THE GLOBE AND MAIL - Sep 18 - Mobile dating apps such as
Skout and Are You Interested let users download software onto their phones that alerts them when a potential match is within a few hundred metres. The pioneer of GPS dating was Lovegety, which originated in Japan in 1998 and notified users if a match was nearby by vibrating their cellphones. Lovegety inspired Bluedating, spontaneous matchmaking via Bluetooth. Soon after came “geosocial” networking services such as Loopt and Brightkite.com, which allow people to keep track of friends and explore social communities around their favourite venues. Even though the apps are all explicitly opt-in, they've raised safety concerns. With stalker risks in mind, most will only reveal the distance between users, not their exact location. They also let users block others if they become pesky.
The full article was originally published at Globe and Mail, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: It will take a major iDating site to integrate LBS before Location Based Dating will really take off.
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