The 3G Dating Agency’s Blog

Tune in to “Dragons Den On Tour” tomorrow (Wednesday) night at 9pm BBC2 to get an update on our progress.

As visitors to our blog you’ll know the Dragons declined the investment opportunity on the basis of Peter Jones claim that we needed to partner with a Mobile Operator in order to have any chance of success. Whilst the App Store had only just launched at the time of filming it’s clear that the mobile market has transformed in the last 12 months with the ability for independent Mobile Service Providers to be discovered and promoted without doing a deal with a mobile operator.

The biggest lesson I’ve learnt in life is that you don’t always have to invent something completely new and ground-breaking, just something that everyone WANTS – and if you sit around waiting for divine intervention you’ll probably never get around to launching anything or making any money!

As always feedback and comments are very welcome…

Samsung have launched their latest touchscreen with gorgeous girl band The Saturdays in a photo shoot reminiscient of the 1963 Lewis Morley photograph of Christine Keeler.

Available from Phones 4U with £35 of credit to spend on 3G Dating…

As President Obama warns children of the dangers of posting on open social networking sites, here’s my favorite example of where an adult got caught out because he was tagged within another persons photos on facebook!

Fibs told by Anglo Irish Bank intern Kevin Colvin to his boss backfired after Kevin excused himself with the good old “something came up at home” necessitating the need to immediately return to New York. Unfortunately it became abundantly clear that this was no major family emergency when his boss found a tagged Facebook photo of Colvin at a Halloween party wearing a fairy outfit and holding a can of beer.

It’s obvious that Obama’s advice shouldn’t just be reserved for the children… watch out that you’re not being tagged within other peoples photos on open social networking sites!

Listening to Eddy Ankrett, Chairman and CEO of Dateline Holdings, PLC, (which runs Dateline in the UK) at iDate 2009 in London on Friday and I just had to make an impromptu video as he started going off subject about how impressed he is with his 3G Smartphone experience and the lessons this can give us all…

Established in 1966, Dateline runs one of the very few offline dating sites offering members inperson face 2 face meetings with trained interviewers and letters sent by snail mail…. Could this be the sign that says times have moved on?

Lesson 1: Turn off your Video Mobile (or at least put it on Silent mode)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HopA_Oh46M&hl=en&fs=1&

1. Direct Marketing…

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: “I am very rich. Marry me!”

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2. Advertising…

You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says: “He’s very rich. Marry him.”

———

3. Telemarketing…

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day, you call and say: “Hi, I’m very rich. Marry me.”

———

4. Public Relations…

You’re at a party and see gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink, you open the door (of the car) ”Marry Me?”

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5. Brand Recognition…

You’re at a party and see gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says:”You are very rich! Can you marry me?”

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6. Customer Feedback…

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: “I am very rich. Marry me!” She gives you a nice hard slap on your face.

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7. Supply and Demand Gap…

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: “I am very rich. Marry me!” And she introduces you to her husband.

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8. Competition eating into your market share…

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say anything, another person come and tell her: “I’m rich. Will you marry me?” and she goes with him.

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9. Mobile Marketing…

You find the profile of a gorgeous girl. You message her. You make a 3G Video Date and impress her with your wit and charm. You ask her to marry you.

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ADAPTED From Jonathan MacDonald

Kim Woodbridge writes an interesting blog over at the (Anti) Social Development and her latest post “10 things i’ve learned in my adventures in Social Dating” discusses her first hand experiences approaching the modern dating after 10 years off the market.

As a read through them it appears obvious that 3G Mobile Dating would eliminate half of these major problems eg.

1. Texting is the new phone call… Making plans via text messaging has replaced the phone call. Part of this may be because I’m dating slightly younger men. And, actually, I don’t mind. I hate talking on the phone and a couple of quick messages is a lot more efficient…. …Of course, I do prefer to speak with someone prior to meeting him because I think a voice can tell you a little about a person but a text is fine for plans.

I wonder how Kim would find a 3G Video Call as first base after a bit of flirty SMS?

2. People are flaky – You can have a series of email conversations, seem interested in each other, and then when it comes time to making plans for meeting they become really flaky about it. I’m not sure if they are shy, anti-social, not presenting themselves honestly, or married but the point to all of this is actually meeting and even though it makes me nervous I have plenty of email buddies and I don’t really need new ones.

I think it’s because over half the profiles are fake. Not only are there huge overseas call centers now being used by dating sites to add conversation and keep subscribers paying their monthly installments BUT there is also nightmare of some members who get carried away pretending they’re someone they’re not… meeting up is avoided as it would lift the lid on their fibbing!

3. “Odd first date requests”

Avoid them by having your first date on a 3G Video Call requiring little preparation/cost.

4. People can be very different online than in person – I had some email conversations with one guy that were a blast – he was so much fun and I couldn’t wait to meet him. Then the 90 minutes that I spent with him were some of the most awkward and uncomfortable minutes of my life

This is because a guy typing an email thread may be a lot more charming particularly if he is one of the “flaky” ones you describe above who may have been practicing flirty email lingo for some time with other women. Whilst it might need you to take a leap of faith, there is no quicker and more surefire way to get to meet the ‘real’ person than with a live face to face 3G Video Date.

6. Alcohol – A lot of first meetings revolve around alcohol in some way. Since I don’t really drink, I’m not really into that. Although it can take the edge off and alcohol would have definitely helped with the guy who wouldn’t speak. I’ve had more alcohol in the last two weeks then in the last 5 years.

When meeting with a date for a first time alcohol consumption not only compromises your personal safety but it also clouds your judgement. You wouldn’t get drunk to go and choose a new car or home so an environment where there is no pressure to drink is always a good idea.

7. People lie – Again, this isn’t so surprising but I try to be straightforward with people.

Lift the veil of dishonesty with Validated Profiles of genuine members and use 3G Video Calls for your first date to avoid nasty surprises when you meet someone who’s advertised himself with a picture from 20 years ago!

8. People are wishy-washy – This ties into being flaky. I’ll get a message from someone I’ve met and that I like asking if I am free on a particular day. I’ll say yes what do you have in mind. He will then say I might be able to clear some time. What?!?! Why did you ask me if I was free if you weren’t.

Because this guy is doing what a lot of men do when they are on a subscription dating site that enables them to send messages to everyone on the database for no extra cost… they use the “machine gun approach” and hit on every single female they can sometimes without even checking out the other members profile. The reason this guy probably had no idea what you meant was because he’d lost the thread of the conversation because he’s concurrently making contact with 100+ other members, and as all women know men aren’t very good at multitasking!

At The 3G Dating Agency members only pay to send messages and at 50p each it makes it worth your while checking out the profile and seeing if you actually want to date that person before sending them first contact.

9. I’ll call you tomorrow – Oh, this one is still going strong. Men can’t seem to get over this line. If you have no intention of calling, don’t say anything or say it was nice meeting you. Or don’t say it and then call three days later. Silly silly games. People really don’t know how to be honest.

Again this one goes back to the honesty step. A dating site full of genuine validated profiles and offering the ability to immediately set up 3G Video Dates helps deter the fake profiles of the dishonest dreamers.

10. Mismatch – This one is still going strong too. The ones you like are the ones you never hear back from. And the ones that you didn’t like are the ones that ask you to go out again.

In my opinion the trick to avoiding the mismatch is to get to meet more genuine people in less time. Stop wasting your time waiting at your computer for replies or contact, wasting time getting ready for/travelling to & from dates, and spending time with people you wished you’d just walked straight back out on (but you didn’t want to be rude). We’ve designed the 3G Dating Agency to help you get the replies and make the contact straight from your mobile phone AND avoid the costs and time traveling for first dates by enjoying a 3G Video Call to meet up in person…

A rather convincing editorial by Zosia Bielski in the Glove and Mail hit my desk this morning with claims that mobiles are already somehow acting like radars that are able to automatically search out available lovers in your vicinity… apparently using GPS the phone can “detect another” “potential” date who is 2 blocks away and vibrate to try and get you to hook up.

“Dick sees Jane. Jane sees Dick. Their phones have tabulated the distance between them, exchanged information about their age, employment status and relationship expectations, and even thoughtfully suggested a local watering hole.GPS has long helped drivers find alternate routes around traffic and construction. Now, it’s helping people find love, with a new frontier of location-based dating.Mobile dating applications such as Skout and Are You Interested? let users download software onto their phones that alerts them when a potential match is within spitting distance. The technology allows people to date spontaneously, but also gives “chance a hand,”

BluePont CEO Alex Bloom (who is claiming his Blackberry based service launched last summer has created nearly 140,000 meet-ups) says: “But I think the odds are vastly improved if you don’t just bump into people who happen to be very close to you but also a person 100, 200 or 300 metres away.”

Word of warning: Daters are going to have to be careful of the commitment phobes a service like this will attract… i mean it can’t be a good sign if “The One” isn’t prepared to travel 400 metres!!!!!

Whilst the possibility of your cell phone letting you know “The One” is ” taking a leak at the same Starbucks” has got to be at least interesting the author lightly covers the huge safety concerns that come with such applications with help from Hal Niedzviecki, Toronto-based author of The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors. Unfortunately he’s a little naive when he suggests that GPS dating stirs “numerous ethical concerns” such as the prospect of it making users unwitting targets of “location-based advertising” from “corporations” and making us “more amenable to surveillance” by the police.

Sorry to dash your conspiracy theories but don’t worry about the police… worry about the rapists, burglars and foreign credit card theives who are keen to use your location and identity to access your bank account/car/house/office… or worse!

Lisa Scott in the Metro writes this morning on the “Cost of CyberLove” about how online dating scams are on the rise and may already be costing Britain over £3.5billion per year, according to the Office of Fair Trading.

“After months of chatting online to potential suitors, Jessica finally met someone she could see a future with. Tall, dark and intelligent, 44-year-old Mark promised he would fly to London where they would start a new life together – he just had to finish building an orphanage in West Africa first. On top of his very attractive credentials, Mark, originally from Ohio in America, was clearly a good Samaritan. So when he told Jessica about a sick child who needed £1,500 for urgent medical treatment, she wired it over immediately. Then he contacted me again and said the child was going to die unless they got another £1,500. I didn’t want her death on my conscience so I sent the rest over,’ she explains. They continued an intense affair, which involved online conversations – sometimes lasting up to six hours – plus phone calls and regular text messages. But three months after Jessica sent the second instalment, she realised the person she had spoken to candidly about love and sex was actually a gang of Nigerian men who were after her cash”

Interestingly the article quotes Barb Sluppick, Head of the Support Group RomanceScams.org, who discusses the different levels with which these gangs typically work. It’s interesting to note that The 3G Dating Agency has been specifically designed to ensure members avoid EACH and EVERY one of these…

1. The most basic involves sending out thousands of winks, hugs and e-mails…

This is the scattergun approach… put out enough bait and you’re bound to get some vulnerable victims. Unfortunately most mainstream online dating sites are actually designed to enable this because they provide members with the ability to send unlimited free messages. The 3G Dating Agency is different, because you don’t pay a subscription and only pay 50p when you want to send a message it doesn’t put off anyone who really likes your profile and wants to introduce themself BUT it does deter those who want to send a message to everyone on the site. The moderator of our chat engine would also ensure that we quickly pick up on any scammer who was foolish enough to pay to send everyone a scam message and we would promptly take him into a conversation with a fake profile that we’d set up to find out the particular details of their scam. We would then block this approach in future AND report the activity to the police.

2. Most scammers aren’t geniuses. Here are some clues that they may not be genuine: They claim to have blonde hair and blues eyes when the picture is dark hair and brown eyes or vice versa.

Can’t do that with a live one-to-one 3G Video Call…

3. Scammers want to avoid the site moderators (if they exist) and so immediately want to get off the online dating website and on to instant messaging

No way to avoid our moderators I’m afraid… we moderate every single message and because it’s easier to use our Mobile site than a separate instant messaging application there is no reason for members to provide one another with their real contact details UNTIL they have met and come to learn that the other member is deserving of their trust.

4. If you ask them a question they don’t know, they will be offline for a while when they go off to look up the answer and then claim they had a phone call or had to go to the bathroom

Not very easy to do that with a live one-to-one 3G Video Call…

5. They claim it was destiny or fate and you are meant to be together or God brought you to him/her.

The only thing bringing people together at The 3G Dating Agency is a simple to use mobile website and our unique personal rating/discovery system that ensures members preferentially see the validated profiles of individuals who have already rated their profile…

6. Many of them claim to have lost a spouse/child/parent in a horrific car or aeroplane accident.

Our moderators are on the look out for chat like this and will intervene if we hear different tall tales being dished out by individuals we suspect of scamming…

7. Standard clues that indicate you are dealing with a scammer include the use of ‘i’ not ‘I’ and poor spelling, for example they may misspell the cities or towns they claim they are from and are unfamiliar with any of the local landmarks and attractions.

Lots of people use the spelling i instead of I and with many people affected by dyslexia this is a pretty silly way to exclude potential partners, I mean you wouldn’t really pass up a date with Richard Branson or Tom Cruise would you! As well as that in 2009 it’s a bit naive to think that a spell checker is beyond the reach of most online criminal gangs!

8. They may request you to show yourself on a webcam… and then they record this video and use it to try to blackmail you by threatening to send copies to family members or your colleaugues at work if you try to end the affair without paying them off…

Key to prevention of this is the comprehensive safety advice on our website and the fact that our moderators are expert at looking for this type of activity. The anonymity of the usernames we use to identify members also means it’s very difficult for the scammers to be able to locate your workplace or family (something that is easy to do if you exchange email using your work email address or mention where you live – which are somewhat normal activities within many online dating communities).

9. In nearly every case, the scammer is a man who takes on both male and female personas. ‘They will just ask their wife or sister to talk on the phone if required,’ says Sluppick…

Can’t do that with a live one-to-one 3G Video Call…

10. ‘When a man realises he has been talking to a West African man, not a beautiful woman, it is devastating.’

Can’t do that with a live one-to-one 3G Video Call…

11. “Barb Sluppick says the responsibility falls on many shoulders. ‘Amongst others, Western Union and Money Gram think they are protected by asking the simple question, “Do you know the person you are sending money to?” and the dating sites who feign ignorance to this epidemic problem, feeling they are covered by a blurb that says don’t send money to someone you don’t know.’?

The 3G Dating Agency screens every validated member and all messages between members. This prevents ALL attempts of scammers to pretend they’re living in a completely different country AND prevents all requests for money transfers because they are not a part of normal dating conversations.

The fact is the best way to prevent is to deter, and because it’s easier to scam on the various non visual sites that are either completely free or offer subscriptions enabling you to spam the entire community (for no extra cost), you’ll be safer at The 3G Dating Agency because most scammers will just try it with the easier targets… love might be blind but the design of The 3G Dating Agency makes sure we’re hitting at the heart of those out to scam you!