Flirt charts Background checks A virtual bouquet

Apple and Google are working to reassure iPhone and Androidhandset users that they aren't tracking their locations. Onlinedating companies are betting their bottom lines on doing just that.

Meetic, the French owner of the European operations of Match.com,is joining start-ups including New York-based MeetMoi in offeringlocation-based dating services. Meetic will introduce features thisyear that let handset users find out in real-time who's nearby andinterested in meeting, and match potential soulmates who, forexample, frequent the same gym, Managing Director Philippe Chainieuxsaid.

Taking advantage of smartphones' location data is a logical stepfor dating services, whose users increasingly are accessing theirmatches from handsets. The number of European Web users visiting adating service "almost every day" through a mobile device increased49 percent between February 2010 and the same month this year to 2.8million, according to researcher comScore. The number doing so atleast once a week climbed 44 percent.

"As soon as mobile services are made available, uptake is usuallyfaster than on the traditional Internet," said Luca Benini, vicepresident and commercial director for comScore in Europe. "You canexpect that everything that can be geo-localized will be,eventually."

The boom in mobile dating coincides with increased regulatoryscrutiny of location data on smartphones. Germany, France and Italysaid last month they are checking whether Apple's iPhone and iPadproducts violate privacy rules by tracking, storing and sharing dataabout users' locations. Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple said it isn'ttracking users' locations and plans to cut the amount of data theiPhone stores.

Meetic, Europe's largest online-dating service, plans to use geo-location to shore up offerings for its 860,000 subscribers at the"flirt" end of a chart it uses to plot relationship types and theamount users are willing to pay to find them. "Love" and "long-term" matchmaking rely more heavily on existing, Internet-basedaccess.

"Instead of going to find Mr. Right or Ms. Right at the other endof the world, maybe he or she is someone you go by every day,"Chainieux said. "We want to be able to say whether people whocorrespond to your criteria are in the same place as you."

Convenient mobile services will give dating sites a chance toboost their "conversion rate," or the frequency at which usersmigrate from free to paid services, the executive said.

Meetic offers a range of prices for an online subscription, withpromotions starting at $22 a month. Mobile access will be free forthese subscribers. The company charges less for mobile-only service.Meetic's profit reached 24 million euros in 2010, an increase of 23percent from a year earlier.

The Web site operator, based in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, has declined 6 percent this year, compared with a 17percent jump at Edinburgh-based Cupid and a 26 percent increase atIAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns Match.com's U.S. operations.

In some ways, traditional dating sites like Meetic have laggedbehind more specialized services in bringing location-based datingto the masses, which have tracked the rising popularity of moregeneral location services like Foursquare.

Location-based iPhone and Android app FlirtMaps topped 500,000downloads last month, with that figure expected to double by year'send, according to Marco Franciosa, the chief technology officer ofparent Zodiak Active. Grindr, a location-based app for gay men thatlaunched in 2009, boasts 62,000 users in London alone, according toits Web site, and is planning a version for straight daters.

Still, safety concerns may slow the adoption of location-baseddating. Last month, a Los Angeles woman who said she'd been sexuallyassaulted by a date she met online sued Match.com. This and similarincidents may prompt calls for background checks by dating sitesthat would "incur significant additional cost and time delay," saidFiona Orford-Williams, an analyst at Edison Investment Research inLondon.

To ease some of those concerns, FlirtMaps limits geo-localization, leaving any more specific coordinates for users toreveal themselves. Meetic is considering making only men visible onits pending real-time "flirting" service, keeping women's locationsat a given moment mostly off the map.

One major group of sites for singles is holding back from geo-location. Higher-end "matchmaking" sites, which pair partnerslooking for long-term love based on complicated personalityprofiles, "haven't figured out how to make it useful," said PeterSchmid, the chief executive officer of Germany-based Parship.com."We have to be very careful about the use of new technologies."

Even so, matchmaking sites - which promote an electronic, lessexpensive version of "concierge romance services" like those offeredby London's Gray & Farrar International - are moving gingerly towardmobile services. Parship, which operates in countries includingItaly, Britain and France, will roll out an application for Androiddevices this year, complementing an existing iPhone app, Schmidsaid.

Rival ElitePartner, which says it has about 2 million members, isbetting mobile applications will push more users to sign up for paidservices, rather than sticking with a basic free platform. "Mobilewill increase the activity of the member, that's clear," said CEOJost Schwaner. "Our perspective is that when activity rises, youwill migrate into that second level. I'm totally convinced."

In the longer term, mobile dating and matchmaking apps may becomehubs for the sort of virtual currencies now common within Facebookgames like Zynga's FarmVille, with star-crossed daters sending eachother virtual roses, for example, Schwaner said. FlirtMaps isalready in this business, with features like "FlirtBombs," a singlemessage sent to the nearest 100 members, available in exchange forpurchased "FlirtCoins."

Although moving dating to mobile devices may involve peculiarchallenges, there's no reason it couldn't eventually grow even morethan its traditional desktop counterpart, according to FlirtMaps'Franciosa.

"It used to be Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan falling in love over theInternet in 'You've Got Mail,'aEUR S" he said. "But we're in adifferent era now."