Cupidtino: The Dating Website for 'Machearts'

Jesse had a longtime ambition of working at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, and joined ‘Macheart’ dating website Cupidtino mostly for networking purposes.

But one user, a military man stationed in Japan, caught her attention. She eagerly messaged him on her iPhone, and they began chatting daily until they had their first date in California. Now Jesse and Curtis live together in San Jose.

“Had it not been for Cupidtino, it’s probable we never would have met,” wrote Jesse on Cupidtino’s Facebook page.

Founded in June 2010, Cupidtino is a website for iJunkies to meet, well, the Apple of their eye, or network with other Mac enthusiasts. The site—which can only be accessed on iPhones, iPads, or Macs—currently boasts 35,000 paid and free subscribers, according to co-founder and CTO Amol Kelkar. It is not affiliated or endorsed by Apple itself, he added.

“Cupidtino is like that neigh­bor­hood café where the peo­ple are hip, decor is classy, con­ver­sa­tion is intel­li­gent and prices are rea­son­able,” wrote Kalkar in an email.

The site is not just about meeting other Apple product fans, said Kalkar, but rather other creative-minded people with similar interests.

“Part of what we pay for is the chance to run into another geek who’s just as much into photography, design, Netflix, hybrids, the BBC, HTML5, polar bears, Wired, Whole Foods and Angry birds as we are,” he wrote.

Cupidtino is a three-person team—with backgrounds at Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, but not Apple—based in San Francisco. The subscription goes for $4.79 per month—a price pegged to the cost of a Starbuck’s Venti Latte—and $4.99 on the iPhone.

When users create a profile, they answer questions such as “What I do,” and “When I Became a Mac,” a section filled with stories on many profiles about when users had a Mac ephiphany, and shed their PCs for good.

If users like another person’s profile, they have the option to ‘Mac’ them—a move similar to Facebook's poking feature—or send them a message. Cupidtino is currently working on a customizable function to “Meet at the Nearest Mac Store.”

Where do most Cupidtino members hail from? In order, the top seven countries with members are the U.S., Germany, Canada, the U.K., Russia, France and Spain. The top four cities are in the U.S.—Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago—with the others being Moscow, London and Toronto.

Their number one favorite song is Viva la Vida by Coldplay. Uprising by Muse comprises the second spot, with Lady Gaga songs -- Bad Romance and Alejandro -- in third and fourth place.

Even critics of the site have found its appeal. “Making sure that Apple fans only date other Apple fans is a good way of stopping them from spreading their Apple fan genes to the general population, I guess,” wrote blogger Michael Arrington on TechCrunch before the site’s launch. “So maybe this site isn’t all bad."