DoingSomething Review
DoingSomething Review Ratings
Summary: Innovative slant on online dating that's all about doing something fun on that first date (in London).
2.9
Long gone are the days when a dating site was just a dating site and that was enough. There are literally thousands of sites out there serving the same purpose – to help people find love. Such an abundance of dating sites increases our possibilities and options, yet at the same time it’s getting increasingly hard to find our way through the massive labyrinth of the online dating world – not to speak of finding a good match within hundreds of thousands of profiles.
Therefore we here at the Online Dating Help office greatly appreciate websites that do half the work for you and help you in your endeavours to find someone you’ll enjoy spending time with. DoingSomething is an admirable example of this – it provides a good choice of opportunities without overwhelming you in the process. That in itself is quite a unique characteristic for a dating website! We’ve visited hundreds of them and not very many leave an impression on you without having to spend hours exploring it.
Creating your DoingSomething Profile
We love how EASY and yet ingenious the whole idea behind Doingsomething is. First of all, this has got to be one of the simplest sign-ups we’ve seen. There’s absolutely no profile-writing ,you just choose a username, put down an idea what you would like to do on a date (or choose a readymade idea), upload a photo and that’s you done.
After that you can – if you want to – put down a few answers to a set of simple questions but contrary to your usual dating site profile, it’s not actually “a must” here. I doubt many people will actually take a look at your profile – unlike on other sites this really isn’t a must here. The whole idea is to find like-minded people near you who would be interested in doing something you would like to do – be it on a Friday night or a Monday afternoon. However, we do encourage you to put down a few sentences about yourself as it will maximise your chances of people getting in touch with you – after all, there are thousands of great date ideas there but people generally want to know who they’re going on a date with. Still, if you want to skip that for now, just make sure your date idea sounds original enough to stand out. If you want, you can have a peek on other people’s date ideas, there’s some great stuff out there. The system even lets you “steal” their date ideas plus it offers a bunch of fun stuff to do with some freebies included!
The questions on the site are weird and funny and you might feel a little under the pressure to perform there – after all, we all would love to sound fun and original and witty. But like I said, there’s no need to fill in the whole thing, feel free to leave some questions unanswered. What really matters is a good date idea.
Searching for a date
You can no longer search for people, only date ideas. The best thing about it is that it doesn’t even have to be a classical “date”. Let’s say you really want to participate in an indioke or try a roller disco – you can just look up all the date ideas on the page and add the date idea to your profile or send a message to someone among the people who are also interested in doing the same thing. You can even get a whole bunch of people together to go! It really takes the pressure off you, no more dating panic!
That’s the whole idea behind it: to make the dating experience as painless and comfortable for you as possible. They are right: it can be an awkward and intimidating task to set up a date with someone in a bar and realise you haven’t got much to say to each other and every minute feels like an hour. But with some kind of an activity set up you’re bound to enjoy at least some of it, even if you don’t think your date is “the one” for you.
Oh, and apparently this is not exclusively for finding dates! It is also a legit site for finding a friend to do stuff with, although to be honest, we don’t know how widely that option is used.
Right now the site is pretty much exclusively for London users only – prior plans to launch in other cities don’t seem to have materialised. This is one of the main reasons we’ve lowered our review rating along with what appears to be a declining user base.
When it comes to finding matches we can’t be very enthusiastic here. The search was limited before but at least you could search for matches by gender and age. Now you can only see a list of date ideas with links to member profiles.
Extras and other features
People can see you’ve visited their profile and you can also let them know you have liked their date ideas by clicking a button on their profile – no need to send a message if you don’t want to take that first step. The great thing is that if you like someone’s date idea but are not so sure about the match itself, the system offers you a choice of other matches who have a similar date idea.
In our previous review we criticised the design and clarity of the site and it still looks quite sparse and lacking in detail. There’s also no indication when a date idea was posted and when that member was last active so you’re never very sure if it’s worth showing interest.
Free vs Paid site
Unfortunately there’s not much you can do here without subscribing. Like most paid sites you can create the profile, search for dates and browse other people’s profiles, even let them know you like their date ideas, but you cannot send or receive messages and go on dates.
DoingSomething Review: Conclusion
This site is worth a try if you feel that online dating isn’t completely living up to your expectations – maybe it’s too static for you or maybe you feel the opposite: that it’s too much of a big deal to set up a date with someone you’ve only just met online. Here’s where Doingsomething might be useful. I am sure there are hundreds of online daters out there about to give up on the whole scene – but try this first. It might just change your mind.
If you live in London we recommend signing up for free and getting a feel for the site first. DoingSomething still has a lot of potential but we’ve not really seen it take that next step to dating game changer. But perhaps you might end up trying something new, something utterly fabulous with a likeminded soul, fingers crossed!
If you’re not a Londoner we suggest you give this site a miss – there’s not a lot you can do if you live in Glasgow or Birmingham but the people you want to meet and dates you want to go on are all in London.
How to get 30% off at DoingSomething
We love bagging our readers a bargain so we’re happy to be able to give our visitors a massive 30% off DoingSomething voucher to use on any subscription package. Get a one month rolling subscription for only £20 instead of £29.99 – save a third while you can!
Just use our DoingSomething Review exclusive discount code: DATE30 for 30% off the subscription price.
DoingSomething Review: Pros and Cons
An original site with a simple, yet ingenious idea and approach to online dating.
Centered in and around London and won’t even let you search for members in other cities.
And that concludes our DoingSomething review, we hope you enjoy the site if you decide to join 🙂
About the Author
Aet Suvari has been reviewing and writing about the world of online dating since 2008 and the launch of Online Dating Help. A stickler for promoting ethical practices within the UK dating industry she champions the sites that get it right while highlighting those holding it back. You can follow her on Google+
Related Posts
First date ideas in London →
6 months for the price of 3 at DoingSomething →
Oasis Dating – Free Dating Site Review →
