I know for a fact that this girl [http://automateyourdate.com/testimonial/automate-your-date-t...] is on fiverr.com

Are you suggesting that they paid her to record a false testimonial?

I legitimately thought this was satire at first.

Is it not? I still can't tell

Probably not, although the post dated July 5th that states "the holidays are upon us" indicates to me they aren't very serious about quality.

The question that I've got is what is your surrogate going to tell the girl in order to get you a date? You know the only way they can go viral is to start getting men dates.

What happens when the girl finds out that you're not Tom Cruise's younger brother who just sold his startup to Google? This makes much better sense as a reality TV show. Poor Allen Funt would be horrified.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Funt

Not sure if this is the way to win the hearts of prospective partners: caring little about the approach as to outsource personal interactions.

I imagine there's room for improvement in online dating, and can see professional help being a viable service (tips on profiles, photographer, suggesting people to contact or automating some initial contact) but I don't know if this would appeal to people?

There's a market because online dating is a funnel process. In large markets, there are thousands of potential female matches and tens of thousands of potential female matches.

The funnel from initial message to reply is brutal. The funnel from conversation to date is also brutal. Relying on mass messaging has a terrible conversion rate. So you need relatively specific messages, and lot of them, to get as far in the funnel as "first date".

Some people feel that they don't have time for that nonsense. Along comes an English lit grad who needs some extra cash ...

It might be nice if the picture of the couple at the beginning actually rotated/fade-in/out between "traditional" image of a couple, interracial, same-sex, etc.

Dating is not a "solvable" problem because asymmetric information and asymmetric supply/demand meaning that the solutions to the Stable Marriage Problem aren't applicable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem

"Outsourcing" just makes the informational asymmetry worse. It's a negative-sum strategy. Hooray.

LOL