Britons are unabashedly in love with their mobile phones.
Besides making calls on them, they send short text messages to flirt, to ask for help in an emergency situation, to cheat on exams, and to wish someone a happy birthday. Text messaging on the devices is so common that the Guardian newspaper once sponsored a poetry contest in which hundreds of people composed haikus on their mobile phones.
Now, they are meeting potential friends and dates at M-Parties, Britain's latest display of affection for the mobile phone.
Here's the typical format for the M-Party: Guests – not told the location of the party – register their mobile phone numbers on a database.
On the evening of the event, guests receive a text message with clues as to where the party will be held. People eventually find others scrambling to the event and get together to figure out where to go. Depending on how much the event's host or hosts are willing to spend, the party could end up anywhere: a restaurant, dance club, limousine or cruise ship.
"It's a fun and funky party using text messaging," said Tom Carr, founder of Pocket Generation, a company that arranges M-Parties. "People have had an amazing time."
Carr, whose company has managed 25 M-Parties in the last seven months, said companies will host such parties for their employees to boost morale or they'll throw the bash for their clients as a publicity stunt. He recalled one event in which a client tied a helium balloon to a street lamppost for a contest. Carr's customer then had contestants scavenger for the balloon. The person who found the balloon first won $150.
While the company got what it wanted -– hundreds of people running to street lampposts -– Carr said the most important element of any M-Party is "team-building."
"Everyone gets to meet each other before the party starts," Carr said.
The M-Party may be a clever use for mobile text messaging, but it isn't an original idea for using the telephone. In British culture, the telephone has always played a dominant role in social settings, M-Party coordinators say.
Carr said that in the 1950s, rotary phones were placed on every table at a dance party. Anyone interested in dancing with someone at another table would pick up the phone and place a call to the next table.
Taragh Bissett, founder of another company that plans M-Parties, Beautiful Strangers, said the current phenomenon around wireless phones reminds her of how people got to raves 15 years ago.
Some people would get a ticket with an 800 number. They would then call the number to find out the location of the rave. They would then tell friends where the party was.
But Bissett quickly added that unlike M-Parties, raves were illegal because they often operated without valid liquor licenses or permission to use the premise. M-Parties may be secretly planned like raves but they're more likely to happen in a bar where the owner knows how many people will show up.
"The idea of keeping the event secret is to make the first part of the event work and make people solve clues together," she said. "It's kind of a special surprise."
She added: "It's hard to talk to people in bars because they think you're crazy. People can come alone (to the M-Parties) and feel (safe) to text-message."
Even though Carr and Bissett have databases with mobile phone numbers, they said they don't give the numbers out to anyone outside of the party.
The biggest party pooper, they say, is when the phone carrier's network goes down, and text messages aren't transmitted. Carr recalled one event in which many of the guests were late or didn't show at all because the transmission of text messages was delayed by two hours.
"We do have help lines," he said. "You can call on a fixed-line phone for people in the office."
Fortunately, Adam Ash – who met his current girlfriend, Helen, at an M-Party – didn't experience anything short of a "brilliant" time.
About a year ago, Ash, 30, a landscape architect who lives in Manchester, attended an M-Party hosted by Bissett at a London bar. He jotted his name, interests and mobile phone number on a card, which was then placed side-by-side with others on a bulletin board.
Guests interested in meeting anyone mentioned on the board would send a short text message to that person's mobile phone.
Helen spotted Ash dancing in the crowd but didn't know his name. So Helen had the party's organizers project a mobile phone text message on a large overhead screen: "Tall, curly-haired guy, look for girl with back-less top."
The message flashed on the screen twice. But Ash, who is 6-foot-5, didn't spot the girl wearing a back-less shirt who was only 5-foot-3.
Later in the night, Ash asked Bissett for the mobile phone number of the person who broadcast the message.
She gave him the number.
A year later Ash and Helen are still dating and busily planning a six-month trip together to South America, New Zealand and Australia.
"The very same evening (of the party), I called her," Ash said. "It was worth a ring."
