Log on to Daterate.com.au to give anonymous feedback after a date

MELBOURNE - Australians would now be able to know how good or bad they were on their last date and get anonymous feedback on their awkward dating experiences.

The Date Rate site was launched at Startup Camp Sydney, a boot camp for entrepreneurs.

Daterate.com.au works by collecting anonymous feedback from men or women who go on dates and often don’t get their calls, emails or texts returned, said Gabe Hollombe, one of the creators of the site.

Users give their dates a unique number, allowing them to fill out an anonymous feedback form on the site.

Hollombe and his teammates Bryce Summerell, Carlo Del Fabbro and Helen Hung created the site under pressure from the Startup Camp Sydney organisers.

Hollombe said Date Rate was “a place to get honest, anonymous feedback about online dating”.

“I went on a date and I thought it went pretty well, but then, after a few days, my date wasn’t taking my phone calls,” the Age quoted him as saying.

“I started to wonder: was it my hair (or lack of it)? Maybe I just talked too much? Or maybe she just didn’t feel a spark? The point is: I didn’t know,” he said.

Hollombe said that all that a man or woman needed to do was to give their date a unique number that they could then use to fill out an anonymous survey form online.

Then, after you’ve been on a few dates and have received five pieces of feedback, the Date Rate site will randomise and “unlock” the feedback for you to see.

“Date Rate will aggregate them all, anonymise them so I can’t figure out who said what, and present them to me.

“So hopefully I can learn what my strengths are and places I can improve on,” said Hollombe.

Anne Hollands of Relationships Australia NSW said the Date Rate idea was a “cute gimmick”.

But she said that she could “see the appeal” in it for some.

“I think probably there is an issue, a more serious issue here of, particularly if you don’t get a second date, then people are often left wondering why,” she said.

She said we were not very good at giving or receiving feedback.

“And I think there are lot of us out there wandering around dateless or having multiple dates with different people and not really understanding how we’re doing at all.

“It doesn’t teach us how to engage on a human-to-human level with each other,” she added. (ANI)