If you want to know a little about the origin of Play With Matches click here.

Once upon a long time ago, in 2002 I think, I ran across an article in Wired magazine (a 1998 article) about the LoveGety. The LoveGety is a small egg shaped electronic device that you carried with you and when were you in range (15 ft) of someone of the opposite sex, who was also carrying the device, it alerted you and you could meet up. I've probably greatly simplified what it does, and not having actually used one, I'm not an expert on it but it definitely gave me something to think about. The idea was just so cool.

Who hasn't wondered if the person sitting in the car next to them at the traffic light was their soul mate or wondered who in all the hundreds of people you pass by was the love of your life? The concept, the dream, the goal...it's powerful, it's personal and it's universal.

At the time it was only available in Japan so I wondered how something like the LoveGety could work in the US. In order to really have a great user experience, the device would need to be ubiquitous. Hmm...was there another way a similar service could be done? Well, you need something that can run some kind of matching software. You'd need something that has some sort of short range wireless and you'd need something that could alert a user if there was a match. Are you seeing where I'm going with this?

You'd just need a cellphone, a capable one, one that soon everyone would carry. At the time, smart phones were new, Palm OS and Symbian were leading the way, so it seemed like there could be a standardized phone OS to put software on. In the late '90's Bluetooth, a short range wireless protocol, was being hyped quite a bit as a technology to wirelessly link devices. And finally, all cellphones can alert the user through a ring or vibration. So we had the core idea in hand. We'd make proximity matching software for smart phones and notebooks with Bluetooth so people would be able to use a real time icebreaker and possibility strike a more meaningful first encounter rather than "Hi, I thought you were attractive so I decided to approach you." By matching people on common interests we'd have a very effective icebreaker. At the time we were referring to this project...err...dream as BTLove (the "BT" was for Bluetooth) and we (me and friends at work) continued to brainstorm.

(Years fly by) Here we are with Play With Matches. We don't have phone OSs to worry about. We don't have to worry about Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. And we aren't limited to only dating scenarios. You can meet anyone who matches any criteria that's important to you. It's ubiquitous, flexible and powerful running in any standard browser with Flash. If you want to know the whole story, I'll tell you the rest over a cup of coffee sometime.

-Rajen

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