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Mixing business with pleasure
If you're lookin' for love in all the wrong places, as Johnny Lee sang in the summer of 1980, try LinkedIn instead.
There's a relatively new app called LinkedUp! to help you forget about the business part of mixing business with pleasure.
As The Wall Street Journal puts it, LinkedUp! is a networking app "for those who want to ensure their match is gainfully employed before they meet for drinks." And, as The Guardian notes, sometimes a request to meet for coffee "can actually mean more than just coffee."
The app takes LinkedIn beyond a professional connection, for which it was meant, by letting you search for your potential date's profession, age, etc., and then the two of you can chat it up.
You can also "like" someone's profile, which hopefully you're going to do if you plan to date said person. Or you can "pass" (anonymously, by the way), which presumably you're going to do if you're turned off. It will also tell you if you like each other.
LinkedUp! - there's actually a little heart where the "e" should be - boasts that it's the "smart new way to date via LinkedIn" and that you can "get the conversation going by already knowing what industry your match works in."
As its founder Max Fischer, who soft-launched it in March, told the Journal, he thinks it's all going to mean "much higher-quality matches."
You have to be at least 17 to download the app - it cites "mature/suggestive themes" on the iTunes store, after all - and at this point it's only for Apple Inc.'s iOS devices.
So if you're using a BlackBerry or Android unit, you might actually have to go out and meet someone.
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- Janet McFarland and Jeff Gray: Nortel hearing a cross-border spectacle
- Jeffrey Jones: Oil patch M&A activity gains momentum
- Boyd Erman: Nova Scotia mulls joining national regulator
The week in Real Estate
- Tara Perkins: Real estate agents start using drones
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- Sales gains signal strong spring for much of Canada's housing market
- Click on the dotted line: Real estate agents test cyber boundaries
- Too many condos? Canada's housing growth 'sustainable': BMO
The week in ROB Insight (for subscribers)
- Carl Mortished: When mega-mergers are less than the sum of their parts
- David Parkinson: Encana buys a quick fix, not a permanent one
- Kevin Carmichael: Fed sounds alarm over U.S. housing rebound
- Brian Milner: New Chinese ambassador laments Canadian red tape
- David Parkinson: Bleak Canadian employment report reveals job-quality erosion
The week's top news
- Brent Jang: Asian coal demand is set for robust revival, study says
- Marina Strauss: Departure of Target CEO puts Canadian retreat on table
- Simon Houpt: TSN fights to stay on top with three new channels
- Carrie Tait: Encana bets $3.1-billion on Texas oil play
- Greg Keenan: Facing higher costs, Magna puts brakes on new plants in Canada
The week's must-reads
- Barrie McKenna: Why Detroit-Windsor bridge could become Canada's white elephant
- Joanna Slater: Invest like a hedge fund: What the best money managers think
- Sophie Cousineeau: Guy Laliberté on a mission to rejuvenate his Cirque du Soleil
- Omar El Akkad: Nintendo's long fall in the gaming wars
- Susan Krashinsky: Claws out in the battle for pet parents' wallets