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TIME EUROPE Friday, January 12, 2001 The Love Gun A digital matchmaker explores new frontiers in flirting By THOMAS K. GROSE London Flirting, or so the experts tell us, is supposed to be fun and healthy. Why then do so many people find it embarrassingly difficult? Ego, probably. Who wants to face rejection from a person you have a crush on? Now, thanks to a free digital flirting service, you can make your moves on Mr. or Ms. Right via an online love messenger who even writes your pick-up lines for you. Britain's CosmicCupid.com (www.cosmiccupid.com) may not help your rejection rate, but at least you won't face being shot down in public. CosmicCupid herself is meant to be an alien armed with a love gun — she looks a bit like Pippi Longstocking in "Star Trek" gear. You tell her the name of the person you're interested in, and supply her with the relevant e-mail address or mobile phone number. CosmicCupid then sends cheeky or romantic (but never rude or risqué) notes to the object of your desire — using short messaging services or e-mail — inviting him or her to respond. (Sample message: "Love is in the air! Find out which of ur m8s thinks U R a real turn on. Some1 u know sent u this.") If your intended paramour is interested, that person can visit the CosmicCupid.com website and submit a list of people whom he or she fancies. If your name is on the list, you're both notified of your mutual attraction. If there is no match, the people involved remain anonymous, and you can either try again or move on to pastures greener. "It's all about fun. We hope people don't take it too seriously," explains John Farmer, co-founder of Carbon Partners, a provider of wireless entertainment and communications services for young people, which created CosmicCupid.com. "It's all about messaging and communications within your circle of friends." The service is aimed at 16- to 24-year-olds and, obviously, people of that age do a fair amount of flirting already. They're also early adopters of mobile phones. So far the site, which went live last June, has 15,000 subscribers and averages 7,000 visitors a day, but it projects 100,000 subscribers by this summer. In the short term, Carbon expects to raise revenues by selling ads that piggyback on the digital billets-doux. Some may even be discreetly rolled into the messages, like product placements: A suggestion, perhaps, that potential partners meet up at, say, a well-known coffee bar. Eventually, Carbon wants to reach revenue-sharing agreements with networks by guaranteeing a certain volume of traffic. That's a business model borrowed from Japan's i-mode mobile Internet service, which has more than 10 million subscribers and is heavily oriented toward entertainment. Farmer, 32, who has a background in consumer marketing, met his co-founder Conrad Yiu, a 27-year-old former manager at professional services firm Arthur Andersen, at a Cambridge University MBA program in 1998. And though they're based in Britain, they think that digital come-ons will work in any language. So, once they've solidified CosmicCupid.com's base in the U.K., Farmer says, they're eager to aim their virtual matchmaker's love gun on the Continent's swinging singles.
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