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In the San Francisco Bay Area, where lots of single engineers, programmers and Web developers lurk, finding a date can be a daunting task.
That's why Jim Wald, a 37-year-old technical writer in Burlingame, California, turned to online dating services like Match.com and the personal ads on craigslist. Wald estimates he has scored between 15 and 20 dates by posting and responding to online ads.
"I've met all kinds of women," he said. "I do recommend it."
But would Wald be open to starting a romance over his cell phone?
Cell-phone companies apparently think so.
Now that wireless carriers are setting up the necessary infrastructure to help emergency dispatchers pinpoint the location of emergency 911 callers, they are mulling over ways to make money from knowing exactly where customers are.
The carriers are required by the Federal Communications Commission to install location-tracking technology for emergency purposes by 2005. At the same time, services like cell-phone dating are often bandied about.
Here's how it would work: Single people would subscribe to the service online or by text message over their cell phones. They would fill out applications with their interests. They could also post pictures, because cell phones increasingly include a camera or image-viewing option.
When out and about, users could ping the service asking for compatible singles in the area. After notifying the other members nearby, the system would provide the user with a list of people in close proximity and their location. A potential match could be right across the street.
This type of service is already popular in Japan and some parts of Europe, where teenagers and 20-somethings often set up rendezvous by cell phone. AT&T Wireless (AWE) says it has had success with its Find Friends service, which lets people look up the locations of people on their buddy lists.
"It is consistently outperforming our expectations," said AT&T Wireless spokeswoman Danielle Perry.
SMS.ac, a San Diego, California, company that hosts an online community of wireless-messaging users, also offers a dating service in which users send text notes over short-messaging service, or SMS, to people whose profiles interest them.
Moviso, a Vivendi Universal (V) company that sells ring tones, games, songs and other mobile media services to wireless carriers, plans to take that concept one step further.
Around Feb. 14 -- Valentine's Day -- the Los Angeles mobile media company plans to unveil DateTrak, a permission-based system that lets users anonymously search for people who share their interests, including their real-time locations. Even though not all carriers have location-tracking technology in place for the service to work, and the idea of "location-tracking" gives some people the creeps, Moviso President Shawn Conahan says such programs' success in Europe and Asia makes him optimistic.
Last month, Conahan tried to get into a nightclub in Las Vegas where the bouncer at the door demanded that an equal number of women and men be allowed to enter. He was by himself, so he scrambled through the line looking for other single people to enter with him. If his proposed service, DateTrak, were available, he said, he could have punched in a message asking for other wireless users in the area to go to the club with him.
"The original intent of location-based services was safety," Conahan said. "But that capability enables another layer (of services) on top of it. I can take a picture of myself and post it onto a server that Moviso operates for a dating application, let's say."
Even though Conahan emphasized that it's up to the user to choose what information to post -- if any -- some of the biggest fans of online dating were unmoved.
"I will try anything, but it does sound a little bit intrusive," said Wald, who was recently perusing ads on craigslist. "If you are out and about and getting these pages, 'Hey, I know where you are!' I think that might freak people out."
Heather O'Neal, a 28-year-old media strategist in Ashland, Oregon, who met her current boyfriend, Nick, through the SMS.ac service, agreed.
"That sounds kind of scary to me, just because it gives out my address," she said. "First you have to talk to someone for a while. I would definitely want to see them and know they are not a psycho."
