[Air-l] Query: surveillance

Nicole Ellison NEllison at csustan.edu
Tue Feb 4 22:13:56 PST 2003


Wired had an article on this topic just today:
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,57394,00.html.
It lists several companies that do variations on this theme.
-Nicole


Ring, Ring! It's Your Soul Mate  

By Elisa Batista  |   Also by this reporter  Page 1 of 1 

02:00 AM Feb. 04, 2003 PT

In the San Francisco Bay Area, where lots of single engineers, programmers
and Web developers lurk, finding a date can be a daunting task. 

That's why Jim Wald, a 37-year-old technical writer in Burlingame,
California, turned to online dating services like Match.com and the personal
ads on craigslist. Wald estimates he has scored between 15 and 20 dates by
posting and responding to online ads. 

"I've met all kinds of women," he said. "I do recommend it." 

But would Wald be open to starting a romance over his cell phone? 

Cell-phone companies apparently think so. 

Now that wireless carriers are setting up the necessary infrastructure to
help emergency dispatchers pinpoint the location of emergency 911 callers,
they are mulling over ways to make money from knowing exactly where
customers are. 

The carriers are required by the Federal Communications Commission to
install location-tracking technology for emergency purposes by 2005. At the
same time, services like cell-phone dating are often bandied about. 

Here's how it would work: Single people would subscribe to the service
online or by text message over their cell phones. They would fill out
applications with their interests. They could also post pictures, because
cell phones increasingly include a camera or image-viewing option. 

When out and about, users could ping the service asking for compatible
singles in the area. After notifying the other members nearby, the system
would provide the user with a list of people in close proximity and their
location. A potential match could be right across the street. 

This type of service is already popular in Japan and some parts of Europe,
where teenagers and 20-somethings often set up rendezvous by cell phone.
AT&T Wireless (AWE) says it has had success with its Find Friends service,
which lets people look up the locations of people on their buddy lists. 

"It is consistently outperforming our expectations," said AT&T Wireless
spokeswoman Danielle Perry. 

SMS.ac, a San Diego, California, company that hosts an online community of
wireless-messaging users, also offers a dating service in which users send
text notes over short-messaging service, or SMS, to people whose profiles
interest them. 

Moviso, a Vivendi Universal (V) company that sells ring tones, games, songs
and other mobile media services to wireless carriers, plans to take that
concept one step further. 

Around Feb. 14 -- Valentine's Day -- the Los Angeles mobile media company
plans to unveil DateTrak, a permission-based system that lets users
anonymously search for people who share their interests, including their
real-time locations. Even though not all carriers have location-tracking
technology in place for the service to work, and the idea of
"location-tracking" gives some people the creeps, Moviso President Shawn
Conahan says such programs' success in Europe and Asia makes him optimistic.


Last month, Conahan tried to get into a nightclub in Las Vegas where the
bouncer at the door demanded that an equal number of women and men be
allowed to enter. He was by himself, so he scrambled through the line
looking for other single people to enter with him. If his proposed service,
DateTrak, were available, he said, he could have punched in a message asking
for other wireless users in the area to go to the club with him. 

"The original intent of location-based services was safety," Conahan said.
"But that capability enables another layer (of services) on top of it. I can
take a picture of myself and post it onto a server that Moviso operates for
a dating application, let's say." 

Even though Conahan emphasized that it's up to the user to choose what
information to post -- if any -- some of the biggest fans of online dating
were unmoved. 

"I will try anything, but it does sound a little bit intrusive," said Wald,
who was recently perusing ads on craigslist. "If you are out and about and
getting these pages, 'Hey, I know where you are!' I think that might freak
people out." 

Heather O'Neal, a 28-year-old media strategist in Ashland, Oregon, who met
her current boyfriend, Nick, through the SMS.ac service, agreed. 

"That sounds kind of scary to me, just because it gives out my address," she
said. "First you have to talk to someone for a while. I would definitely
want to see them and know they are not a psycho." 

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrejevic, Mark [mailto:MAndrejevic at mail.fairfield.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 9:57 PM
To: 'air-l at aoir.org'
Subject: [Air-l] Query: surveillance


Hi Folks,
I'm trying to track down a fascinating web site I came across a while back
devoted to a dating service that worked via cell phone: the idea was to
allow eligble singles to know when they were in the vicinity of each other.
If they subscribed to the service they would be alerted when other members
were nearby so they could call one another "spontaneously" for a cup of
coffee, etc. I haven't been able to find this service online, and just
thought I'd check to see if anyone might have any leads. This is for work
I'm doing on lateral surveillance/mutual monitoring.
Thanks so much!
Mark 


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