where the ladies at?

Have you ever walked into a bar, or a party, or even a restaurant and thought, ‘Wow, it’s a real wienerfest in here’, or ‘What’s with all the dudes? I mean, where are all the ladies at?’  (Admittedly,  I’m a lady, so this has never bothered me, but my male friends ask these questions a lot). Well, a couple of dudes from San Fransisco, Path‘s Danny Trinh and Digg‘s Jeff Hodson, have decided to help the fellas out by literally pointing men in the direction of women. Where the ladies at? is a new service that uses Foursquare checkins to scope out untapped deposits of women around San Fransisco and announcing things like, ‘Found them! They are at DNA Lounge!’

The site, which is soon to be turned into a Facebook app, works by guessing the sex of the user through his or her first name, which does create a margin of error: I’m sure users would be upset if a high concentration of male Staceys and Courtneys happened to be in a bar at the same time. Where the ladies at ranks venues by the concentration of women there, and features the ones most chock-full of chicks. Alexia Tsotsis of TechCrunch writes:

as someone who deals with dorky guys desperate for practice consistently, I think this is brilliant and totally gets an “A” for effort and vision. Says Trinh, “The few chicks that check-in are a decent sample of where more might be.” Using any female checkins as signifiers of an even larger “lady” ratio, it’s like Trinh and Hodson have totally made an app giving nerds some kind of advantage in natural selection.

Users of Metafilter made some interesting comments about the site, criticising its quality (Where the ladies at? is prone to glitches)  and questioning why there are more single men than women in the 25-35 range, and why there are more single women in the 45+ category. Some of the more entertaining suggestions include that “women get increasingly, er, large in their older years” and that women get married younger and outlive their husbands.

Quality and margin of error aside, Where the ladies at? Is a simple concept which uses data that has already been sourced—and for free! The only dangers, I think (apart from stalkers, but if you had one, you probably wouldn’t use Foursquare, anyway) is that the site might:

a) Send a pack of meatheads into a place where a group of ladies were just trying to have a good time (thereby turning your favourite bar into a meat market … gross),
b) Send a pack of vitamin-D deficient tech-nerds into a place where a group of ladies were just trying to have a good time (thereby turning your favourite bar into a mass of bumbling awkwardness), and
c) Limit the kinds of women Where the ladies at? users meet (internet dorks and/or self-absorbed cultural elitists?).

Nevertheless, Where the ladies at? might be coming to a city near you. Soup for one, be done!

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