What it’s like to be Gatsby’s friend: Reports from the field

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Sara

Because so much of individuals’ experiences with Gatsby are private, it can be difficult to imagine all of the work that Gatsby does behind the scenes making connections and exchanging messages. We’re fortunate here at Gatsby’s Mansion to get to hear about memorable matches from some of our users.

We heard from Gatsby members Xianhang (who goes by Hang) and Jorge about their match (right in our hometown of San Francisco) and asked them if we could share what happened. Here’s what happened from Hang’s perspective: Continue reading →

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Meet the Meet Gatsby iPhone App

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Sara

It’s been several months in the making, but as our previous post alluded to, we are proud to announce that Meet Gatsby is now available for free in the iPhone app store. We’ve built in all of the features from the text message/mobile web service and, thanks to the advantages of a native application, we’re able to offer a few more. Continue reading →

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The Meet Gatsby App

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Gabe

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Friends of Friends

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Sara

After weeks of testing and preparation, we finally pulled the switch last week to make matches using common friends. This means that in addition to introducing two people who are interested in ‘Vegetarian Cooking’ or like the ‘San Francisco Giants’ we also introduce two people who are friends with the same person on Facebook or Foursquare (but are not already friends with each other).

It’s too early to say how these matches stack up (in terms of response rate) to matches based on common tags or Facebook ‘likes’ – only time will tell. However, here are some early observations we can make because we’ve been running this on our testing site for much longer than it’s been publicly available.

Continue reading →

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Match selectivity

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Gabe

Our New York City members might notice that they’re receiving fewer introductions, starting this week. The team’s been working on an update that would help Gatsby cope better with very dense urban areas where there are many Gatsby members. Up to this point, we’ve been sending these members way too many messages: eight to twelve per day! Starting now, Gatsby will examine your travel history, and in cases like this, he’ll be much more selective about the matches he’ll make for you.

If you’re a Gatsby member in New York City and you’ve opted out of match messages because of message volume, do give us another shot — you might find he’s far more sensitive to your availability and interest in new introductions.

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Making effective introductions (Part I)

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Gabe

We’re always looking to help Gatsby make better introductions and better matches, and since most people end up playing matchmaker every so often, we decided to start this blog to share some of our learning with you. This will be part one of an ongoing series whenever we have some new findings to share — follow @meetgatsby to get the latest news.

Since February, we’ve teamed up with Desi Danganan, the manager of The Summit SF (a lovely cafe in San Francisco’s Mission District), to try out some of our latest ideas in a controlled setting. Desi’s on side promotion of Gatsby at the Summit let us create a pocket of local density in the cafe, giving us a chance to try out a new idea we’ve had on making better introductions.

Continue reading →

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