Clique Blog

Beta Battle! Clique vs. DuoDater

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 09:10:58 -0400

On Friday, the awesome Laurie Davis of eFlirtExpert featured us in her eFlirt Toolbox newsletter—you can think of it as a handy guide to upping your “digital swagger” on a weekly basis. (Pro-tip: sign up stat so you don’t miss next week’s edition).

But instead of just raving about Clique (okay, she did that too; see note about awesomeness above), she pinned us against another hot new dating start-up called DuoDater, based in Silicon Valley. We’re in a heated Beta Battle, and we need your votes to show them who’s boss!

Show your Clique (and NYC!) pride by voting here and we’ll share the results when they’re announced. We’ve got this in the bag…

High five for new features!

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:41:10 -0400

Spotted a hottie on Clique this week? Well good news, now you can give them a virtual high five! When you’re browsing profiles, click on the hand icon in the tools or below the photo and we’ll send that person an email letting them know you’re interested. Just think of it as a wink or a nudge to get someone’s attention.

Happy high fiving! And happy Friday!

Clique is hiring!

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:07:00 -0400

Clique is looking for an engineer to join our team in a leadership
role. Our site is built and was beta launched in February, opened up
to the public in April. Since then we’ve been talking to users,
mocking up new feature designs, and looking at where we want to go
next. Our new engineer should be excited to take the lead on some big
product development, and really take ownership of our runway.

A bit of information on Clique: Clique is a dating site that connects
friends of friends. It’s how you meet people at a party, brought
online. We include those in relationships—dubbed “wingmen”—to set up
friends as well. We’re aiming to make Clique both a matchmaking
platform and a truly social online dating network. And we want you to
take the journey with us! We’ve gotten some great press from the likes
of Mashable, Business Insider, Huffington Post, The Next Web and Time
Out New York, among others.

We’re raising a seed round right now, but want someone committed as we
enter formal talks. This means that no work on the project would begin
until we close the round (late summer). Details will be disclosed upon initial
conversations, along with more information on us, the founders.

Full qualifications are below. Want to learn more? Email Christy at christy@letsclique.com.

Summary
Clique is seeking a full-time Ruby on Rails engineer to develop and
maintain the new iteration of our web platform. Clique is an online
dating startup that matches potential dates through their mutual
friends.

Qualifications
* Significant professional experience building web applications in
Ruby and Rails
* Comfort working at all layers of the web stack, from the database
through the application to client-side behavior with jQuery and
presentation with CSS.
* User-focused development ethic; desire to take active role in
product design and implement new features autonomously.

Current status of project
Clique has been live since February 2011, and has a growing and active
user base. The application was built by our technical cofounder; the
code is clean and maintainable, and comes with a robust unit test
suite. The following technologies are used:

* Ruby 1.9
* Rails 3
* PostgreSQL
* MongoDB
* Redis
* jQuery
* LESS (for CSS abstraction)

Thanks to all of our super-connectors who came out to celebrate...

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:50:29 -0400

Thanks to all of our super-connectors who came out to celebrate with us. It was a magical summer evening! Check out the rest of the photos.

Upcoming Event: Friend-of-a-friend Party!

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 10:30:17 -0400

Quality dating events are hard to come by. They’re either super awkward, way too cheesy or, frankly, a little intimidating. Luckily our buds over at Urban Girl Squad, a cool NYC networking group for women, has dreamed up the perfect event: A friend-of-a-friend singles party! The concept is simple: Girls, grab your best male friend and bring him along to meet the cute Urban Girl Squad members—and they will do the same. Guys, simply get a lady pal to sign up with you and let the mingling begin. It’s exactly how Clique works, brought offline. The trivia-themed soiree is set for June 16th at Pranna in Midtown Manhattan.

Snag your tickets here. And don’t forget to say hello to us at the event!

Now it's even easier to invite your friends to Clique!

Thu, 26 May 2011 12:58:00 -0400

Growing your network on Clique is important, so we want to make it as easy as possible to invite your friends. We’ve developed two new ways for you to now do so on our invitation page. Here’s the rundown:

1.) Invitation links

Click the links in the left rail and post an invite on your Facebook wall or tweet one out to your followers. Anyone who signs up using your invitation link will automatically be your friend on Clique. This way you can reach your friends in your existing social networks with just one invite. We’ve autofilled the text, but you can easily edit it or add more.

2.) Import Gmail contacts

Before you start sending out invites, import your Gmail contacts. Just select the contacts you want to invite (or use the search box) and the names and email addresses will populate in your invitations. You can write a personal message if you want. Then you just have to hit send!

So spread the word and invite all of your friends. It’s no coincidence we rolled these amazing features out with just one week to our Super-Connector Contest Party! Get the most friends to join and we’ll see you at our upcoming rooftop soiree.

Be a super-connector and get invited to our summer party!

Mon, 09 May 2011 23:07:00 -0400

Be a super-connector and get invited to our summer party!

Watch our demo from this month’s NYTM.

Thu, 05 May 2011 19:36:00 -0400

Watch our demo from this month’s NYTM.

A sneak peek from our first photo shoot! Thanks to our lovely...

Thu, 05 May 2011 16:04:00 -0400

A sneak peek from our first photo shoot! Thanks to our lovely photographer, Briana E. Heard and all of our models.

We're Unlocking Clique: Here's Why

Thu, 05 May 2011 12:19:26 -0400

We know we always say we’ve got a “big announcement” (hey, we’re a little biased over here!), but today’s really is pretty darn significant. In fact, we feel the change we just made is one that will affect the entire trajectory of Clique—for the better.

Today, we’re removing our invite-only policy and allowing anyone who wants to join become a member. Since our launch, we’ve seen people from all over the world express interest in joining; we’ve even had people offer to lead launches in new cities. It’s been exciting, humbling and thought-provoking. We asked ourselves: If people want to be on Clique, why are we shutting them out?

The reason we’ve been holding on so tightly to our invite-only model is that the value of the site is only as great as the user’s Clique network. By joining with an invitation, you’ve already got at least one friend on the site—and therefore a network of dates. By joining without one, there is a chance that you won’t have any friends on the site to start with, and therefore, no dates.

But we soon realized our users had a counter argument: Let me build my network myself. Every social network starts with a base of users who don’t have friends initially; but over time, the network grows and they eventually will.

And so now, anyone can begin building their Clique network.

Though this change won’t affect our current users—in fact, you’ll experience the site in the same way you did before—it will significantly change the way everyone else uses it. Anyone can join and begin inviting friends. When those friends join, they can invite friends, and the dating pools continue to grow.

This change was probably obvious and somewhat inevitable to everyone outside of the Clique team. The hardest part of beginning a venture is seeing what your users see, but what you cannot see yourself. So welcome to Clique, World. We’re excited to have you.

Share Netflix and Goodreads on Clique

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:45:11 -0400

One thing that sets Clique apart from other dating sites is that we pull in your social media feeds. This way you don’t need to spend time filling out an in-depth profile and your future dates can get a candid peek into your life.

Today we are very excited to announce that in addition to Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, Clique will pull in your Netflix and Goodreads accounts too! If you opt in, the movies you’ve watched instantly and rented from Netflix will appear on your profile. So will the books you’ve read or are currently reading on Goodreads.

You can add these feeds by hitting “Edit” on your profile page. From there click ‘Manage Feeds’ and add Netflix and Goodreads. Now you and your next date can bond over the fact that you’re both reading the entire Hunger Games trilogy! Or that you both have a thing for cheesy Kate Hudson rom-coms…

Clique featured in Mashable

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Clique featured in Mashable:

Over the weekend, we scored some really great press from Mashable. They chose to feature us in their Spark of Genius series. Clique saw a ton of interest from readers in just a few hours, and even more in the days that followed. This was our first piece of press devoted entirely to Clique, and we feel really grateful to Mashable for selecting us. But most importantly, a huge thank you to people all over the globe—from Mumbai to Los Angeles—for reaching out and cheering us on. Take a peek and spread the word!

A smarter way to invite your friends

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 21:43:00 -0400

We totally know how you feel: You’ve become completely obsessed with Clique, and you want to get your friends on the site to share in your obsession. But no matter how long you stare at your unsent invites, you can’t decide who to send them to.

We’ve just changed that, making it easy for you to see which of your friends is pining after an invite. Instead of going through your address book, trying to decide if your college sorority sister or BFF from childhood gets the goods, we’ll surface anyone you know who has already requested an invite to Clique. You can also add your own personal message to the invite. Basically, we want to help you grow your network in the smartest, most personalized way possible. Who will you invite next?

Friday feature round-up!

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:44:00 -0500

One thing we’ve heard from a lot of you is that you’d like more ways to find your friends who are already on Clique. In addition to Facebook, you can now quickly find your friends on Clique using your Twitter and Gmail contacts. And if there’s someone in particular you’re looking for, you can search for them by entering their email address.

Another addition to Clique this week is an account settings interface, which can be accessed from your profile page. Once there, you can change your email, name and password; select which email notifications you wish to receive; and un-hide connections or friends. You can even deactivate your account, if you wanna be like that.

More profile photos + new cropping tool

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:10:00 -0500

Exciting announcement today from CliqueHQ: You can now add additional photos to your profile page! We know how important viewing multiple pictures of a potential date is, and let’s face it: You want to know what (er, who) to expect before you go out.

We’ve added a neat-o cropping tool as well. We suggest using it to focus on yourself in a group shot. That way, no one has to guess which beer-guzzling dude you are. Winning!

Post-launch feature round-up

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:13:00 -0500

Since our launch two weeks ago, we’ve gotten some great feedback from our beta users. From minor bugs to desired features, you told us what you wanted to see on Clique—and we’re doing our best to make your vision a reality. Here are a few additions we’ve made so far, and there are more in progress. We hope you like them!

We’ll send you an email notification when a someone adds you as a friend, when you receive a message, when a friend recommends you, and when you’ve been matched with someone
Revamped inbox, including new icons and a clearer indication of unread messages
An option for Clique to remember your log-in information, for a quicker sign-in process
The ability to see more social media updates on profiles of friends and dates

We’ve got some really cool things on the horizon, too: the ability to add more profile photos, a super-sleek cropping tool, and of course, invitations to send to your friends. Keep in touch with us as you come across problems or see the need for additions, and we’ll keep you up-to-date on new features.

Happy Valentines Day! And happy Clique launch day! Thanks to all...

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Happy Valentines Day! And happy Clique launch day! Thanks to all who came out and supported us last night. The party was pretty darn perfect! :)

Check out the rest of the photos from the launch party here.

You’re invited to our pre-Valentines Day launch party!...

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

You’re invited to our pre-Valentines Day launch party! Can’t wait to celebrate with you!