Mobile Dating Makes Cell Phone use More Obnoxious

COURIER POST -- Dec 20 -- Technological dating has finally spun out of control and there is now a movement under way -- by both large companies and two-geeks-in-a-basement-start-ups -- to turn our cell phones into matchmakers.  Mobile dating is already more popular than Internet dating in places like Japan. All you need to post a profile and picture on Webdate, the mobile dating leader, is a Web-ready camera phone and $3.99 a month. Then there's Dodgeball, a service where users make a list of "crushes" based on online pictures. Then, when they go out to the bars, they send "check-in" text messages to Dodgeball to find out if a crush has checked in from another bar nearby. If so, the crush instantly receives a picture and profile of the admirer via cell.  Zogo enables users to search through profiles and then speak over the phone through a service that doesn't reveal their numbers.  Bluetooth dating is known as "toothing", "bluejacking" and "snarfing". It enables your phone to detect singles currently in the neighborhood.  SMSGenie is a mobile dating program with no pictures and no profiles, just random texts sent to you from random women and men.  6 million Americans reportedly mobile-date.

Mark Brooks: Location Based Services could lead to a significant paradigm shift in online dating eventually.