Video Dating Rebound

There's so many formats for online dating these days that it's almost hard to swallow that another one is coming to life. However off this may seem, Comcast and HurryDate have teamed up to bring Video Dating Profiles to your local cable TV.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Cable giant Comcast Corp. has paired up with a dating service to offer video dating profiles to high-end cable customers.

Comcast, the nation's largest cable company with 21.5 million subscribers, will test "Dating on Demand" in its home turf of Philadelphia in the next few weeks. About 600,000 of Comcast's 1.5 million customers in the Philadelphia market have digital cable, a spokesman said.

The merger will help fill the cable giant's need for content while drawing younger customers to its video-on-demand service, an analyst said.

Hurrydate will host three socials at which singles can make three- to five-minute videos that will be offered locally to video-on-demand customers. A viewer can learn more about the video subject on Hurrydate's web site.

To exchange e-mails, the viewer must join Hurrydate, which costs $14.95 a month but will be free to video participants for six months.

Source: Comcast Press Release via Social Software Weblog.

This certainly brings new meaning to Channel Surfing. It's very difficult to gauge how successful a venture of this nature will be. Real estate has tried for years to do the same thing with properties interspersed with you daily dose of Bob Vila, but the success rates vary widely.

Of course this has both an upside and a downside. Unlike the real estate placements, I am most likely opting to view these videos. Unfortunately, there won't be much by way of search or filtering which could be an issue (or not if no one signs on) and then I'm forced to make a $15 investment to face possible rejection.

Doesn't sound like a winner to me.