Mobile phone flirting 'is hotting up'

Spending on flirting and dating services on mobiles phones showed signs of hotting up, official figures show, reports the BBC.

Mobile and online flirting services reported a boom in sales of "virtual gifts" - such as a virtual kiss sent to somebody's mobile.

Men are more likely to phone flirt, the report said.

Some 63% of users were men, with 18 to 34-year-olds the most likely to use the premium rate flirting services.

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How Technology Has Changed the Way We Break Up

A new book exploring how technology has changed the way we end relationships. Newsweek reports.

Ilana Gershon decided to study how new technology has changed the rules of romance. She interviewed 72 undergrads, 18 men and 54 women, who shared stories of being dumped via texting, voice mail, Facebook, instant messaging, Skype, and even occasionally an actual paper letter.

The results in her new book, The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media. Almost all the people she talked to agreed that the most honorable way to break up was in person, but many turned to new media because the face-to-face conversations didn’t get the results they wanted, Gershon says.

Read full review.

Text messages become a growing weapon in dating violence

The Washington Post on "textual harassment," a growing aspect of dating violence at a time when cellphones and unlimited texting plans are ubiquitous among the young. It can be insidious, because messages pop up at the sender's will: Where r u? Who r u with? Why didnt u answer me?

... One challenge is that many teens do not view excessive texting as a problem and may not recognize abusive behaviors. "If you're getting 50 messages an hour and you want 50 messages an hour, that's not a problem," says Marjorie Gilberg, executive director of Break the Cycle, which works to end dating violence. "But if you're getting 50 messages an hour and

Read full article

Cell Phones Open New Vistas in Middle East

The rapid spread of cell phones in the Middle East over the past decade has created a new space for young people in closed societies to interact and express themselves while providing activists with more efficient ways to organize massive political campaigns. In so doing, mobile technology is reshaping the region's cultural landscape.

[via Cellular News]

Looking back:

-- Phone technology aids UAE dating - Technology is aiding the secret liaisons of young men and women in the conservative culture of the United Arab Emirates.

-- Custodians of morality must reckon with cellphones (Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states) -Even the fiercest custodians of morality haven't reckoned with cellphones. Nowadays a boy and girl can stand in a busy Saudi mall, behaving like complete strangers while text-messaging intimacies to each other".

-- Saudi Arabia sets jail penalties for camera phone misuse -One year prison sentences and fines of $134,000 for Internet hacking and misuse of mobile telephone cameras, such as taking unauthorised pictures.

-- Kuwait's approves Bluetooth sanctions - Kuwait's National Assembly's Legislative Affairs Committee approved on Saturday a governmental proposal to place stricter sanctions on misusing the feature of Bluetooth wireless technology.

-- UAE - Police sound warning over obscene SMS - People who use mobile phones to send pornographic images or indecent SMS messages will henceforth have to face imprisonment, a United Arab Emirat police source has warned.

-- Saudi jails three for filming rape with mobiles - A Saudi court has sent three men to prison for orchestrating and filming the rape of a teenage girl in a case that has shocked the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

-- Saudi to punish "immoral" use of 3G phones - Saudi Arabia will punish anyone using third generation (3G) mobile phones for purposes deemed immoral in the conservative Muslim kingdom, the state telecommunications regulator says.

-- Female Students With Mobile Phones Face Campus Ban, Fines- Saudi - Female college students carrying cameraphones on campus in any college in Saudi Arabia could face a SR500 fine and 3-year suspension under recent regulations issued by the Ministry of Education.

-- Will Saudi Arabia lift ban on cam-equipped mobiles? - Four Saudi ministries have appealed to King Fahd to reverse a ban on camera-equipped mobile phones in the kingdom.

-- Religious edict bars camera phones in Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority has issued an edict barring the use of cell phones with built-in cameras, blaming them for "spreading obscenity" — a final resort after a ban on their sale and import to the kingdom failed to dent their popularity.

-- Saudi women beaten for mobile phone snapping - Two Saudi women were badly beaten by other female guests at a wedding party in the kingdom when they were seen using a mobile phone to photograph the segregated celebration.

-- Mobile pictures spark violence - A wedding party in Saudi Arabia turned violent after a female guest was caught using her mobile phone to take digital photographs of other women at the celebration.

-- Footage of an assault in Saudi Arabia through cameraphones - A rape scandal broke after the two men reportedly circulated footage of the assault through mobile phones equipped with cameras.

-- Woman fired over mobile snapshots - A Saudi woman has been expelled from her university for taking pictures of unveiled colleagues with a camera-equipped mobile phone osting them on the Internet.

-- Saudi Arabia and phonecams When the Saudi people finally rise up in revolt and throw out the House of Saud," fellow Saudi blogger, Alhamedi Alanezi says, " it won't be for democratic reform, and it won't be for an islamic republic. It'll be about mobile phones".

-- Saudi Arabia enforces ban on camera phones - The Saudi government began enforcing a ban on the sale of camera-equipped mobile phones.

-- Banned Camera Phones Selling Like Hot Cakes in Jeddah's Black Market - Mobile camera phones are hot sellers this Eid season - a celebration to mark the end of Islam's holiest season - despite a Kingdomwide ban and a significant increase in retail price.

Also

- Kuwait: Three years jail proposed for misuse of Bluetooth - A senior member of parliament has proposed a draft law stipulating a jail term of between six months and three years for the misuse of the Bluetooth technology, especially in mobile phones, in invading personal privacy.

The Telegraph on textual infidelity

An insightful article from The Telegraph on textual infidelity.

... The technology that has allowed the working day to expand into a 24/7 slog conducted via iPhone and BlackBerry has no less enabled a hot and heavy culture of permanent flirtation; a flirtation, moreover, where the virtual may effortlessly elide into the physical.

Can Deleted Text Messages be Retrieved? Yes

The New York Times reports on how text messages are being used in court cases to prove that a partner has strayed.

But one question most people ask is what happens to text messages once they are deleted.

Even though you delete an incriminating SMS from your own phone, it can remain on the recipients phone and in your wireless carrier's system. Carriers stores them for anywhere from days to a few weeks (at most). According to The NYTimes article, AT&T said saves text messages for 72 hours while Verizon for 5 to 10 days.

Can deleted text messages be retrieved from the phone itself? According to eZine articles, the answer is yes.

Your Sim card doesn't immediately erase a file once you delete it. Instead it just frees up the space that was occupied by that file (massage) and lists its space as available re-usable space. However until that space is overwritten by new data, in your case new messages, phone numbers etc., your old deleted file is still there and can be recovered.

With recovery programs, such as SIM Card Data Recovery Software, you can recover deleted text messages, deleted phone numbers, call logs and plenty of other deleted data from your SIM.

Love in the Age of SMS

Things were simpler when the only medium for asking someone out was the telephone. Text messaging, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have complicated romance, if not ruined it, The Washington Post reports.

[via Gawker]

Flirting by Text Message, Indians Test Social Limits

Text messages have become an integral part of courtships in many countries. But SMS is proving particularly revolutionary in India, where it is paving a way for the young to maneuver around deep-rooted barriers to premarital mingling.

... Because many young Indians will marry only someone their parents approve of, and in some cases choose, much of this text messaging is recreational.

[via The New York Times]

Mobile Dating in London Bars

ICE brkr brings a brand new approach to dating.

Their mobile dating application lets you send a friendly message to someone you find attractive in a bar. And if a nice message comes back you both get together immediately for a chat.

[Press release]

match.com mobile

The leading online dating site match.com - with over 15 million subscribers - has a mobile version.

match.com mobile enables mobile users to connect anonymously with singles nearby. [via the Associated Press]

MeetMoi

MeetMoi turns your cellphone into your own personal matchmaker, enabling you to meet texty singles wherever you go. [via Smart Mobs]

How does it work? First complete an online profile about yourself and who you want to meet. Then, open your phone and text your location to 94810.

At this point, you will become available to MeetMoi members in your area. If your interests overlap, your profile will be sent to their phones, and at the same time, you will receive their profiles on your phone.

The next step is to search through those profiles and find someone you like. When you do, you can send an anonymous chat through the MeetMoi gateway. "

Are there testimonials? Not yet, but to illustrate a point, they made one up. Check them out!

Crush or Flush: Hot or Not for Mobile Phones

On Monday, a wireless startup from Seattle called IceBreaker (run by some ex-Microsofties) will launch Crush or Flush - a mobile version of Hot or Not, with an added twist. Business2.0 reports.

"On your cell phone, you can cycle through pictures of men and women and either "crush" them or "flush" them. You can search by location or by some of the self-describing tags people put on their profiles. If two people crush each other, they both get a text message inviting them to chat with each other anonymously (via text, for now—with anonymous voice calling in the works). "

High-Tech Breakups Are Quick But Inflict a Special Pain

Almost one in 10 cellphone users age 18 to 34 have "texted" someone out of their romantic lives, according to a survey released this week by Virgin Mobile USA. That stat doesn't even include emailed kiss-offs.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

Say It With Txt

Digital love letters are easy to send, but hard to cherish, writes the WSJ.

"Love letters aren't what they used to be. While young correspondents have committed their deepest feelings to paper for centuries, the latest generation of lovers is coming of age along with new technologies that let them court each other on the run.

The passionate essays penned on Valentine's Days past have morphed into bursts of instant-message affection. Confessions once sealed in envelopes are now dashed off in email.

... The immediacy of high-tech love letters can be exhilarating; there's no waiting for a ship to cross an ocean with news that someone finds you irresistible. However, while older generations have treasured handwritten love letters wrapped in ribbons, many of today's young romantics will end up with little tangible proof that anyone ever cared about them. Unsaved emails disappear. Text messages are gone forever if a cellphone breaks or gets lost."

Read Love's Labors Not Lost, Just Kept in the Closet

Go see it if it comes to your part of town, a wonderful and moving play called Love Letters, by A.R. Gurney. "Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it centers on two characters, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepiece Ladd III. Using the epistolary form sometimes found in novels, they sit side by side at tables and read the correspondence - in which they discuss their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, and victories and defeats - that has passed between them throughout their lives. It is only at the end that they both realize they were really love letters at their core. "

AT&T reveals results of annual study on wireless courtesy and dating

For the fourth year, Cingular Wireless, part of the new AT&T, has commissioned a survey of adult cell phone users to determine how cell phones have affected their romantic lives. Some findings from the survey:

-- Thirty-eight percent of respondents said that a date answered his or her wireless phone in the midst of a great dinner conversation while 31 percent said they had done the same

-- Twenty-eight percent have used text messaging to avoid long conversations

-- Seventeen percent reported that a wireless phone has saved them from an uncomfortable date

-- Twelve percent have used text messaging news as a conversation starter with a date or mate

-- Eight percent of respondents say they have ended a relationship over rude/offensive wireless behavior

-- Five percent of respondents have called someone else he or she was interested in from a wireless phone while on a date and seven percent reported that their date had done so

-- Six percent have judged a prospective date by the phone they use

Also significant in the survey results, 59 percent of active daters use text messaging to communicate with their dates, while only 30 percent of those who are married.

[Press release]

PartyStrands links real and virtual world partying

USA Today writes up partyStrands - "which gives people a new way to use their cellphones to interact with nightclub entertainment systems and each other.

By sending a text message with their favorite recording artist, they immediately begin to influence the music selection as the club's DJ or computer-based sound system works the newcomer's chosen singers into the mix. Each user's "party name" appears on video monitors around the bar, along with an avatar icon and, if they choose, an Internet link to their personal MySpace or Facebook page."

Previously: - Influencing a music festival by SMS

"Nurse" bleeds lonely hearts with flirty SMS

A Chinese company has duped about 400,000 people by creating the character of a young female nurse to solicit text messages and collect revenue from lonely men, reports Reuters.

"The Beijing-based company employed a team of 12 or 13 people -- mostly men -- to act as "Wang Jing", a 22-year-old nurse who would invite mobile phone users to become her online boyfriend and to seek her out "whenever they felt lonely", the Beijing News said.

"Yang", who would receive up to 2,000 text messages from people all over China in a single shift, said the nurse scam had reaped hundreds of thousands of yuan a month, a Chinese newspaper reported.

... Text message scams and unsolicited spam flogging everything from real estate to weapons are common in China, where telecommunication service providers allow companies to bombard mobile phones for a cut of the profits."

Insight on "SMS Sex Chat" services in a Wired article posted yesterday: Backstage With a Text Actress

Crush or Flush2: new social mobile dating service

GigaOM writes up a new mobile social dating service called Crush or Flush2 created by software company Ice Breaker, due to launch next Monday.

Crush or Flush2 is a mobile dating application that lets users choose between photos of propsective dates that are either “crush” worthy or “flushable”.

Crush or Flush lets you flirt, chat, and meet new people while you are on the go. It’s fun, easy to use, and there’s nothing else like it. You can chat people up, or just check people out and hook up your friends using your mobile phone or your computer (PC or Mac).

Virgin Mobile to Launch Text Message 'Dating' Game

According to the WSJ, Virgin Mobile USA is set to announce today the launch of a dating text message game that allow its customers to test if they have the right moves in approaching others for romance.

"The game, developed by Vibes Media, puts players on a virtual date where they respond to questions and react to situations.

For example, if a female player is losing momentum, the response might be, "C'mon, throw him a bone once in a while -- the poor guy can't tell if u like him or NOT." Then she will receive a message with several choices. Each text message choice brings the player one step closer to getting a virtual date, or striking out."

Don’t tell a lie on your mobile phone

Another lie detecting technology scheme for cell phones, to help lovers find out if feelings are true. From KTF. Telecoms Korea reports.

"Korean mobile opeprator KTF is launching a "hierarchical voice leading analysis service in association with Seoul based start-up EGTEK."

According to KTF, "the technology was used by the Israeli intelligence agency MOSSAD and this is the first time that the anti-terrorism technology was applied to mobile entertainment service. " This must be another version of a similar service luanched in 2004 (?) because it reads just like it:

"The “Love Detector” service analyzes the voice of caller and informs users of the level of affection in the voice. After ending the phone conversation, the user is informed by MMS of how much the other enjoyed, focused or got embarrassed during the conversation.

“Truth in Calls” service lets users know whether the other is telling a lie. Users also receive the results of trust level and stress level of the person he or she talked to on the phone. "

Related articles:

-- Mobile phones as lie detectors - KTF, a Korean wireless service provider, launched a service in August of this year, that detects emotions in a speaker's voice.

-- Nokia smartphones as lie detectors - A new application from AgileMobile.com for smartphones such as the Nokia 7650, 3650 and 6600, turns these into portable lie detectors. The company behind it says it's for entertaiment purposes only

New UK Service Matches People Via Mobile Phone

A new site called YourMyCrush.com allows mobile phone users to find out if the person that they admire feels the same way about them through an anonymous means.

A user who has a crush on someone will come to the site and fill in the details of their ‘crush’ including their mobile number. The ‘crush’ will get a n SMS letting them know that someone fancies them, directing them to the website. The ‘crush’ goes to the site and enters the details of the person that they hope it is, once again this includes a mobile number. The system then checks the details against all the original crushes already sent from the site, if there is a match it lets both people know and helps suggest ways in which to start their new relationship.

If YourMyCrush.com does not detect a match then it will send on the new crush to the new person, at this point the cycle continues once again.

The service is presently limited to UK mobile phone networks but will shortly be providing access to other countries in Europe and the rest of the world.
[press release]

Love Detector

Love Detetor A new cellphone service in Turkey, Hungary, and the UK allows callers to determine whether they're speaking to loves them, reports Gizmodo.

In their own words:

"During the call, our server will monitor the excitement levels and other related parameters your friend is demonstrating, and will calculate the "Love-Level" as detected in the conversation. Once the conversation has ended, the final report will be sent to your cellular phone using SMS or audio message! The final report is not only about the "Love-Level", and includes other parameters, like "Concentration", "Embarrassment" and even "Anticipation"."

Bluedating

Aljazeera reports on "Bluedating", or strangers on trains sending each other messages via bluetooth in order to possibly meet up. Al Jazzera reporter, Sakhr al-Makhadhi, interviews some people and gives it a shot.

"Self-confessed bluedating-queen Mammy Kufuor says it is a no-risk way of finding a partner: "It's quite a safe way to meet people, you can normally see them straight away, so if you don’t like them, there’s no damage done." ... she says it is a growing phenomenon. "I've had quite a few people bluetooth me without me bluetoothing them, all over the country," says the 22-year old. "It's spreading quite quickly, I’m not sure where it started or who started it, but it's one of those word-of-mouth things.

The BBC among many other papers reported on "Bluetoothing in 2004. It was then revealed as a hoax. But news from more credible sources show evidence of real usage of bluetooth for this purpose in (generally concurred) public places.

And it's definitely common practive in some parts of the word:

-- Custodians of morality must reckon with cellphones (Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states)

-- Phone technology aids UAE dating

-- Mobile Phone Is Matchmaker in Singapore

The Joy of Text

Virgin Mobile Canada is excited to reveal its text survey results and launch its latest text aid - a new bilingual book entitled The Joy Of Text, Your Guide to a More Satisfying Text Life.

Some of the (enlightening) figures from the study:

-- 50 per cent of all youth surveyed admitted they've flirted via text
-- 25 per cent of Canadian youth think it's okay to have text sex
-- 69 per cent text in bed
-- 50 per cent text from the bathroom

In a media briefing held today at Virgin Mobile's offices, text kitten and relationship expert Pamela Anderson unveiled and signed the first Joy of Text book, and talked about her love of text, how much she does it, where she likes to do it, who she does it with.

[Press release]

Texting & Dating: Top-Ten Do's & Don'ts

Tegic Communications, maker of popular T9 Text Input software for cell phones, has teamed up with John Gray, author of best-seller Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and AOL Love & Sex Coach, to offer the top-ten tips to help ensure a successful union of texting and dating in 2006. [Press Release]

For instance:

-- DO wait until at least the third date before you engage in "textual relations" with a new love interest.

-- DON'T read too much into whether he or she has (or hasn't!) signed off with X's and O's for kisses and hugs.

SMS as evidence in divorce court

According to IOL, text messaging are ending up in court as evidence of infidelity in about a third of divorce cases in Poland.

"More and more often people are attaching text messages found on their spouse's mobile telephones to their divorce papers," Judge Maria Taront told the Wednesday edition of Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

"Messages like: 'You gave me so much pleasure yesterday', 'I'm waiting for the next night', 'Darling, the alarm is off. she says, adding that faced with such strong evidence cheaters have little possibility to deny infidelity.

"This is usually enough to find them responsible for the marriage falling apart," she says.

... If the court is uncertain whether a racy text message is just a joke, judges request billing documents which can reveal telling patterns and the intensity of SMS contact.

Related:

-- Texting sparks affairs (UK)

-- Cell phones exposing more cheating spouses (Singapore)

-- Unfaithful Italians betrayed by text messaging

-- Text Messaging causes MP divorce in South Africa

Lovers stab each other over SMS

Two teenage lovers stabbed each other in Pakistan's Karachi city after the girl refused to show her lover an SMS she received on her mobile telephone, reports the newindpress.com.

"The ‘Daily Times’ said the couple had told the police initially that cell phone snatchers attacked them in Korangi area while they were returning from the Sea View beach. However, police found after questioning them separately that they stabbed each other with sharp objects in anger. Both were said to be in stable condition.

In Pakistani society, friendship or outside of marriage relationships between males and females is uncommon and considered a taboo.

Women are even sometimes killed by their relatives for disgracing their family "honour" by marrying or having relationships with men of their choice."

Phone text nails a rapist

A rapist was trapped when he sent his victim a text message saying sorry, according to The Sun.

"Mark Woodland, 38, met the woman through a text-dating agency. He left his wife and daughter and had a sexual relationship with the 21-year-old woman.

But Woodland, a coach driver, raped her when she tried to end their fling.

The next day he sent her a text saying: “I didn’t mean to rape you.”

Woodland, of Ilminster, Somerset, was convicted of rape and jailed for four years, nine months at Dorchester Crown Court."

Related story happened in 2004: - A rapist with Asperger syndrome apologized to his victim in the other room by SMS

How cellphones may beat computers as a dating service

Cellphones are becoming devices not only for reaching people you know but for reaching people you don't know - yet. A must-read WSJ article on mobile dating (free access here).

..." Dating was a natural outgrowth of such communities, says David Friedensohn, chief executive officer of Upoc of New York, which has 40,000 texting communities. "We noticed that a large number of our users were devoted to flirting, dating and meeting people," he says. In July, Upoc launched its first dating service. Since then it has attracted about 25,000 subscribers, at $4.99 a week, he says.

Match.com, one of the largest online dating services, has offered such a service on cellphones since February 2003. Users can upload short profiles of themselves and search for matches by gender, age and geographic location by ZIP Codes, among other criteria. " ...

Above picture from text-dating.net

Flirtomatic

Flirtomatic, based in London, is a new mobile and web based flirting service that allows people to connect and meet, by matching their profile with others. Presently in beta test.

In their own words: Flirtomatic makes it quick and easy to see who is out there, send and receive flirty messages and chat live.

[via Cool Hunting]