To find that perfect someone, you might consider taking out an ad, checking the personals or joining some romance-oriented Internet chat group. But you almost certainly wouldn't turn to your cellular phone.
Two Nordic companies are out to change that. Finland's Small Planet and Sweden's Blue Factory have turned the European obsession with sending text messages into services that allow thousands of mostly young people in Europe to flirt and set up a romantic rendezvous wirelessly and anonymously.
With major European wireless operators such as Finland's Sonera and Spain's Terra Mobile firmly on board, Small Planet is rolling out in Asia later this month. Small Planet also has plans to expand into Latin America in the next three months, and is setting up a San Diego office to explore U.S. opportunities. (Terra owns Wired News parent Lycos).
Meanwhile, Blue Planet has rolled out its Flirtylizer dating service in Sweden and is developing an application that will enable would-be lovers to track each other down using positioning technology.
"It's incredibly viral," said Fredrik Sirén, product development director for Small Planet. "We've got a huge number of people sending these messages around. I don't have any recorded cases yet of marriages, but it may not be far off."
More importantly, both companies claim to be near profitability for the services -- which are based on simple technology, require very little overhead, and extract money from customers each time they're used. By contrast, consumers on the Web are used to getting their e-mail for free.
"People in Europe are willing to pay premium prices for cell phone services that make their social lives more productive, and dating has to be at the top of their agenda," said Seamus McAteer, a senior analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix. "It's that notion of instant gratification and defeating loneliness. Consumer expectations have already been set on the Web. People aren't going to pay to join a chat room."
If the services continue to catch on in Europe and Asia, they will join downloadable ring-tones and simple games as some of the first premium wireless services to earn profits and gain a worldwide following –- bolstering wireless evangelists' contention that the humble cell phone is destined for far greater things than simply voice transmission. The U.S. is generally seen to be one to two years behind Europe and Asia in the adoption of wireless services other than voice.
Neither Small Planet nor Blue Factory will disclose details about revenue, profits or number of users, although Blue Factory says usage of its Flirtylizer service in Sweden has doubled every month since its rollout in February.
Here's the basic idea. A would-be lover keys in an anonymous message on her cell phone and sends it to her love interest. The recipient is invited to guess who it's from by sending his own message to the cell phones of people he suspects. If he guesses right, a "match" is declared and the two can happily take the next step. If he guesses wrong, he sets up his own flirting session with an entirely new person.
Either way, the wireless operator carrying the service makes up to 70 cents per transaction, which it splits with either Small Planet or Blue Factory. In fact, the two companies do better financially when there isn't a quick match than when there is, since the person who receives the first message will keep on sending messages until he tracks down the sender. And all the people receiving his messages will likely send off queries of their own, and so on.
Besides its MCupid service, Finland's Small Planet also runs a service called MFriend, which allows a user to place a personals ad on the wireless operator's server, browse existing ads or reply to ads. If you're involved in a long-term relationship, you can play "Roses," a "know-your-partner" service that queries you and your partner about the other's preferences and then lets you compare notes.
Blue Factory and Small Planet say their services are easily adapted to the social mores of the countries they're rolled out in. In Muslim Asian countries where casual dating is frowned upon, for example, Small Planet plans to roll out services that allow "friends" to meet. In Japanese test trials, it's advertising "pen pal" services.
Blue Factory is running pilot tests on a new service offered by mobile operators that allows would-be lovers to zero in on each other to within as little as a few meters.
"You get a message that says, 'Somebody likes you and they are 20 or 30 meters away,'" said Per Holmkvist, Blue Planet's founder. "It creates a sense of excitement."
Or fear. Could a suitor also use the service to stalk somebody?
No, Holmkvist insists, because only the recipient of the message –- not the sender -– is informed how far the sender is away. Once the recipient sends a message to someone they want to meet –- and it happens to be a match with the original suitor -– the two lovers are cleared for their rendezvous.
This may all sound like a big palaver for a first date. But Holmkvist says Swedes and Finns tend to be more shy and formal about their dating then their American counterparts.
"I hate to disappoint you, but we're not really so wild," said Holmkvist, referring to Sweden's reputation as the land of free sex and easy love. "I don't know anybody who goes to singles bars. If you use a dating service, that database is certain to have some bad guys. So most people are introduced by friends. With our service, you only contact people you already know. That makes it very acceptable to users."
Whether such services could flourish in the United States is unclear. Wireless text messaging has yet to find a big U.S. market. And whether brash Americans will copy the wireless romance techniques of the more diffident Scandinavians remains to be seen.
