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Broadband & Mobile Featured Article
July 31, 2007
Match.com offers Mobile Online Dating Service
By Raju Shanbhag TMCnet Contributing Editor
Online dating just got cozier and comfortable as Match.com came up with another mobile phone based service. According to a report in Reuters, online dating service Match.com is launching a new application for cell phones, allowing subscribers to be in touch with their love interests on the go.
If you are a match.com subscriber, chances are, you would have come across someone special. If you hate to talk to your special one only via email and if you want to keep in touch with him/her all the time, this service will help you to do just that. As the market with flooded with devices that allow users to check their emails from their mobile, this service should be fairly simple to use.
When you get an email from someone interested in you, this server sends an SMS to your mobile device. It also lets you to search for your partner from your mobile phones. If a subscriber wants to answer the suitor from his/her mobile phone, he/she just needs to pick up their phone and send a message. This extra service costs $5 per month and will be first introduced in United States, UK and Canadian markets before spreading to other markets, the company stated.
Match.com reportedly has a good track record when it comes to mobile based services. According to Enraght-Moony, an earlier version of Match.com for mobile phones was used by nearly half a million subscribers. Match.com has a database of nearly 15 million users and the new service will allow them to tap into that database on the go.
And Match.com has the market trend going for it too. According to data from tracking firm M:Metrics, about 3.6 million U.S. cell phones subscribers used a mobile dating service in May this year. The company can also take heart from the forecasts from Frost & Sullivan, which predicts that revenue from mobile dating services will grow to $215 million by 2009.
Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
