Location, location, location. The timeless mantra of real-estate professionals has, in recent years, quickly become the sacred slogan for online dating enthusiasts as well. With a slew of dating apps now on the market, “dating” has become increasingly difficult to define, as users log-in looking for everything from a soulmate who shares a fascination with pirates to an anonymous booty call for the night. Skout, Blendr, Grindr, and OKCupid are just a few of the more popular options.

Realizing that it’s easier to alter our environments than it is to alter human nature itself, MeetMoi founder Andrew Weinreich saw a need for a dating app that would address the awkwardness typically associated with the bar and club pickup scene.  As MeetMoi Marketing Analyst Andrew Beale explicated, “Interesting single people are all around us every day, but social conventions tend to get in the way of actually meeting them. The problem isn't supply; it's market efficiency.  We wanted to create a platform that makes the introduction for you.” Push notifications and an algorithm that matches users on a variety of preferences -- from age and body type to music taste and drinking habits -- is integral to MeetMoi’s model. “When two users with compatible preferences are near each other, each of them gets a push notification with the other user's profile, to which they can respond ‘Yes,’ ‘Not Now,’ or ‘Never.’  If both people say yes, they get an hour to chat, completely free,” he continued.

By encouraging its users to engage in real-time location-based conversation, MeetMoi sets itself apart by capitalizing on context.  As a result, MeetMoi has emerged as a lucid alternative in the muddled milieu of mobile dating apps. While most dating apps encourage wink exchanges and the gifting of virtual teddy bears as viable mating strategies, MeetMoi prefers to facilitate the wooing process as opposed to digitizing it. “We don't generate specific questions right now, but we just launched a dating tips service called Icebreakers that's centered around helping people meet each other. We also have plans on the horizon to integrate Yelp's API so that we can suggest nearby restaurants or bars for newly-matched users to meet at,” MeetMoi clarified.

What is digital, however, is often disposable.  When one knows that a new date is only a push notification away, one has to wonder if mobile dating can ever appeal to anything more than the drive for novelty. And if, as the story goes, men overwhelmingly seek out quantity while women largely look for quality, it appears that online dating will remain a battle of the sexes, regardless of how intricate the logarithms are.