The real push is to build a community larger than that of mature SL members who want to meet real people, share real experiences and real bonds. This isn't the place to find poseball companions or the like." "One of the things that differentiates metaMatch from the typical dating agencies in SL is this is wrapped around a community, not a bunch of nameless faces on boards. People come here to sit, meet, make friends." The hangout area provides a social hour every Wednesday and Friday at both 12pm SLT and 4PM SLT where people can meet other members and make new friends, enjoy games and music, have a drink and hang out and chat. There is beer pong, bowling, a hearts game table, and business room besides the bar and various seating areas. They also offer a gift card option in order to utilize the dating/information exchange boards.
(below is a pic I snapped of Mike)
Mike is a scripter and has really managed this system well. The information exchange boards are completed through easy-use kiosks. I decided to try this out, as not only do they have male seeking female and female seeking male company boards, they also offer male/male, female/female, and female/friends and male /friends. So interestingly enough you can just go to actually meet friends with like interests or unlike interests if you want : ) who are also interested in making more friends.
Ok, so yup, I approached one of the kiosks, and being a very techy-impaired type person I have to admit I was a little worried it would be intimidating to complete the process, but the beauty of this system is the ease of use. Mike has scripted the kiosks so well. It asks a series of questions and you can skip whatever you don't want to answer, it asks if it can use your profile pic or if you'd like to supply your own photo to drop in for your board photo, and it allows you to also drop in an additional notecard with more detailed information if you'd like. I just agreed to it having my profile pic and it automatically used that with no effort on my part. I also completed the basic questions and the extra notecard so if you want to know more about me feel free to go over and have a look. Go check it out some time and see what's happening that is new in SL while meeting new friends, companions, or more.
I popped back over tonight just after finishing this blog post and found Mike is running a promo for new members, through Sunday, check this great deal out!
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