Breeding Elitism, Literally.

GoodGenes.com just started in the mix of the Boston University NPR station WBUR’s underwriting statements. When non-commercial radio isn’t asking for money and isn’t providing program content they’re bringing you non-comparative, non-qualitative commercial advertisements from euphemistically named underwriters. Bostonist thought we would check out one of the newest underwriters so you don't have to. Good Genes is a matchmaking website. It’s not your typical online dating site like Match.com that’s open to anyone, or even eHarmony.com that requires you to fill out a personality profile before you’re matched to a mate. The Good Genes site targets those Faculty, Alumni, and Students of Ivy League and other college and universities. There are a number of ways that you can verify your affiliation with the institutions on their list. Once a user is verified they are allowed to pay the membership fee and search the biographies of other elite-educated for their perfect match for only $60 each month.

The business plan of this site seems simple, bring together people who have at least one thing in common, an education from a top-tier school. Sure, this sounds like a good idea but it’s not very robust or complete. There may be lots of Harvard, MIT, Brandeis, etc, grads running around this city, some we like some we don’t. Not to mention that the site lacks, well, pizzazz. The philosophy of dating is very conservative/breeder, you can only meet members of the opposite sex according to their introduction page. The name of the site implies a not-so-subtle goal to find people with good genes that might make good offspring. Incidentally, if you load up the Introduction/Site Tour page check out the title bar in your browser: Good Genes, the smarties, apparently are Goog Genes sometimes.