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Will This Dating Advice App Decode Your Loveless Life?

This article is more than 8 years old.

Three weeks ago media executive friends Emily Listfield and Nadina Guglielmetti quietly rolled out Jyst, an app that crowdsources answers to dating questions. Bam - the first week the app was written about by HarpersBazaar.com, Glamour.com, InStyle.com, Elle.com and media in Germany, Brazil, Argentina and the UK.

The friends were stunned -- but not totally.

"I really believed in this from the beginning," says Listfield, a 50something widowed Manhattan author of seven novels and former top editor with magazines Parade, Fitness and McCalls. The app was conceived 9 months ago when Listfield started dating, and would ask her friend Guglielmetti -- a 45-year-old digital marketed executive and married mom of two -- to help her decipher texts from the men she went out with. Listfield noticed her college-aged daughter also decoded guys' texts en masse with her girlfriends. 

"Jyst is deeply rooted in female behavior, which involves seeking and giving advice -- and feeling empathy from hearing others' stories," Listfield says. "It was shocking that this concept didn't already exist, but then most startup founders and men, and we asked a bunch of men what they thought -- and that is not how they behave." The project is self-funded for less than $50,000, Listfield says. 

Once you download Jyst from iTunes, the interface quickly prompts you to select the type of question you have about dating. You can then post a question, or respond "yes" or "no" to others questions -- and add more detailed advice if you choose. For example: 

Users can flag answers, and any unkind responses are deleted. Otherwise, the content is uncensored, Listfield says.

Jyst is so new that its website, Jyst.me, is but a shell, and its Twitter handle @iJyst, has 34 followers. But its 1,000 downloads and impressive press attention led to a major media's company's interest, Listfield says. Future features might include geo-sensing, messaging and groups that would form communities around age, life status or location. Business models might include advertising partners and brand integration with a dating app. "There are so many dating sites, there needs to be brand integration," Listfield says.

 

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