Playing *tag* in the city, a GPS game for mobile digital daters

Rapidly losing its stigma, online dating is settling into place as a social networking niche. On Match.com, Lavalife, eHarmony, as on Facebook, people connect, communicate, and sometimes sync. Then they meet face-to-face, or opt to keep it virtual, or disconnect. Membership numbers on internet dating sites fluctuate with the seasons, higher during holidays and in recessionary times, when people find it harder to be alone. Stressful times inspire togetherness.

The online dating industry has weathered their own version of the Facebook effect-–which in this instance describes the decline in paid memberships that resulted when social network use mainstreamed. For a while, digital daters quit the branded sites and migrated to FB for a DIY approach to online dating. But over the past year they have largely returned to the professional matchmaking sites. Yahoo!Personals, Plentyoffish, and the like are purpose-built for internet dating—and they have some services and safeguards the other sites lack.

Still, there are many widgets and apps for dating on Facebook and Twitter, and those sites are mobile-ready. So to compete with the big three socnets (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter), online dating needs to be both mobile and now, location-aware. Enter proximity dating.

With skyrocketing smartphone adoption and the spread of GPS-enabled apps, locational social networking is taking hold. Tagged maps, Foursquare, friend finders—these technologies are quickly normalizing our expectations for e-presence and proximity—of people and services. As a result, online dating is becoming mobile dating, and now shifting to geolocational dating.

MeetMoi, which bills itself as the first location-based mobile dating service, emerged onto the scene last year. Members can opt-in by entering romantic preferences, and MeetMoi sends the coordinates of likely prospects in the area. It is effectively about tagging yourself. The result? You, a beacon on the sea of singletons, attract faster connections, impromptu coffee dates—serendipity in an always-on urban culture.

“Location-based dating applications like Skout and Are You Interested? help you pinpoint when ‘the one’ might be right around the next corner,” reports the Just a Guy Thing blog. And after connecting, if your first date goes south, there’s a GPS app for that too. MobiMeet can be used to summon friends to the user’s location, letting them know a bailout is in order.

The move from online dating to GPS dating is part of a cultural shift toward mobile data consumption. The triad of mobile web use, m-commerce, and smartphone app development have accelerated consumer desire/demand for instantaneous information at-hand and on-the-go, as users get more adept at handheld computing. For work, play, and now, for ♥

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