The 3G Dating Agency’s Blog

Due to requests from BBC Viewers who were disappointed that the BBC didn’t show any of my pitch in the Den – here is what I said:

>WALKED UP THE STAIRS AND PLACED THE LARGE SOFTBOARD BACKED 3G DATING AGENCY LOGO ON THE DISPLAY EASLE<

“Hi, My name is Romi Parmar and I am the CEO and founder of The 3G Dating Agency. I am here today to offer X% of my company and am looking for an investment of £X.

We’ve launched a safe multimedia mobile dating community that can be accessed from any network and on any handset that can access the internet. It is also available via a PC.

The service is completely free to join and this takes less than 2 mins. In fact as it is a live service it can be accessed right now by viewers on their mobile phones as they are watching this programme.

We’re completely unique in that:

> The service is designed from the ground up FOR MOBILE

> The service offers great value because it’s;
• Free to join
• Free to create a profile
• Free to browse
• Free to receive messages from other members.
• The only time you ever need to pay is when you want to send or reply to a message, and the cost is only 50p per message.

So this is NOT a premium rate or subscription service and because it’s prepaid the customer remains in complete control of their spending.

The Global dating industry is currently worth $2 billion. In 2007 over 30% of this was made up from Online Dating Service revenues – where average individual monthly spend is $25 per month. The size of this opportunity is all the more impressive when you consider that this entire industry has developed from nothing to this in less than 10 years. In that same period 6 billion people on our planet have gone Mobile. In the next 12 months it is predicted that more people will be accessing the internet via their mobile phones than via a PC.

Following on from a successful UK Trade and Investment mission to attend Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, we have been approached by leading brands from around the globe who want to bring the 3G Dating experience to their customers. In the UK we have signed a deal and are working with the leading high street mobile phone retailer Phones 4U. This Friday we launched a co-branded marketing campaign with them that provides The 3G Dating Agency “Guide to Mobile Dating” in the box of new phones being sold to a tightly targeted 20 to 34 year old segment of their customer base.

In the first year we are conservatively looking to attract approx 9334 paying customers to our service and this will generate approximately 817K of revenue in the first year.

Thank you for listening, do you have any questions?

<END OF PITCH>

Sorry to have taken out the amount we asked for and the percentage we were offering – we’ve done this because we think it may have been a little generous! If you’re interested, why not make an investment enquiry?

Tonight I pitched our safe mobile dating community to the Dragons on the popular BBC Reality TV programme Dragons Den.

I hope you saw me, if you didn’t check it out on the BBC Website iPlayer or watch the repeat on BBC1 this Sunday at 7pm. If you’re outside the UK – see it on YouTube.

The editor hasn’t done anyone any favors by not showing my presentation and choosing such flippant remarks from all those which were recorded from my 20 minutes in the Den. The comment from Duncan Bannatyne where he says “I like your suit” for example is such a throw away comment that it makes me wonder why they continue to pretend this is a serious business program despite the mounting evidence.

On the plus side one look at our site statistics shows that the service has definitely proved a hit with the viewers – currently we have record numbers of visitors!

Join now for free and you can take a look at all the new profiles the viewers are creating!

Haven’t got a 3G Video Phone yet? Well hurry on over to Phones 4U and get the best deal on the latest handsets from any network and together with next day delivery we’ll give you £30 of free credit to spend on 3G Dating!

Kate Alvarez in the Sunday Times suggests that the Facebook phenomenon’ days are numbered and that it’s no longer cool to share photos and silly videos, do endless quizzes, promote favorite mobies, books and music and send cute little icons to your friends as gifts…

Despite the mounting evidence that social networking is here to stay maybe this is just a sign that you may have too much time on your hands and might be better off getting off the computer and getting out there meeting new friends?

The BBC lists the names of the next willing contestants to enter the Dragons Den.

“Will the Dragons prefer to form a relationship with Romi Parmar from Bedford who hopes to woo them with his 3G Dating Agency for mobile phones?

View the BBC Show Trailer on You Tube

View the BBC Show Trailer on the BBC  Website (UK only)

Please check back here for as-it-happens updates during tonights show…

3G iPhone Mania was late to hit Japan but now after a month on the market local blogger “Nanchatte TechnoJunkie” points out that wider adoption is being limited by the absence of functions that westerners might feel are unnecessary. Amongst these are deal breakers such as the inability to text with one hand, no Emoji (Japan’ standardized emoticons), no strap hole and no infrared transmitter…

American readers are probably scratching their heads to think of the need for an infrared transmitter – who/why would anyone want one of those?

But in Japan all phones now come with other smart features that extend their use beyond that of just voice and text. In this case an IR or Bluetooth transmitter this enables communication to happen outside of the mobile network by simply “beaming” your vcard (address, phone number, photo, profile and other private details) to another persons phone. These are standard and work across any carrier, any make, brand or generation of Japanese phone.

According to the blogger “not having an infrared transmitter means you’ll never get the phone number or email address of a potential pick-up at a bar: Congratulations, you’ve effectively ostracized yourself from the dating circuit.”

Wow… isn’t it amazing how a user can find this simple dating function can be a deal breaker for an otherwise very popular mobile?

If you’ve watched any late night TV you’ll have seen plenty of these ridiculously unbelievable commercials… but aren’t they getting a bit much?

They definitely have for the guy in this funny YouTube Video – because he agrees with us that the days when any normal person would fall for the idea of texty flirting are numbered!

Good news for users of Apples 3G iPhone as Qik announces support for the 3G iPhone to make it possible for users of this new device to make live streaming video calls over 3G.

Simply let us know you have the iPhone 3G when completing your personal profile, find a mirror (because there isn’t a front facing camera) and we’ll be sure to video validate you with a Qik Mobile Video Call.

Thanks for the great work Michael!

Tonight i appeared again on BBC’s Dragons Den as another brief introduction to my pitch that will be screened on the 15th of August.

The programme also featured NavSpy a mobile tracking company that was voted out without an offer by all of the dragons. Whilst location based mobile services have had very few market successes and i share Tomi Ahonens scepticism on this area i was surprised by the comments Deborah Meadon and Peter Jones used to show Giancarlo Calderini the door.

Deborah Meadon claimed she couldn’t see the point of social networking – despite the mounting evidence of the opportunity shown by the likes of Facebook which has created its investors a $15 Billion fortune in less than 4 years, her own companies are already spending advertising $’s within these networks and the fact that 25 million professionals already participate in the online business social networking community LinkedIn.

Peter Jones dismissed the enormous security opportunities of Mobile Location Based Services and laughed at what he thought was a ridiculous idea because “wives might be able to find out their husbands are in the pub when they should be at work”. Very odd particularly when one realises that this is the same Peter Jones who has invested for some years now in a Mobile CCTV business – by the sounds of his security scepticism who knows maybe his own company has had some security lapses of their own where wives were able to “see” their husbands in the pub!

Giles Hattersley of The Sunday Times reports on how the growth of text messaging is breaking down social barriers & encouraging instant flirtations!

…and reveals how far the mobile messaging phenomenum has spread by revealing who sent Prince Harry a birthday text message wishing him many happy returns…

The BBC reports today on a study of more than1,000 children and 1,030 parents by online identity experts Garlik found that use of social networking sites by children is now common and as many as 25% 8-12 year olds are ignoring age restrictions to use social networking sites with 13+/15+ age restrictions, such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

> More than a quarter of the 8-15 year-olds questioned admitted they have strangers as “friends” on social networking sites
> 20% say they have met up with strangers they first encountered online.
> 2/3 have posted personal information on their pages, including details of the school they attend and their Mobile number.
> 25% of parents said they secretly log into their child’s networking page to check they aren’t befriending strangers.

The research warned that Social Networking environments meant children were mixing with people much older than them, and with 25% of parents admitting to secretly logging into their child’s networking page obviously it’s also common for adults to be online pretending to be children.