Blackbox Republic unveils a 'label-free' dating site

After announcing its concept for a social network aimed at the sex positive community a few months ago, Blackbox Republic is now ready to show off its site and welcome new members.

There have been some big changes. Here’s the biggest: When I met with the Blackbox founders in July, every other word coming out of their mouth was about the sex positive movement. Now, co-founder and chief executive Sam Lawrence told me that phrase has been removed from the site, because it didn’t always get a good response from potential users.

“I would characterize it as a site targeted at people who believe in diversity, who want to be around people who believe in diversity,” Lawrence said. “People who aren’t maybe mainstream, who value freedom of expression and don’t want a place to put all of these things that keep accidentally blooming all over the web.”

Even though the site is now less focused on a specific group, Blackbox Republic still has plenty of features that help it stand out from the glut of other dating sites. The first is how users get involved — anyone can sign up, but at first you can only see the site’s public stream of updates, not other users’ personal profiles or any updates they’ve marked as private. You don’t really get involved until another member invites you in, so there’s a level of exclusivity to the membership.

And once you’re active in the Blackbox site, the big theme is giving users the freedom to define their own identity, rather than forcing them to choose from labels. So instead of filling out a profile by choosing from a bunch of drop-down menus, you decide what wording best describes your relationship with other members on the site, and you can move sliders around to indicate where you fall on the spectrum of heteroexual/gay, attached/unattached, looking for partners, and more. Instead of entering your favorite movie, book, etc., you build a “corkboard,” which collects different images that communicate something about you.

The site is based in Portland, Ore., and has raised $1 million in angel funding. It’s free for now, since it’s still in beta testing, but eventually Blackbox plans to start charging, with plans ranging from $5 to $49 per month.

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