Courtship is a timeless ritual practiced by individuals around the globe. In the same way that governments, science and philosophy have evolved so has this enigmatic custom. In recent times technology and the internet have facilitated far more efficient dating than ever before. In fact, according to Jupiter research, internet dating is estimated to have become a $649 million industry in the United States in 2006. Recently a potentially disruptive technology has appeared within the dating landscape which could possibly shake up the internet dating industry. Companies such as MeetMoi (www.meetmoi.com) a VC backed start-up based in New York, have brought the courtship process to the mobile phone. This service allows users to connect with suitable singles that are currently out-and-about in the same vicinity using anonymous text and picture messaging.
Looking at dating through the Innosight, "Jobs to be done lens we see that many daters are over served in multiple dimensions. Most internet dating sites such as Match.com, LavaLife, Yahoo Dating and JDate stress the number of users and extremely detailed profiles as must-have features. Yet, most daters cannot benefit from more than one (or a few) good matches or necessary details. Instead, most daters are looking to "fill a lonely moment or "meet someone interesting now. While certain features, such as the ability to instant message through internet based-dating sites, allow some degree of immediacy, location based mobile dating could potentially change the paradigm.
The greatest question lies in the reaction of incumbent dating service providers. Will incumbents brush-aside the potential threat from mobile dating in order to continue serving their highly lucrative on-line subscribers better, or will they re-allocate resources to take on the potential threat from mobile? Further, is mobile dating a disruptive force or simply a sustaining feature that internet dating companies can choose to adopt? Whichever way the competition for daters pans out we are likely just at the beginning of the mobile dating phenomena.