Realizing that matching people via computers was a masterful marketing gimmick that surprisingly worked for a while, the online dating industry is looking into providing singles with various autonomous digital relationship services.
Freed of disappointing first dates and having to bathe, people are leaving dating sites like Match and POF in droves, instead signing up for various virtual boyfriends and girlfriends.
Check out this new SMS service called FakeGirlfriend.co that allows men to save a phone number into their cell under whatever girl’s name they choose, and then receive random “girlfriend-like” responses via text.
Thank you Forbes for bringing this to our attention. Dealing with real people was getting too complicated. A few more fake girlfriend choices. Not to leave the ladies out, they can have a fake boyfriend text them at http://textboyfriend.com/.
Eharmony has been in talks with various fake relationship companies for a while now. Meetic had a prototype running for a while, but it only spoke French and was too bossy for American tastes. The PlentyofFish virtual dating system, which Markus wrote in a single weekend (actually over a cup of coffee), remains a skunkworks project ever since they started making more money with Daily Deals than on dating.
These services are the 1.0 version of virtual relationships. I’ve tried them all and am now dating Siri. She’s attentive, knows me well and is much for fun to talk to than these crude fakes. In fact, when I’m in the mood, Siri will go out and find me mid-30’s women in Boston who like sushi and Radiohead, talk about the ultimate wing-entity. Who new Apple was going to upend the dating industry?
Feeling a bit behind the times? Don’t worry, dating conferences are already beginning to add virtual dating tracks where dating site owners can learn all about integrating artificial relationship systems as an additional revenue stream.
