Website Brings Cupid to Harvard

Thanks to the efforts of two freshmen roommates, single students have a new tool to help them find romance just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Crimsoncupid.com, an online dating service that aims to match Harvard students based on personality and physical traits, was launched on Wednesday by its creators, Jonathan M. Hyman ’08 and Shaan K. Hathiramani ’08.

“The ultimate goal is to provide the students of Harvard with yet another rousing way to take a break from work and have some fun, and maybe even find the love of his or her life and make many many babies,” Hathiramani wrote in an e-mail.

So far, with the publicity garnered by e-mails and an announcement on thefacebook.com, the site has reached 306 members-—79 percent of whom are freshmen—and a total of 2800 hits to the home page as of yesterday evening, with numbers rising by the hour.

“We’re really excited with all the buzz surrounding the site, and certainly didn’t expect such an enthusiastic response,” wrote Hathiramani in an e-mail.

With a grinning, red-haired cupid gracing the top of every page, the website features a 35-question survey that asks new members to evaluate their own personal traits, including dominance, liberalism, compassion, organizational skills, and affinity for romance.

Members are also asked to rank how important they want certain characteristics to be in their potential match ups.

“I don’t think that I can say what matters most between two people, but as a college student I think it covers mostly everything,” Hyman wrote in an e-mail.

Just seconds after submitting responses, new members receive an e-mail of multiple match-ups, complete with campus residence and class year. The student’s compatibility percentage compared with that of the potential matches also appears within pink hearts.

Hyman said he designed a computer system to automatically pair members together.

“Each question has a specific weight to it that is, in most cases, tied to another question,” Hyman said. “So for instance, if you say that you are attractive and someone else lists that their partner’s attractiveness is important to them, you’ll be rated higher for that person.”

Hyman ran a two-day trial of the site in Apley Court last month.

Kevin J.T. Grosvenor ’08 was one of several participants in the test run.

“It’s also really nice to use the compare with a friend option that lets you compare percentages with friends that you know,” Grosvenor said.

Hyman said that the positive feedback he received then encouraged him to open it to the rest of the student body.