Skout’s online dating service and iPhone application are being launched at the 6th annual Internet Dating Conference in Miami, Florida, January 22nd and 23rd, 2009.

“When I founded Match.com, I envisioned how the internet could change the way singles discover each other . As we stand at the cusp of mobile convergence, Skout is perfectly positioned to disrupt the online dating market. Skout represents what all dating companies must become to not only just remain relevant, but to survive,” says Match.com’s founder Gary Kremen.

The Skout dating service is available on virtually every mobile phone with a browser as well as via a laptop or desktop computer by visiting http://www.skout.com .

“We are very excited about today’s release of our Skout dating platform and the SKOUT iPhone application,” says Skout Founder and CEO Christian Wiklund. “We’re making it easy for singles to discover others with similar interests, using location information and mobile phones. Skout brings cheer to people who are on the go and typically don’t have time to find someone special.”

According to Juniper Research, the mobile dating market will reach 1.4 billion dollars by 2013. Skout is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this growing market.

About Skout
Skout is a mobile, real-time, location-based dating platform that helps people meet singles in their vicinity by chatting and sharing photos and other user-generated content. The company is based in San Francisco, CA. The service is available on over 10,000 mobile devices, as an iPhone application, and on any Internet-connected laptop or desktop computer.

website: Skout.com

Meetmoi.com isn’t a new concept, in fact a Japanese manufacturer produced a small egg sized device back in the late 90’s that you could program with a very simple profile, and take it with you to a bar or a public place. If you got close to someone that was interested in that profile, the device would light up, make a sound or buzz. Similar to the devices you get at the restaurant when you’re waiting for a table.

The Japanese perfected location-based dating and tracking early on, since the general public was not concerned with privacy or tracking issues like Americans were. In fact, it took until 2006 for celphone makers to actually unlock the celphone GPS chipsets and give developers access to the technology. By the time the American public demand was enough such that it overrode the ‘privacy’ concern blocking the release.

Meetmoi.com is a solid first start, seems they have venture funding backing them, but the subscription charge is a bit steep, and it’s definitely a volume game. If you do the quick math, i.e. 50 states, x 100 cities in each state give or take, then 10 main bars within each city, well that’s 50,000 unique locations. If you had 50,000 users, or even 100,000 users, and all of them happened to be online at the same time, then you might meet one or two people. So in order for this to work, you’d have to have a gargantuan user base like Facebook or Myspace in order to really meet someone, as the odds are going to be about 10% to 15% of people will be online and out at any one particular time.

Other ideas have been presented along these lines within the location-based computing effort that started in the US in around 2002-2004. In fact the most promising applications seemed to come from the gay community, as there was a high demand for real-time, instant ‘hook-ups’ in already established known locations. Also, it was an affinity group that was not shy about hooking up, so meetmoi.com could get its legs through the gay community.

Over all, meetmoi.com is a a great way to meet up with someone while traveling, as it truly is location based, and in real-time.