Woome.com Review
Woome.com launched what it calls its online introduction platform in November of 2007. According to the site Woome.com uses video and allows “users to meet, see, and hear people live in 1-minute conversations. Users can instantly experience the exhilaration of meeting five people in five minutes in topical sessions straight from their webcam. “
Online introduction platform? Meet five people in five minutes? Sounds like internet speed dating! This is essentially what this is. Think video conferencing meets speed dating.
After a very quick sign up process, less than 30 seconds including the mandatory photo upload, you can basically dive right in and join one of a number of sessions, or start your own. Your home page has a list of sessions and a countdown to when they start. Simply click on the join button and wait for the session to begin. Hover your mouse over the thumbnails to see who’s already joined the session. Once it starts you’ll have five minutes to talk to five people. That’s it, time’s up! Seriously though, there is an option to dramatically increase your chat time to a whopping three minutes. Talk fast.
There’s a handy link on your homepage that you can use to check that your microphone and (optional) webcam are functioning properly. You don’t have to have a webcam to join Woome.com as there are audio sessions available, but really, what would be the point?
You can also search for members geographically, by sex, and by interests, but the geographic search for anyone outside of the USA and the UK is severely limited. If you’re in Montreal, Canada and want to hook up with others from your city, well, good luck scrolling through all those Canadian profiles.
Site navigation is quick and easy with tabs that expand when your mouse is placed on them. The overall look here is cool and modern. The layout is definitely designed for the younger generation whose attention spans are notoriously short.
Free to join, and free to use and woo, if you decide that you want to exchange personal contact information with anyone they will ask to you cough up a dollar, a euro or a pound, depending on your geographic location. I’m curious as to how they enforce this. I mean what’s to stop me from telling someone my email address in an online conference? And of course nowhere on the site are the mechanics behind this explained. What can I say, I’m a stickler for detail.
Woome won’t replace traditional internet dating sites, it’s a different, faster and more immediate experience, and likely won’t appeal to older users or to anyone who prefers the anonymity and privacy afforded by the traditional sites.
Tags: woo me, woome, woome review, woome.com, woome.com review
December 11th, 2008 at 3:49 am
i track websites that I like using google alerts and thats how i found your review of woome. i agree with most of the things you say except the paying $1, €1 or £1 for people’s contact details. they don’t charge for it - probably because they haven’t figured out a good way to do this which raises interesting questions about their revenue model…but hey am not complaining
Also, the site gets more interesting once you have actually met people in sessions because you can now have private 1-to-1 video calls with them and as many as you want and they have a messaging facility as well
December 11th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I’ve been using the site for a while now and still haven’t been charged once for connecting with someone.
January 14th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I’m the Community Manager for WooMe, and I love to see such a great comprehensive overview of our site!
However, John is correct, we do not charge to connect with people, it’s free!
October 20th, 2009 at 12:07 am
woome.com is a scam website, evident by the bombardement of messages only seconds after i created any account. Do some proper research jeez your woome review SUCKED JUST AS BAD AS THE ACTUAL SITE.