'Siren' dating app wants to keep women safe from creeps
While Tinder solves a few of the problems women face with online dating -- like being smothered with lascivious messages from anyone and everyone -- there's still an issue of privacy that it fails to address. That risk of not being nearly as anonymous while looking for a mate as one would hope is what inspired Seattle's Susie Lee to create Siren. What sets it apart from every other dating app is that it keeps a woman's picture private until she deems it appropriate to share with a possible suitor. As Seattle Times notes, a lady can peruse the profiles of men at their leisure and if, say, she's into a guy's answer to questions like what their three magic-lamp wishes are, she can then show him her picture. The idea is to give ladies the control here and base matches on real-world personality, not a dry series of surveys akin to eHarmony.
Access is fairly locked down at the moment. There are around 1,200 current users and you can only get in if you're living in grunge-music's birthplace and have an iOS device. Perhaps more restrictive is that it lacks options for anyone other than heterosexual men and women. Lee says that despite the app's abilities, though, if you use it like any other dating service and focus on shallower interests like how handsome a mate is, you're likely to remain sleepless in Seattle. And really, who wants to go through another break-up again anyway?
