French student Paul, who published his dating challenge story earlier this year, has inspired location based dating app Mint to collect and publish dating stories.
Paul wrote a blog post about coming to Riga and accepting a drunk challenge to have 10 dates in 2 weeks. Using Mint dating app, which is very popular in the apps hometown, young man managed to go on 10 dates (almost) and had a really great time. He openly describes fun and romantic situations, providing a realistic and comic insights on a modern dating scene - meeting a drunk girl for breakfast, spending hours looking for blueberries, having a date who was nothing as on pictures and others.
“After reading this, we felt inspired,” says Mint Content Manager Katrina Aboltina. “It was an amazing possibility to see the impact our app has on real lives. We contacted the guy and got his permission to re-publish his stories, but could not decide on format. Till it hit us - why not to ask other users to share their stories?”
Dating app just posted on Facebook and Instagram, asking its users to send in stories and promises to share all kind of experiences on their site. “We believe there are no good or bad stories, as all stories are relevant and worth to share,” adds Mint founder Klavs Sinka, “Therefore we are naming this campaign 'Finding love is a journey not a destination' and encouraging people to write us all kind of things. Of course, to protect our user privacy, we will publish them anonymously.”
Mint does not promote itself as an especially romantic, hookup or arrangement oriented app, aspiring to provide an experience as close to real-life as possible with a clean and easy to use User Interface, clear filter settings and option to see currently active people. Dating app connects people nearby and users don’t need a match - they can start messaging anyone they like.
“Say what you will, but dating app experience can not be all rosy or adventurous,” explains Katrina, “as life itself is very diverse. We don't think people should be told they would get specific kind of experience - as we provide a service and the rest is up to themselves.”
Mint believes that with a million users, there are bound to be a lot of interesting stories and hopes people will be willing to participate in this project.
Do you have an interesting story to share? Send it to mint@mint.me