It's nice to see iTunes branching out into new product offerings such as TV show Season Passes and TV movies. It's also nice to see that an NJG (that is, my self-invented hip-hop slang for "Nice Jewish Girl") like myself can take advantage of the chance to meet thousands of prospective suitors on JDate. At any given time, as many as 14,000 NJGs and NJBs are logging in for love (or lust).
I hope, therefore, that Steve Jobs and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach alike will take notice of my revolutionary new business idea. I call it "jTunes." Using the powerful and proven iTunes store layout (over one billion sold!), NJGs and NJBs can search through thousands of prospective soulmates, narrowing their searches based on location as well as "genre" (i.e., smug investment bankers, taciturn accountants, oversexed engineers, pampered princesses, Hasidic hotties, finicky Playaz with multiple allergies...and the list goes on!) Undoubtedly, jTunes' most popular feature will be the "30-second preview option," enabling users to effortlessly distinguish the beshert from the blah or bizarre. And with jTunes' tried and true uniform pricing scheme of just $0.99 per date, $9.99 per an "album-length" amount of dates, and $39.99 for an entire television season's worth of dates, jTunes will substantially accelerate the propagation of the Jewish population in the same manner that iTunes has energized the music industry and increased the ratings of cult TV hits. Did I also mention that particularly appealing dates can be uploaded into the user's jPod?
Seriously though, I believe that the efficient and user-friendly iTunes store model might well be applied in some manner to online dating and other areas of e-commerce. Sites like JDate charge a monthly subscription fee yet encourage a slow, drawn-out communication process. First, the person sends you a "JMail" message through the site, then you respond back (often never to hear from the person again, because they have sent a mass mailing to you and 50 others), and then the requisite email and phone conversations ensue. All of the above generally must occur before the moment of "JTruth" - the actual in-person coffee date. And it is only at that very moment of JTruth when the compatibility between two descendants of Abraham can be appropriately assessed. For, as I have learned, great emails and phone calls do not reveal essential facts like: 1) sometimes Google millionaires won't pay for a law student's measly cup of hot cocoa; 2) a JDate user with a self-described "athletic build" might close the date by abandoning you in the middle of the street by literally running away at warp speed, breaking several Olympic records in order to catch the subway for his next date of the afternoon; and 3) a second date can indeed consist of force-feeding the extended versions of both LOTR I and II down a non-Hobbit fan's throat, followed by dumping the poor Elvish-overdosed girl the very next day. Not that I am bitter. But I'd definitely prefer if shopping for dates were just like shopping for music and TV shows. And if loving iTunes is wrong, then I don't want to be right. This is the Silicon Valley after all!