WinkVid is now open to everyone, everywhere, and WinkUps are now being held every night.

Again, WinkVid is now
Open to everyone – We’re so excited to announce that WinkVid is now open to everyone in every city!
Every night – Our weekly live-video speed-dating events are now nightly. Visit WinkVid.com any day of the week and meet up to 10 singles every night.
Free – We welcome you to join in on the fun and try WinkVid for free (for a limited time).

You absolutely, positively can try WinkVid now by joining one of our live-video online speed dating events. To celebrate, for a limited time, you can try WinkVid absolutely free.

Why keep sending endless messages into the abyss on other dating sites? Try WinkVid tonight and meet people, not profiles.

To make sure you’re the first to know about the newest, most bestest way to meet people online drop your email into the form on the right.

We’re super pumped to announce that we have just been awarded the second grant from Chicago-based Scalewell, a new organization of entrepreneurs who have formed together to offer funding, mentorship and office space to promising, early-stage, scaleable startups.

Jake and I have plenty to keep us busy here at WinkVid, and the help we plan to receive will only make WinkVid better for you. We look forward to working with some of the smartest people in technology in the next couple of months, and a giant thank you goes out to Scalewell and its trustees.

Read more about, and apply to, Scalewell here.

To an extent, it’s true. Both WinkVid and Chatroulette focus on real-time connections between users, and we both use live-video to create an engaging experience that’s also a ton of fun. At the same time, we are different than Chatroulette in a few key ways.

Chatroulette has a sketchy reputation because of their super open, completely anonymous system which has led to many users engaging in graphic, profane behavior and experiences. This ‘shock-factor’ is probably a central element in the website’s success.

WinkVid avoids these problems in a few ways. We require people to register for our events to discourage anonymity, and we also charge users to attend an event. This “pay-wall” filters out most users intent on ruining other’s experiences on WinkVid. At the same time, it encourages genuinely interested singles to join. On WinkVid, the focus is always meeting high-quality, interested singles. And if things go well, you’ll feel comfortable grabbing coffee or drinks after the WinkUp.

What do you think? Any questions you have about the service? Perhaps a suggestion or idea? Let us know in the comments!

In the world of startups and new companies, we tend to get a lot of value from others’ contributions and feel we might have something to give back. As a startup competing in an insanely competitive market (online dating) we’re making mistakes, learning a ton, and occasionally getting something right. Follow along as we share our adventures, tips, and tricks as a startup with a small chance of making it.

Of course, we won’t be all business. Online dating is huge and established, but not without its problems. We hope to shake things up a bit, make online dating more fun and personal, and change expectations of what online dating can be. As a start, we have our online live-video speed dating events which are a really fun, easy way to meet 10 local singles in an hour. Currently we’re only in Chicago but hope to quickly change that.

If you’ve read this post, a big thanks to you. We don’t expect many readers initially, but if we do our job well, we’ll expect to see you back