Meet the CMU Alumna That Founded Tagdates, the First Online Dating and Chatting Platform Solely Based on Hashtags for Fun, Genuine and Happy People

Rotterdam, Netherlands, February 1, 2015 (Newswire.com) - "#lovelife", "#hateDrinksWithBubbles", "#beautyAddicts", "#aMysteryToMyself", together with the trendy "#girlBoss" popularized by Nasty Gal's founder Sophia Amoruso's recently released book with the same title, they were how Yuyan Chow, founder of TagDates described herself on her own TagDates profile. 

"I think I used to have #loveChocolate in my five tags." Yuyan explained. "I do take my own advice to heart. I update my tags often." TagDates is the up-and-coming online dating and chatting platform that is the first of its kind. It lets users to connect with each other through their self-descriptive interest tags. All interactions between users centered around the hashtags, such as the gamified user discovery feature, Tag Game. When a user receives new like, he or she will get notified. When a user's tag has been skipped, on the other hand, they will receive some heartwarming tips from TagDates' admin team. One of them is to update your tags often.

"It completely takes the appearance factor out of the question. And I think that's really where TagDates truly differs from most online dating platforms. It tells you to be good, be honest, don't judge the book by its cover, be part of a healthy community. I can really tell you that's something new and different in the online dating industry."

Yuyan Chow, Founder of TagDates

TagDates' founder, Yuyan Chow, graduated with a Chemical Engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007. Since then she has worked as a consumer researcher in the US, Germany and the Netherlands. In the last couple of years, she has developed and launched over thirty mobile products in the iTunes store before launching the TagDates app in late 2013. TagDates.com was put in production late last year, bringing in an even wider range of users, especially in North America and South East Asia. to the growing community.

From her experience as a consumer researcher, she had realized the pitfalls of traditional personal profile writing.

"A person is a dynamic, fluid piece of art. Which means metrics can only represent it to a certain degree. TagDates does not want to quantify a person through numbers and measurements, and neither do we want to keep the profile page too open-ended that it becomes a chore to fill in ones' profile." Yuyan explained the reason behind the extremely simple profile settings of TagDates users. "We settled on five hashtags."

Instead of filing in forms of biometrics data, taglines, or never-ending list of questions attempting to give the interested parties a glimpse into their life and their character, TagDates users were given five simple hashtags to put whatever they find fitting as their descriptors. "With the freedom of the given hashtags, users can really express themselves however way they want with words. They can talk about their characters, their beliefs, their hobbies, their loves and hates, their wishes, their fear or their state of mind. Really, they can put just about anything and these tags will paint a good picture of who they are to another users which could be understood in a matter of just a few seconds. This is very desirable in today's world where people are essentially expecting to get what they want, in our case a potential date, in a few clicks or swipes." TagDates also supports input in all languages, giving users opportunity to use their whatever languages they are most comfortable with. 

"Be creative, be honest and stick to something that brings out positive emotions on others, that would be my advice to all TagDaters."

Yuyan comes off as an intelligent, but humble and quiet person. She doesn't seem like the kind of person that would run a dating platform. When asked about this, Yuyan said online dating had brought out another side of her, a playful and daring side. "Online dating was uncommon in the my college days, but I was already neck deep into it, finding lots of opportunity in the myraid of forums and sites out there. I met so many people from all kinds of backgrounds and walks of life. It really opened my eyes to the world." Yuyan recalled with excitement. "It was very new to do that back then. Of course, to the teens and young adults nowadays, it's just the way how you meet people."

"I think I have a user profile on most of the online dating websites out there over the years. I am a true veteran in online dating and if there is an industry I really know something about, this is the one. I met my fiance online, too."

We asked what her fiance thought about her running an online dating site and seeing potential dates online all the time. "That's actually a very good question. It touches upon what is love. Love is letting each other shines and trusting that each other will do things they want to in good faith. --- Trust, honesty, positive energy, all of these concepts are very TagDate-ish. I hope everyone can find someone via TagDates who loves and trusts them. It happens more by chance than by default in the sites I have used, and that's the gap. That's why I have to keep working hard on it, to keep that spirit of TagDates alive. So the short answer is, not only does my fiance not mind I run TagDates, he is also on my team. We are in this together."

The internet is a very hostile place. People can hide behind their screens and pretend to be someone else. They can write anything they want and put up nice photos but turn out to be someone else entirely. Probably most of us have some level of experience running into imposters, on dating platforms or other crowdsourced websites alike. Yuyan has an interesting perspective on this. ---  "People can fake everything. Real life or virtual. You cannot avoid it. My thinking is, people fake parts of their characters or their lives for reasons. TagDates' job is neither to cover it or to uncover it. TagDates' job is to make sure people can feel comfortable enough to eventually getting to a point where they just want to be themselves online or offline, and they expect that from each other." She said. "We have a feature called Blind mode in TagDates' Tag Game. It is a kind of an educational propaganda towards that goal,  if I may describe it like this."

When using the Blind mode of the Tag Game, users would not be able to see each other's profile picture until they have made up their minds about each other's hashtags. "It's quite idealistic, some say. I just found it incredibly fun. It's a social experiement in itself, to see whether people would have talked to each other if they do not know beforehand how they look like. It completely takes the appearance factor out of the question. And I think that's really where TagDates truly differs from most online dating platforms. It tells you to be good, be honest, don't judge the book by its cover, be part of a healthy community. I can really tell you that's something new and that's something as a veteran online dater I found to be the most important part of the online dating experience that is missing until TagDates." 

You can visit TagDates via www.tagdates.com or connect with Yuyan on Linkedin for more information about her company's latest moves. 

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