It’s just in Singapore now, but there’s another social mobile networking service now called BEDD that uses Bluetooth/SMS/MMS/IM or email to connect people when they are physically close by. It’s orients around phone-to-phone connections, too, which means its pretty much limited to the range of your phone’s Bluetooth receiver, but they have a large range of services, including dating, eBay-like auctioning, buddies, software distribution, and more. Actually, the more I look at this, the more I’m noticing this service has been out for a while (on Series 60s phones, at least), although they just had their official ‘big launch.’ I guess the news is that they’re aiming to roll out to the rest of Asia, Europe, and the Americas soon.
I’m not too big on the Bluetooth-based mobile social softwares, not because I don’t like the concepts, but just because Bluetooth has such a short range. Even here in New York you’d have to be on the same side of the block for this to be useful; I can only imagine how infrequently you’d hook up with someone in a less densely packed city. I need a GPS-enabled phone sending my location to a central server, with user-definable ranges of intersection. And a pony.
