Lonely hearts in Africa will soon be able to publicly or privately list their locations on a popular mobile phone dating service.
`Flirting` service Eskimi, accessed by 5.4 million mobile phone users in Africa, has partnered with Finland-based Gecko Landmarks to implement location-based tracking in the coming weeks.
Those looking for love using Eskimi on their handsets will soon be able see if any other users of the service are in the vicinity of landmarks nearby to them. The location tracking will then appear in a text-based format on an Eskimi user`s profile, chat, e-mails, dating profile search and, later on, even local, area-relevant advertising.
Eskimi focuses on emerging markets such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, which make up about a million users, according to the company`s CEO, Vytas Paukstys.
Africa is the dating service`s biggest market, as the continent has seen levels of mobile phone usage soar over the last 10 years to reach 500 million, according to a report by Booz & Company this year.
About 2.7 million people in Nigeria use Eskimi, while countries such as SA and Tanzania have about 200 000 to 300 000 users each, says Paukstys. The service launched in 2010.
“It took us one year to grow from around almost zero to five million customers worldwide, and currently our biggest markets are [on the] continent [of] Africa,” Paukstys says.
Both Eskimi, which has its head office in Lithuania, and Gecko Landmarks say security risks around users revealing their data are mitigated by the fact that the service only lists landmarks close to users, and not their exact locations.
“You don`t have to give your exact location,” says Osmo Korri, Gecko Landmarks` COO.
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