Years ago I worked at a major tech publication right about the time
things like Facebook and Myspace were becoming popular. Consequently my
colleagues and I received emails nearly daily that all shared one phrase
that we all rued. We hated – and still hate – the term, “not just
another social network”, because every time another social network was
launched the phrase used it to try to explicate just how “special” it
was. The words cut us. There was a “not just another social network”
dedicated to Toyota Prius owners; one for yo-yo enthusiasts; and even
one for those who collect World War I era dummy firearms. Few social
networks, then, made us take note, and fewer still do today. Those scars
run deep.
But then I made friends with a charming social network called
Crushee. It was awhile ago and it was in a closed private beta. I was
asked to take a look and share my opinions with the small cabal in
charge of the site. It was cute, but obviously still growing. The most
important thing, however, was that it operated in a totally different
way than the big social networks, like Facebook.
Crushee isn’t about keeping in touch with the awesome people in your
life; Crushee is about meeting and gathering new awesome people into
your life. Going in, I had only one or two people I’d be able to say I
“knew” on Crushee. Now I’m best friends with everyone there.
It may sound like hyperbole, but it’s not. I’m helping one member I
met on there book her first rock show in Seattle when she tours this
summer. I’m putting up another for a couple days while they road trip
through the West coast. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve helped
with their websites or other tech projects just because they’re fellow
“Crushees”.
These aren’t people I know in real life, these are people I met and
befriend and fell in love with on a website. And the love, let me tell
you, is real, man.
It helps that, for the most part, the Crushee’s membership are indeed
a hip set. Musicians, alternative models, artists, and designers are
the norm. The people tend to be young and attractive, dress
exceptionally stylishly, and there are more than enough tattoos to go
around. And, amazingly, the creep factor is low. (The site is designed
that way, more on how that’s achieved below.)
It’s also generated its own customs and traditions that seem to have
appeared via the collective will of the participants. On any given day
you can see the merits of different types of pizza being debated via
animated gifs of cats. Again, that’s not hyperbole, that’s just how it
works.
Crushee was founded by Annaliese Nielsen, whose previous web
successful major web venture is (the decidedly not safe for work)
GodsGirls, a website for independent and alt glamor models, many of whom
call Crushee a second home.
I talked with Nielsen about her vision for Crushee, how it came to be, and why it’s so special.
So who’s behind Crushee?
There are currently zero people on staff. This is a completely
bootstrapped start up. We are self-funded and working on this thing on
our nights and weekends. We’re a team of three founders: Atom Smith,
Brent Akamine and myself. We did give a little equity to a friend to
help us navigate our legals and financials with a little more literacy,
but otherwise it’s just us.
Is Crushee a dating site?
Crushee isn’t a dating site. Brent and I met in 2009. I think and we
talked about building a niche dating product at the time. We prototyped
it with some capital that a friend kicked in. It was basically like
Tinder [an alt dating app], but on the web. It had a feed that was a
very basic shoutbox [similar to “Facebook’s “wall”] sort of utility. The
idea was that people could use this shoutbox to make a post to grab a
user’s attention and get some extra eyeballs on their profile.
During that prototype, we let some people onto the site to test it
out. They were all using the shout box to talk to each other. Everyone
used the “crush” utility very freely regardless of any actual potential
romantic interest in each other. it became obvious pretty quickly that
we would need to move in another direction if we wanted to address a
real need as opposed to this need that we had hypothesized the existence
of.
We found out that people just wanted to talk to each other regardless
of whether they knew each other. And then people were making friends.
It was neat!
