OkCupid's Geo-Dating Joins the Growing Group of Location-Based Services

Today the online dating site added a "Locals" section to their app

Today online dating site OkCupid jumped on the location application bandwagon, integrating geography-based "Locals" section into their Android and iTunes apps, reports TechCrunch's Leena Rao. "The use of mobile apps for dating and even meeting friends is definitely on the rise, and it seems that the future of this industry could lie in mobile platforms." Now, more than ever, the old real-estate adage rings true: location, location, location--and you're going to see a lot more location-based everythings in the current app culture.

Integrating location into dating apps is obvious, explains the OkCupid press release. "The whole point of dating apps is to get people to meet in real life--so why has no one figured out location-based dating?" But OkCupid isn't the first dating application to integrate the locale of other possible mates. It joins other applications, like Grindr, focused on where you might find other singles. Gizmodo's Kat Hannaford explains:

Their new geolocation feature for Android and iOS apps will aid you in your search for true love.

True love, or a hetero-shag a la Grindr, anyway. The apps will locate other OkCupid users within your proximity, whether they match your interests or not (you can toggle the security settings, obviously). Once you've found someone whose profile catches your eye, you can either chat with them, swap some photos and arrange a date.

But it's not just dating. "There’s no doubt that the trend of matching people based on their interests and location is catching on," explains Rao. Other applications capitalize on this evolving trend. Foursquare, the application that allows you to "check-in," telling your mobile and social networks you're exact location, monetized geography. And they've recently teamed up with Groupon, which provides daily deals in your area--the coupons are only as valuable as how accessible the place where you can use them.

Even search is honing in on location. Fwix, highlighted by Fast Company's Howard Lindzon, is working to geo-tag every web page, making search more about the where than the what. "While the rest of the industry works to leverage location in order to create content, Fwix finds content that already exists on the web and tags it with location." Fwix scans and organizes the web by places, explains founder Darian Shirazi in a video interview with Lindzon. "Content consumption is getting much bigger on mobile phones than it would be on computers in the future... The phone is very different than the PC because it has one other dimension of relevance and that other dimension of relevance is location."