Dating while you travel

By Sean O'Neill
October 3, 2012
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If hotel lobbies aren't your kind of dating scene, you may be interested to learn about three new dating services that are available via cell phone.

This month, Match.com launched a mobile dating service that allows its more than one million paying members to send messages to potential dates from their phones, according to Reuters. The service costs an additional $5 a month on top of the $17 a month members pay for six-month contracts.

Want something faster? MeetMoi is a new "location-based" dating service. You send a text-message to the website providing your current Zip Code or street address. MeetMoi then tells you if there are any other members of the service who have said they're looking for a date in your area. You also receive info about people whose profiles match your criteria. The service is free to join and costs 99 cents for 10 anonymous text messages. [via SmartMobs]

Prefer to talk to someone before you meet them? Zogo is a dating service that connects singles who want to talk by smartphone. Surf to Zogo.com on your phone's Web browser and see a list of singles who meet the criteria you've provided. If you find a member's profile interesting, you can click to ask for a phone call with the person. Zogo then passes along your request to the person via text message. If the other person agrees, you can have an instant phone conversation without each member learning the other's phone number. The service is currently free. [via the Orlando Sentinel]

About 3.6 million U.S. cell phones subscribers used a mobile dating service in May, the most recent month with available data, according to the research firm M:Metrics.

Photo: MeetMoi publicity

Here's advice on flirting for women travelers, as two bar owners and authors told our readers in the 2007 issue of Girlfriend Getaways.

Are you comfortable with dating on the fly? Or do these cell phone services make you queasy? Feel free to sound off by posting a comment below.

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