Wanted: New Friend, Must Have Bluetooth
Wed Jun 23, 2004 12:31 PM ET
<http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Student Gracinia Lim has made new friends thanks to mobile phone software that alerts her to compatible people nearby.
She is an early customer of a service in Singapore called BEDD that uses Bluetooth wireless communications to scan strangers' phones for their personal profiles.
The application joins a swelling number of Internet and mobile phone based services that offer to widen people's social networks.
Users download the BEDD software into a compatible phone, complete a short profile of themselves and include a description of who they want to befriend, or an item they want to buy or sell.
The software automatically searches for and exchanges profiles with other phones that come within a 20-meter (65 ft) radius. Matched users are given each other's contact details.
"I've become close with people that I've never known before, built up a close clique of friends whom I chill out with, sleep over at their homes and go for late suppers with," said Lim, 19.
