Category: Zogo

Meeting on the Line

Posted on December 28, 2005

Zogocom_2NORTH JERSEY MEDIA GROUP — Dec 23 — Zogo.com, a free site that launched in October, offers the same profile searches available on other online dating sites, with an important bonus – it hooks its users up by cellphone. Find a profile that interests you, click a button to send a text message to that person's cellphone inviting him or her to chat. If the person is interested, it takes just one more click to connect you to his or her cellphone.

Mark Brooks: Zogo hides the telephone numbers.  Email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com if you'd like a copy of the anonymous calling service providers white paper. 

Mobile Dating Makes Cell Phone use More Obnoxious

Posted on December 21, 2005

WebdateCOURIER POST — Dec 20 — Technological dating has finally spun out of control and there is now a movement under way — by both large companies and two-geeks-in-a-basement-start-ups — to turn our cell phones into matchmakers.  Mobile dating is already more popular than Internet dating in places like Japan. All you need to post a profile and picture on Webdate, the mobile dating leader, is a Web-ready camera phone and $3.99 a month. Then there's Dodgeball, a service where users make a list of "crushes" based on online pictures. Then, when they go out to the bars, they send "check-in" text messages to Dodgeball to find out if a crush has checked in from another bar nearby. If so, the crush instantly receives a picture and profile of the admirer via cell.  Zogo enables users to search through profiles and then speak over the phone through a service that doesn't reveal their numbers.  Bluetooth dating is known as "toothing", "bluejacking" and "snarfing". It enables your phone to detect singles currently in the neighborhood.  SMSGenie is a mobile dating program with no pictures and no profiles, just random texts sent to you from random women and men.  6 million Americans reportedly mobile-date.

Mark Brooks: Location Based Services could lead to a significant paradigm shift in online dating eventually. 

Zogo.com, Anonymous Mobile Phone Based Dating

Posted on November 30, 2005

Zogocom_1CBS NEWS — Nov 30 — Brett Larson, Tech Editor, reports on Zogo.com's new cell phone based dating service.  "It's amazing what you can do with a cell phone these days…Forget online sites for finding love, your next match could be literally a phone call away."  Instead of using the web to find profiles, you use your cell phone, find a person/profile you like and click to and talk, anonymously.  Zogo's CEO says, "We believe the chemistry is in the voice."  A users says, "You're not giving out your number so there's nervous factor about…Oh I gave my number too soon.

The full article was originally published at Zogo website, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: I think Zogo is on to something.  IM, chat, email…hey, how about voice.  But, there's always the concern over privacy…and stalkers. Email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com for your copy of the white paper, "A Guide to Anonymous Phone Calling Services."

How Cellphones May Beat Computers as a Dating Service

Posted on November 8, 2005

Cellphones_may_beat_computersWALL STREET JOURNAL — Nov 3 — The latest phones can do email, video, music, photo sharing and Web surfing. Though the U.S. was late to the market for sending text messages over in recent years. SMS.ac boasts tens of thousands of communities of users who share interests in topics including sports, music and politics over their cellphone screens. In July, Upoc launched its first dating service. Since then it has attracted about 25,000 subscribers, at $4.99 a week, he says. Match.com has offered such a service on cellphones since February 2003. Zogo expects users to communicate in a novel way: by voice. Users are connected by a phone call. Zogo makes the calls to the two users. No phone numbers are made public, so users can remain anonymous behind their screen names. The Zogo service is free as the company builds up its user community. It eventually will cost $12.99 a month. Setting up a Zogo account and using it on a cellphone was cumbersome.

Mark Brooks: Instant gratification with Zogo's service…once they build a critical mass of users.  Webdate offers mobile dating with access to 4 million profiles.  Nice.