High-Tech Dating: 5 Sites for Spotting Singles
Jan. 21, 2011— -- All dressed up and nowhere to go? If you're looking to scout out some singles, an array of websites and smartphone applications are at the ready to help you find someone to keep you warm on a cold winter's night.
Traditional dating sites may help you plan a rendezvous for the future, but newer location-oriented services can tell you where potential dates might be right now.
Some are dedicated mobile dating platforms that use GPS technology to help you find potential matches in your immediate vicinity. Others use location information to show you where you're more likely to find members of the sex you're interested in. All give singles a high-tech way to plot a night out on the town.
Check out five sites below:
Using data from the location-based social network Foursquare, Ratio Finder maps out local businesses based on where men and women tend to congregate.
The site calculates Foursquare check-ins by gender and then visualizes the data on a map, currently only available in New York and San Francisco.
Want to know where you have the highest odds of finding the ladies or the gents? Ratio Finder displays a map of the city with dots of different sizes indicating places of interest. Pink dots refer to female check-ins, blue dots to male check-ins. The bigger the dot, the more popular the place is among members of that particular sex.
The New York map, for example, shows a giant pink dot over the rooftop garden cafe at the Metropolitan Musuem of Art, where it says there are 91 percent more females.
If you want to meet other singles while you're on the go, MeetMoi uses your phone to update your location information in real time and send you alerts when potential matches are nearby.
The service exists as an application for iPhones and Android phones and uses GPS technology to help users meet people while they're out and about.
Users set up a profile with the service, indicating what they're looking for in a date. When MeetMoi finds two nearby users with matching preferences, it sends each a message, opening the door for conversation.
If they want to meet up, they have an hour to take the next step. MeetMoi is free to join, but has a premium service for a monthly subscription fee.
