Lovegety was a proximity matchmaking device introduced in Feb. 1998 in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

by Erfolg Co., Ltd., which allowed users to find potential dates that matched their personal preferences in the vicinity. Over 1,300,000 of these units were sold in Japan for the price of 2,980 yen per unit. It was the first proximity dating device, and "the first commercial attempt to move introduction systems away from the desktop and into reality". As such, it was an important precursor for other location-based social networking applications such as Nokia's Bluetooth-based Nokia Sensor, and more recent geolocation-based social applications such as StreetSpark.Mashable.com - StreetSpark: Foursquare for Dating, retrieved 4/17/2012
/ref> There were three modes users could pre-select on the Lovegety device which reflected the mood they were currently in and hence what kind of partner they were looking for. These included “let’s just chat”, “let’s go sing some

karaoke is a type of interactive entertainment system usually offered in nightclubs and bars, where people sing along to pre-recorded accompaniment using a microphone. Its musical content is an instrumental rendition of a well-known popular song. I ...

” and “get2” or "looking for love" modes. The devices could be set to interact with each other when a potential mate was within close proximity (15 feet) or to simply notify a user of others who are currently set to the same mood.

Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold (born 1947) is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities. B ...

reflects on technologies such as the Lovegety in his work and urges consumers to think carefully about the social implications of these technologies. Rheingold states that "loss of privacy is perhaps the most obvious shadow side of technological cooperation systems".Rheingold, Howard (2002) ''Smart Mobs: the Next Social Revolution'', Perseus, Cambridge, Massachusetts

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Article on Wired "Love: Japanese Style"CNN: "Japans lonely hearts find each other with Lovegety" published June 07, 1998, retrieved 4/18/2012 The Mirror (London, England): "Is that a Lovegety in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?" published Jul 10, 1998, retrieved 4/18/2012
Sexuality and computing Dating Mobile software {{wireless-stub

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