This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.
Name: Moonit
Quick Pitch: Moonit is a social compatibility engine that helps Gen Y users gain insights into their romantic, platonic and professional relationships.
Genius Idea: Whether you take astrology seriously or not, it’s fun to think about. Moonit’s creators know this, so they integrated astrological matchmaking with the web and Facebook with a tool simply called “The Matchmaker.”
The Matchmaker doesn’t just make romantic matches; it also determines compatibility for friendship and business relationships.
It just needs the names, genders and birth dates of both parties. Type those in (or import them from Facebook using Facebook Connect) and you’ll be given a match assessment that includes a percentage rating and a couple quick paragraphs about why the pairing is good, bad or just average.
Once you’ve found a good match, you can use Moonit to notify those friends through Facebook that they’re a match in an attempt to hook them up.
The Facebook integration is neat, but there are a couple problems. Since there’s no search field for friends, you have to scroll through the list to find the people you’re looking for. It’s a bit of a pain to find the person you’re looking for when you have hundreds of Facebook friends, even though they’re organized alphabetically.
Also, the app imports birthdates from Facebook, but if the person you’re importing doesn’t list his or her birth year, just his or her birth month and day (a very common practice, we’ve found), the whole birth date is left blank.
Those two quibbles aside, I’ll admit I spent too much time today matching up friends, testing the matchmaking on both happy and unhappy couples, and doing a little preliminary astrological scouting for prospects among the single women with whom I’m Facebook friends. The algorithms and the medium may have changed, but the core appeal is a time-tested one.
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Tags: bizspark, dating, facebook, moonit, social networking, spark-of-genius, startup, the matchmaker