Saudi Singles Resort to BlueTooth Belts

by David Evans on May 13, 2008   in Mobile

Online Dating Insider delivers cutting-edge insight and commentary on all aspects of the online dating industry. Topics include industry news, site reviews, emerging trends, analysis of dating site features, discussion about safety, finance and other issues important to the online dating market. Don't miss our Startups directory, useful to anyone running dating or social networking sites. Subscribe to the RSS feed (you can subscribe via email as well). Your comments and suggestions for stories are welcomed.

Check out our full suite of dating site consulting services.

I had a great conversation with Stephen Stokols, CEO and founder of Woome.com. I’ll post notes from our talk soon.

Did you see the article in the NY Times Love on Girls’ Side of the Saudi Divide?

Talking about how men and women are prohibited from co-mingling before marriage:

And certainly, practices like “numbering” — where a group of young men in a car chase another car they believe to contain young women, and try to give the women their phone number via Bluetooth, or by holding a written number up to the window — have become a very visible part of Saudi urban life.

… And last year, Al Arabiya television reported that some young Saudis have started buying special “electronic belts,” which use Bluetooth technology to discreetly beam the wearer’s cellphone number and e-mail address at passing members of the opposite sex.

The strict interpretation of Islam is forcing singles to invent a whole new set of dating rules based on technology. Funny how that works.

Related Posts

  • Those Lovelorn ‘Toothing Saudis
  • New Bluetooth dating serivce
  • Down To Earth, Let’s get Down With Math
  • Dating Site Launches
  • Premier singles

  • { 1 comment… read it below or add one }

    1 David Evans May 13, 2008 at 4:37 pm
    If only they could shake hands, in which case they could use the iBand.

    http://web.media.mit.edu/~stefan/hc/projects/iband/

    Leave a Comment

    « Back to text comment

    Previous post: Jangl Heads to the Deadpool

    Next post: Online Dating Insider In the News