Mobile Dating Potential Growth
What do you do right now if you need to find and buy books very quickly? Unless your house is located within walking distance to bookstores, then chance is you will be visiting our dear Google or Amazon to find and purchase your books. Even if the nearest Border Store is nearby, chance is that you will opt in tuning to Google instead. At first, the idea of finding and buying books and groceries from internet is ridiculous. One would always argue that it was not the same as finding the real things in brick and mortar stores but in the end, the internet won. The growths of Amazon and Google stocks indicate a global shift from offline to online in every aspects of our life.
And since this is 2007 instead of 1997, I won’t be talking about the internet phenomenon further, but I will talk about the recent boom of mobile technology. Our cell phones are now loaded with 3G feature and the ability to get connected with other people via Bluetooth. Of course these features quickly become a social networking media as well as dating network. Online dating community has started to move slowly to the mobile dating community. Just like the internet, in ten or fifteen years people would frown at you if you say that you prefer to find your matches offline. 3G video technology has enabled people to see and interact with each other at their leisure. All of the big companies have sensed this and have already developed the initial platform of their mobile services. You can see a lot of brokerage firms now offer mobile trading platform, banks offer mobile banking, and Yahoo offers Yahoo! Mobile and dating companies offer mobile dating.
Mobile dating will become more popular due to the increasing activities of people. In Japan, where a lot of professionals work 14 hours a day, mobile dating has become popular starting from the early 2000. Most mobile dating providers offer the feature to search for any matches based on zip codes as well as the basic video chat between members. Once you have found your match, it is very easy to continue to the meeting stage since all you have to do is to press the numbers and arrange a meeting. In South Korea and Japan, the subscribers of mobile dating were reported to enjoy a feature called proximity dating. This feature, which is also available in other countries, will buzz your mobile phones whenever there are potential matches within close proximity.
One of the most pleasant things about mobile dating is the fact that you can do it anywhere. You can flirt while you are lying on your bed or even when you are pooping on the bathroom. Another pleasant thing is that you can easily verify your match through 3G video. Fake profiles and photos are common plagues in online dating. The presence of webcams do not solve that since not everyone have and use webcam. It is a different case with mobile dating though, most cell phones nowadays are equipped with camera and it is just a matter of time before all cell phones are 3G compatible. It is harder to get away with fake profile in mobile dating unless both parties are just interested in chatting which questions the purpose of joining the service.
The first drawback of mobile dating is the potential privacy attack. Once you really get in touch wit your match, then he or she can easily finds out about your personal number. You will be forced to change your number if someone really wants to harass you badly. Another drawback is the potential sky rocketing cost of mobile dating. Most providers charge initial fee and monthly fee for the basic service. Most providers will also charge you a premium rate whenever you send text messages to your matches. Not mentioning that some providers also charge for video chat. When one gets really excited with flirting in mobile dating, the cost can skyrocket rapidly.
The more popular a place is, the more trouble it possesses. When internet was started more than ten years ago, the so called SPAM email was not even apparent. Nowadays SPAM has become something we have to deal with everyday. The same things also apply with online dating, at first fake profiles were not a major issue like it is today. Mobile dating is still considered new despite its growing popularity, what you can enjoy right now might not be so easily available five years later due to mobile dating increasing popularity. If you want my honest advice then I will advise get in now, get married and get out.