It’s a date

Now that people read books on their iPhone, keep their entire music library on their BlackBerry, and use their Android phone to store their family photo collection, why shouldn’t a mobile phone also become a personal matchmaker device?

Location-based dating plays on human curiosity… it also panders to our desire for interaction

Lets face it – dating can be stressful. It involves a lot of time, effort, money and grooming. And after all that investment and hours at the hairdresser, it can lead to much disappointment and, worst of all, heartache. Yet, being all too human, despite the elusiveness of the happily-ever-after, we never grow tired of exploring new possibilities of courtship.

Technology has changed the whole dating scenario and we have gone from the good old offline attempts to online dating. But it seems even trawling the web is too much of an effort. Thanks to smartphones and the possibility of grabbing someone’s location in real time, we’re now cosying up to location-based dating.

Location-based services are a revolutionary experience. If your hunger is elbowing you in the stomach for a good Chinese, you just ask Siri, and the voice-activated personal assistant will use location-based services to find and direct you to the nearest sweet and sour special. And if you want to improve your social life, you don’t need to go out nor spend more time at home on your computer – thanks to location-based services, all you need is a simple app.

Blendr, for instance, connects and matches users based upon on shared interests. It offers a spontaneous experience – wherever you are, you just find someone with the same interests walking nearby and then decide whether to take it to the next level. If the match doesn’t happen, then you just walk on.

Grindr is another dating app that offers location-based matching for the gay community. It’s just three simple screens – one for photos, a second one for your profile, and a third screen for chatting.

“In the gay world, it’s a bit more difficult to meet people if you don’t socialise in gay clubs,” says one of my gay friends. “Having moved to a new city, Grindr gave me the opportunity to meet people – some of whom are my friends now – without having to go clubbing.”

Having clocked up a million and a half users without doing any advertising, Grindr has become extremely popular in more than 180 countries. Thanks to its user-generated content and user-friendly interface, 300,000 daily users spend an average of an hour and a half a day on the app.

Location-based dating plays on human curiosity – by giving us the chance to meet people we like who might be just around the corner, it also panders to our desire for interaction.

Dating is also becoming a more holistic experience – online, on your smartphone, and via apps, you can create a pull and push experience. The pull experience is that you upload a profile and a library of people to look through. The push experience is when profiles are pushed to you according to your location.

This is how MeetMoi.com, another location-based dating app, works. Basic free membership allows you to create a profile, browse profiles, send winks, respond to received messages, and receive unlimited SMS alerts. After you have signed up for basic membership to Meetmoi, you may upgrade to premium membership at a monthly cost.

One can argue that location-based dating services may be taking away the nuisance of having to go through introductions and small talk. Yet there is a cost – privacy. Anyone with a smartphone can download a free application, see users’ profiles and pin point their exact location on a map. Of course, you determine the kind of information that you make publicly available. Yet that doesn’t mean that ease of use foregoes caution – after all, a possible fun night out can turn into a stalker experience.