TAMPA, FL – A new social platform is launching in Tampa Bay with a simple yet radical idea: what if singles stopped treating every interaction as a potential date and instead focused on doing things they enjoy with other singles? Single Social Club, created by professional matchmaker Felicity G. Morgan and technology lead Greg Miceli, aims to address the growing fatigue many feel with traditional dating apps.
“I kept hearing the same thing,” Morgan said. “'I'm taking a break from dating. I'm focusing on myself. I'm tired of the apps.' And I thought, okay. Focus on yourself. But why should focusing on yourself mean sitting at home? If you love kayaking, go kayak. If you want to learn pickleball, go play pickleball. If your friends aren't available or don't want to do it, why can't we help you find other singles who do?”
That question became Single Social Club. The platform removes one of the most familiar features of online dating entirely: there is no swiping. Members aren't presented with an endless catalog of photographs and asked to decide who deserves a conversation. Instead, they begin with an activity. The platform currently includes more than 157 activity options, from kayaking and pickleball to dining, trivia, fitness, attractions, entertainment and other experiences.
Members choose what they would genuinely like to do, indicate how far they're willing to travel, select the age ranges they generally feel comfortable socializing with, and enter when they're actually available. Then the technology finds the overlap. “If you're free Saturday from two to seven and somebody else is free from three to six, we don't need six text messages asking, 'What time works for you?'” Morgan said. “We already have the overlap. Now let's find the other people who wanted to do the same thing.”
When compatible participation exists, Single Social Club can bring members together in small groups, generally building toward groups of approximately six to eight people. The platform also takes a different approach to identity: members interact using code names rather than immediately displaying their full identities. You might be Bee. Someone else might be Fox, Moon, Turtle or Star. The temporary group environment allows participants to coordinate and communicate without automatically handing strangers their personal phone numbers or contact information. Behind the scenes, Single Social Club uses a verification process before members participate.
“We wanted people to have some breathing room,” Morgan said. “You don't need to know someone's entire dating résumé before you've even bowled a frame with them. Go have the experience. Talk. Laugh. Pay attention to how people actually show up.”
The timing is deliberate. Popular dating formats have increasingly turned the mechanics of modern dating itself into entertainment. The viral Pop the Balloon format makes rejection immediate: participants can eliminate a potential match based on what they see or hear, sometimes before much meaningful interaction has occurred. Meanwhile, Love Is Blind became a cultural phenomenon by testing the opposite question: what happens when people form connections before seeing one another? Single Social Club isn't trying to recreate either show. But Morgan believes both point toward an important question: Are singles sometimes eliminating people before they've had enough information to know who they're eliminating?
“We've gotten incredibly efficient at disqualifying each other,” Morgan said. “A picture. Height. Shoes. A job title. One sentence in a profile. Sometimes we're deciding what somebody isn't before we've had an opportunity to experience who they are.”
Single Social Club flips that sequence. Activity first. Person second. Romance only if it develops. It is also for the person coming out of a breakup, the newly divorced parent rebuilding a social life, the professional whose friends are married, busy or simply interested in different things, the person taking a break from dating, the person discovering who they are again, and the person who simply doesn't want to spend another Saturday night conducting a first-date interview. Research on dating-app use has increasingly examined dating-app burnout and emotional exhaustion among users.
For Miceli, the challenge was building technology whose success ultimately means people put their phones away. “Most technology is designed to keep you on the screen,” Miceli said. “We're building something that's supposed to help you get off the screen. The technology handles the coordination, finds the overlap and helps form the group. Then the real experience happens in the real world.”
Single Social Club is a web app, which means members can access it directly through their phone or computer browser without going through a traditional app-store download. Starting in Tampa Bay, built with expansion in mind, the platform can be accessed beyond Florida, but its initial participation and activity-building efforts are deliberately concentrated in Tampa Bay, where the concept was developed.
To make trying the concept easy, Single Social Club is launching with introductory access for $1 for the first 30 days. After the introductory period, unless canceled, membership automatically renews at the applicable membership rate. The Basic membership is $20 per month and includes up to five activity opportunities per month. For Morgan, the invitation is simple: “Don't join because I promised you're going to meet the love of your life. I can't promise that, and neither can anybody else. Join because there's something you've been wanting to do. Go do it. Let life surprise you from there.”
