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.