Digital age flirting lets fingers do the talking

TORONTO—Can I get ur number? Want 2 hv drnks l8r?
Welcome to flirting in the digital age.

In an era where social networking is increasingly omnipresent, tech-savvy individuals now can let their fingers do the talking when it comes to connecting with a prospective Mr. or Ms. Right.
Some sites are integrating the use of Twitter by helping link users of the popular microblogging site who may be searching for their special someone in cyberspace.
Flirt140 aims to help Twitter users find dates, with capabilities to search by gender, location, and keyword to seek out others who live nearby, as well as to send private messages.
Meanwhile, 140Love allows users to fill out a profile about themselves, as well as what they’re seeking in a prospective match—each limited to 140 characters or less.
They then are matched with those most closely matching the qualities they’re looking for.
And just in time for Valentine’s Day, a singles event in Toronto on Saturday tapped into both Twitter and smartphone technology in helping foster in-person connections.
Hosted by FastLife, a singles event and speed-dating service, Flitter—dubbed as micro-flirting in 140 characters or less—allowed singles seeking to mingle to fire off a tweet on their BlackBerry or iPhone to someone who might be catching their eye.
Attendees were invited to create a Twitter account if they didn’t yet have one and each wore a number tag.
If they saw someone they liked, they could take note of their number and send a tweet or “flit” (elsewhere in cyberspace, Twitter flirting also has been referred to as “twirting.”)
However, messages weren’t sent privately from one phone to another, but rather projected on a screen so that party-goers could follow along.
FastLife founder and CEO Justin Parfitt said they typically have a match game of some kind when they host large parties to help break the ice and get people mingling.
He envisions the use of Flitter working in a similar fashion.
“[People] can just be a little bit voyeuristic if they want to,” Parfitt said. “They can see what the response to their flit [is] or they can just watch other people do it.
“But the thing is it’s like the old Valentine thing: do you want to be anonymous or do you want to go out and wear your heart on your sleeve?
“You’ve got the choice.”
Parfitt said they decided to bring Flitter to Toronto after a successful trial run in Sydney, Australia just before Christmas.
“I think what’s great about this technology is initially it is quite separating and it’s isolating and everyone lives in these virtual bubbles, but now finally people are beginning to realize that it is possible to use the technology in a way that’s social,” he argued.
Parfitt said FastLife, which also was hosting Valentine’s parties in Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver, plans to expand Flitter across North America.
“With the huge kind of popularity of social media, obviously we’re going to be looking at new ways to leverage that technology and get people to meet in person and use that technology in a social way—in a real social way, not virtually social,” he stressed.
Calgary dating coach Karen Howells said her clients are more focused on exchanging e-mails and texts, and said probably about five percent use Twitter or Facebook.
“People right now, they’re really looking for a way to be dating in the technology era, but dating in a personalized manner,” she remarked.
“Text messaging is a great way because you know when you send your text message to that guy that you like, or he sees the text message to the hot girl he saw, that he’s the only one that’s going to see that text message.”
Howells said for some there is a feeling of vulnerability around using social media. They might not necessarily want the whole world knowing who they like until it actually becomes a relationship that’s public.
Still, she does see social networking becoming a more widely-used tool over time, and finds those who are younger are more keen to use Twitter or Facebook for dating.
“With the under-30 generation, they have so much information available to them because everybody is posting information on Facebook, twittering,” she said.
“They virtually can go online, find out who does what, when.
“It’s definitely coming on to being a popular way to go about it,” Howells added.