R U ready to txt for D8s? Don't LOL.
New cellphone services are springing up to help singles exchange text messages and find each other on a handset's digital map.
The modern dating scene has come to this: a text-messaging service that hits random female subscribers in Los Angeles with such messages as "Hello to all the beautyful ladys."
Tech-savvy singles are now relying on cellphone-based services to find new dates and friends. The programs help users find strangers to exchange text messages with and even find, on a handset's digital map, nearby people looking to connect.
Joshua Beaman, a 29-year-old sound engineer from Calistoga, Calif., signed up for one such service, Bouncephone. He soon started texting with Hattie Rohr, a 19-year-old in Wisconsin.
For months, they sent each other messages about music and movies, dinner and work, the mundane things they did every day. Although each exchange was wedged into the 160-character limit on text messages, he said, communicating with Rohr seemed easy. So easy that he finally flew to the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, where she is now a student, to meet her. They hit it off.
"I've paid literally hundreds of dollars for some of those online dating services," he said. "But I'd never found someone that I'm compatible with."
First there was phone dating, in which singles would read personal ads and leave each other voice messages. Next came Internet dating, online matchmaking services made more popular by increased access to broadband. Now, with phones accompanying them everywhere, people are turning to mobile dating services.
"With a cellphone, you can do it any time, any place," said Bob Bentz, director of marketing and sales at Advanced Telecom Services, a Wayne, Pa., company that offers a 350,000-member dating service called MatchLink Mobile. "If you're waiting for the bus, you can be finding a date."
Americans now send about 75 billion text messages a month, so it's natural that the medium has become a popular means of courtship. Speeding the trend is the new generation of handsets equipped with full keyboards, faster Internet connections and global positioning systems that can pinpoint their users' exact location. In the U.S., about 143 million wireless subscribers have GPS on their phones, according to Nielsen Mobile, and there were 43.3 million active mobile Internet users in August.
Juniper Research projects that the mobile dating industry will see $1.4 billon in global revenue by 2013, from $330 million in 2007 (much of that business currently comes from Japan, where mobile dating is already very popular).
