January 8-14, 2004

city beat

BTW, WANNA DANCE? ; )

CYBER-PROM: John Gordon and his wife Jennifer think their new dating website could host the cure for prom anxiety. Photo By: Mike Mergen

Local teens can use the Web to make their big night perfect.

by Rachel Zuckerman

John Gordon was looking forward to his class of 1986 senior prom at Dobbins High School -- until he got stood up and wound up taking his older sister’s friend as his date.

His future wife, Jennifer, didn’t fare much better; she didn’t even go. Since her Prince Charming never asked, she spent the night sulking at her parents’ house.

Although a lot of his friends thought he was "the man" for taking an older woman to the prom, Gordon never quite got over the sting of showing up at his original date’s house to find nobody home that night.

So, the 34-year-old Montgomery County resident decided to turn his pain into profit while sparing some local high-school seniors a few therapy sessions by launching PhillyPromDates.com, an online community in which soon-to-be graduates can find that special someone to dance with. Billing itself as an antidote to "awkward pick-up lines and missed opportunities to meet that special guy or girl before graduation," Gordon hopes his site will take the fear of rejection out of the prom experience.

"It’s a scary thing to ask someone out," says Gordon, who refers to himself as Cupid on the site. "Some people see it as rite of passage into adulthood, but other people want to use alternative methods of getting dates."

With PhillyPromDates.com, teens too shy to ask someone to boogie with them in person can do so from the privacy of their own homes. Like traditional dating sites aimed at adults, users fill in their height, age and other stats to grab some attention. But in this case, they also include if they are merely looking for a prom date or a full-fledged, pre-breakup-Britney-and-Justin-style romance. It’s free for them to fill out a profile and post their most flattering mugs, but if they want to make contacts, they’ll pay. A package of 10 contact "stamps" costs $25 and a three-month unlimited contact subscription costs $40.

Although at presstime only three young women had signed up for the service, Gordon says it’s advantageous to sign up now, because more people will view the first subscribers’ profiles, as they won’t be distracted by the future sea of dateless teens he hopes will flock to his URL.

"I always wanted to do something with the Internet," says Gordon, who previously worked in the wireless keypad systems industry, a.k.a., the gadgets used on game shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to poll the audience.

A year ago, Gordon started thinking about pursuing new business opportunities. He figured the online dating industry was pretty saturated, so he racked his brains for a niche market. Memories of his own prom debacle came flooding back.

He wondered whether he’d have been spared any angst had the Internet been around during his high-school years. It was then that Gordon realized the teen demographic was the way to go.

"People tend to be more comfortable talking to one another through a computer as opposed to face to face," says Gordon, who hopes today’s teens, obsessed with chat rooms and instant messaging, will feel the same way about meeting potential prom dates. (Here, love-struck adolescents will be able to instant-message each other, even anonymously.)

As of yet, there are no sister sites like BoisePromDates.com, as the site is targeted only for users in the Delaware Valley, but Gordon hopes to expand should the site take off. With no marketing blitz to speak of, Gordon is gearing up for Valentine’s Day and eventually prom season, when he plans to appear on local television segments. Plus, anxious would-be promgoers are being directed to the site via search engines.

A spokesperson for the Philadelphia School District declined to comment on the prospect of area students meeting their dates online. (Oddly, the site’s homepage is filled with photographs of attractive urban types who appear to have celebrated their 18th birthdays a couple of years ago.) Concerned parents might also raise an eyebrow at the prospect of their children surfing a dating site marketed specifically at teens amid news stories of cyber perverts, but to allay their fears, Gordon has installed several precautionary measures.

New users are required to sign an agreement certifying they are 18 years old, (the site is aimed only at high-school seniors) and he plans on monitoring the site for any cyber wrongdoing.

"I try to watch out for certain cues," says Gordon, who personally screens each submitted profile. "One of them is language; there's a certain way that high schoolers speak, so I would know if it was an adult or a teen."

Like, totally.