Smokoo founders launch online dating site

When online auction site Smokoo shut down, we told you that its South African-based founders were working on a new project.

Memeburn can now reveal what that new project is: an online dating site.

The site, called Adopt Him, claims to offer a slightly different take on the online dating phenomenon, calling itself “South Africa’s first online dating site that lets the ladies call the shots”.

Here’s how it works. The site lets women decide who they want to chat to them. It says they can do so by browsing or searching through the database until they find someone they like the look of.

Guys, if this sounds like your worst school dance nightmares come true, avert your eyes now.

Adopt Him also says that men on the site can win favour with women by showering them with gifts. The site calls this play a “modern twist on old-school chivalry”. Right.

While women can join the site for free, men not only have and send gifts to the “object of [their] affection”, they also have to “promote themselves, and make an amazing first impression”.

Look, I know more and more people are turning to online dating and doing it successfully, but I have a nagging suspicion that the kind of guys who’ll use a site like About Him may make a better second or third assumption.

About Him Marketing Director and former Smokoo boss Thomas Pays says the site is “looking at taking the South African market by storm”.

Given Smokoo’s chequered history and the oh-so-slightly sleazy language the site uses to describe itself, Adopt Him’s journey is bound to be entertaining if nothing else.