I ranted about updating my Match profile, mobile dating and open profiles on Facebook over at The Progress Bar.

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Mobile community applications developers Mobestar has announced a partnership with Datech Limited. Datech provides dating services to 7,000 web sites around the world via its World Dating Partners brand. The partnership enables Datech to offer fully integrated web and mobile dating solutions to its clients.

World Dating Partners’ clients will now be offered the opportunity to fully mobilise their dating services using Mobestar’s mDate solution. mDate provides synchronised and fully integrated access to online dating sites.

After three years of false starts, it appears that mobile dating may actually be catching on. I like getting my Match alerts on the phone, it’s a nice pick-me-up during the day, although I’m never going to respond via the phone, that’s simply too time-consuming and I want to view the person’s profile on my 24″ monitor and get a better sense of them before writing back.

I hope that mobile dating doesn’t devolve into people sending winks back and forth, that would be a step backwards.

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I only received one press release from a company exhibiting at iDate San Francisco this week. Enlaso is presenting a session titled “Go Global and Localize the Online Dating Experience.” If you’re at the show attending or exhibiting, send in your show photos, session reviews or a link to your Twitter stream. How many people are there, are the sessions any good? Does it feel more social-networking than dating?

I just got back from meeting an interesting new contextual-chat company, talked to a major white label dating company and was briefed on a mobile dating product coming soon from the Lone Star state. Busy Day!

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IceBreaker which I wrote about back in November, has landed $7.2 million in new financing, money that the Bellevue startup will use to continue marketing its mobile dating service Crush or Flush.  Crush or Flush is similar to a mobile version of HotorNot.

IceBreaker plans to use funds to bolster a research and development center in Beijing, where the company now employs more than 20 people and is looking to add more.

With no revenue at the moment, the founders are kicking around various business models, which is what the mobile dating space has been doing for the past several years, as nobody really knows how mobile dating is going to work when it finally gets here in the US.

Seven million dollars is a lot of money, but in no way guarantees  IceBreaker will get crushed instead of flushed.

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