According to founder Christian Wiklund, 200,000 of that million have downloaded the location-sensitive dating app in the last month. Skout uses a game-type financial model, with a free download but fees charged for "virtual gifts, premium memberships, or sending 'wink bombs' which reach up to 500 potential sweethearts in your area at once."

Part of the growth of Skout is, no doubt, the amping up of the still-new thrill of location. As this plateaus, it will be interesting to see how well its dating iteration, including competitors MeetMoi, Grindr and Urban Signals, fares.

Although the company is not specifically marketing Mix as a dating application, it's clearly designed for mobile singles because - let's face it - who else would want to browse the photos and profiles of nearby folks and strike up IM-based conversations with those who look interesting? If that's not about dating, then it's just borderline creepy.

While Loopt Mix is not the first iPhone-based dating application - others like DatingDNA and Skout have beaten them to the punch - the company may have a leg up on their competition already, thanks to brand recognition alone. That's because Loopt was featured in one of the many iPhone TV commercials last year as a great way to stay in touch with friends. Given widespread exposure like that, Loopt is already well known beyond the early adopter set.

Loopt Mix Features

Like its competitors, Loopt Mix lets you tap into the iPhone's location-based features to see which other Loopt Mix members are nearby. You can browse their profiles, view and post photos and status messages, and start chat sessions - all of which is par for the course with mobile dating apps these days. In fact, there's nothing all that revolutionary about Mix's feature set, except perhaps for its ability to send you real-time push notifications - something that a few other social networking apps, Facebook included, have yet to adopt.

In Loopt Mix, the push notifications work with the app's built-in chat functionality, so you're notified when and if someone responds to you, without you having to sit there looking uncool while constantly reloading the page or staring at a blank chat window.

It's also worth mentioning that you don't have to be out on the town to take advantage of Loopt Mix. Since it simply locates people near you, you could use this anywhere - even in your own home - to find and connect to other interesting people. However, should you ever want to go offline, you and the other person would have to make arrangements to meet somewhere... just as you would on a "real" dating website like Match.com or eHarmony. The only difference with Loopt Mix is that, unlike traditional dating sites, the app is completely free. That, too, could help Mix grow - especially in this tough economy, where finding love for a fee is a luxury many can no longer afford.

Gelato is the kind of web site that's going to make married and attached folks almost wish they were single again - it's that much fun to use. Getting started is one of the simplest processes we've ever seen. Not only does it offer Facebook Connect as an alternative to creating an account, it actually imports your Facebook profile information to create an instant dating profile on Gelato. (You can select and deselect which items you want to import, too).

However, Gelato doesn't stop with just Facebook - the site actually supports eight social services in total and has more on the way. Obviously, there's Twitter support, a key component to any good lifestream, but there's also Last.fm, Netflix, Flickr, Hulu, Amazon, and Seesmic. By adding a mix of these sites to your profile, it's much easier for someone to get an idea of what sort of interests you have than by reading some sort of self-created profile list. Think about it: you may have a rather typical list of favorite movies which include everything from "Forrest Gump" to "The Godfather," but your recent viewing of Dollhouse Season 1 on Hulu will out you as the sci-fi geek you are at heart.

Your updates on these social networks are combined to form a lifestream of your activities, just like they would on FriendFeed. Also like FriendFeed, you can "like" and comment on the items posted. And if you don't know what to say, various "icebreakers" are available to help you be witty on the fly. However, because Gelato is focused on making one-to-one connections, those likes, comments, and icebreakers remain private. The only person who can see them is the recipient. They can then respond to your comment if they want to start a conversation with you.

Real-Time Search

A real-time search feature, another borrowed idea from FriendFeed, helps you find topics you're interested in. For example, if you're looking for someone who's talking about the latest Harry Potter movie, you can search for that using keywords. Of course you're also able to filter your searches by age, sex, and location, too, so you can find someone local to chat with.

Legit Accounts and "Friendships"

One unique feature to Gelato that didn't come from elsewhere is what they're calling your "SCOOP" rating, aka the "social confidence of online profile." The higher the "SCOOP" rating, the better chance you're legit. This feature is designed to combat those who post fake profiles on dating sites. To bump your rating up, you can post to Twitter or Facebook and ask your friends to confirm who you are. Obviously, this isn't foolproof, but it should help highlight legit accounts as being so.

The only area that may need a little finessing is the way friendships work on the site. As with Facebook, you can send friend requests to other users and they must accept your request before you can be friends. This in and of itself isn't so bad...or all that different from how many other sites work for that matter. However, since a lot of online dating interaction is typically of the "try-before-you-buy" sort (live chats, email messages, etc.), it could lead to some sticky situations when you decide that the person you "friended" isn't someone you want to get to know better after all. To get them out of your friends list, you have to unfriend them and they will know you've done so. Considering all the other smart features in Gelato, it would have been nice if they could have come up with a less hurtful way of saying "I'm just not that into you."

Still that's a minor complaint in what is, overall, a unique entry to the billion dollar marketplace that is online dating. Despite the fact that much of the site's inspiration comes from FriendFeed, we won't hold that against them. In fact, we applaud them for it. Taking FriendFeed's innovations and applying them to a marketplace decidedly lacking in such technical innovation is a brilliant idea.

If you're ready to give the "stream dating" of Gelato a try, you can join now at ge.la.to.

Blackbox Republic argues that the transaction-focused dating site market is unfulfilling for millions of people around the world.

Lawrence and Donato define the phrase "sex positive" as meaning "open enough about sexuality that it's not an issue." (How neutral became positive, I don't know, people like this have a way of creeping up on you I guess.) They point to queer and bisexual pop-culture icons and big public festivals like Burning Man and Berlin's giant Love Parade as examples of this paradigm spreading around the world. They also point to Wikipedia's definition of the phrase. Blackbox believes it can create a safe, respectful and fulfilling social network for people who are into that kind of thing.

If this sounds like over-privileged, care-free, irresponsible promiscuity to you - then you're probably not in the target market. (I'm not.) Many people will likely appreciate some of the site's features, like the fact that new users are unable to view profiles of anyone but other new users until they are "vouched for" by an established user.

Lawrence and Donato have a messianic vision to disrupt the online dating industry and bring community to a large and unserved group of people. A portion of each month's membership fee will be donated to a charity of each user's choice, creating another layer of connection between groups of people on the site.

Make no mistake, though, this is a business. Lawrence's last job was as Chief Marketing Officer at Jive Software, a high-powered collaboration software suite used by a number of the biggest companies in the US. He's very good at attracting attention through intelligent engagement in online social media. The hot-button issues of love, sex and dating may be a big challenge to communicate about effectively, though. Blackbox's vague inclusion in its plans of "virtual gifts" provided by product vendors may also be hard to balance with its adamantly expressed intention to prioritize authenticity.

If sexuality "isn't an issue" for you, but remains enough of an issue to interest you in sites like this, Blackbox Republic opens to the public tonight. It's an interesting new approach to online social networking and could very well offer the kind of community that a growing number of people are looking for.

As a resident of Wellington, I don't have far to go to attend Webstock. Some of the sessions I'm looking forward to checking out include David Recordon on the 'Open Social Web', Fiona Romeo on 'Astrotagging bots and citizen scientists' (got to attend that for the title alone!), Heather Champ on 'Shepherding Passionate Communities', and Google Chrome impresario Ben Goodger on 'A retrospective of ballet classics' (witty titles galore in Webstock this year).

Also who can resist Bruce Sterling's talk entitled 'The Short but Glorious Life of Web 2.0, And What Comes Afterward' (!)

If you're local and want to attend, you can still pick up a ticket. It runs from 19-20 February, with workshops happening earlier in the week. If you can't attend, stay tuned for coverage on ReadWriteWeb later this week.

While the press release doesn't go into any detail, it seems safe to assume that the company needed a new infusion of money to sustain its rapid growth. While a lot of its competitors are for-pay, SpeedDate has adopted a free model, though it is considering the addition of a premium as well.

Online dating is a competitive field, where large entities like Match.com, eHarmony, and Yahoo Personals seem to dominate, but at the same time, other sites like Randomate, WooMe, or OmniDate have been able to carve out a niche for themselves by putting different twists on the online dating model. SpeedDate.com, though, with its instant webcam conversations, looks like it stands a good chance to continue growing in this competitive field.

Ad supported free site PlentyOfFish is trouncing everyone in the dating game and huge numbers of mainstream users are still afraid to navigate there directly using their browser's address bar. The economics of user ignorance are serious and could have big implications for online innovation. Update: Check out the great discussion on this in the comments below - we may have been convinced that this isn't such a bad thing after all.

What is Wrong With People?

How many times have you seen someone enter a URL in the wrong field of their browser? Apparently it happens a whole lot, over and over again, all day long, all around the world.

Those users end up being shown links other than the place they want to go, including sponsored ads, competing sites and related sites sometimes with confusing URLs. Many of the top dating sites are buying AdWords links to their own sites in searches for their own URLs. How much are the search engines making from user click throughs of Match.com AdWords when users search for Match.com, even though Match.com is the top natural search result as well?

Oddly, no one appears to have bought ads for the search term plentyoffish.com on Google, though Hitwise seems to suggest that would be a good idea. We won't claim to understand AdWords enough to explain why there aren't ads there now - perhaps a reader can do so.

Web 2.0? Uh...

While we're all excited about the Read-Write Web, filled with empowered user contributors and thrilling new web applications - a huge number of people online don't know the difference between their browser's address bar and search bar. Let's keep that in perspective.

What will it take for them to learn? Do the browser providers and search engines want them to? They've got a clear financial stake in that not happening.

In fact, countless parties online probably do. If mainstream users learned how to use the internet, it could be devastating for an online economy based on monetizing their ignorance. Everyone knows that's true for spammers and phishers, but the numbers indicate that there are a whole lot more people than that who are dependent on user ignorance. Luckily for them, there's plenty of it to go around.

If more savvy users are less likely to click on ads, what does that mean for website usability and user education? Will an explosive future of smart users creating content online and using the web's powerful features be limited by the financial interests of the companies providing online services? We think that's probably already happening and it's a real shame.

Update: Reader John Andrews articulates beautifully another perspective.

Don't underestimate the user.

When she searches Amazon.com and gets something else in the top 2-3, she wants to know what that something else is, and why it ranks for her Amazon search. Perhaps there is something better than Amazon.com that other people know about, and she wants to know about that, too.

Even if the top 5 are amazon.com URLs, she may scan them to see what Google is suggesting is hot at Amazon.com, along the way to whatever she was after. Maybe there is something cool at Amazon she doesn't yet know about, and she wants to know about that,too.

The path to Amazon.com via Google is a richer experience for her than the direct navigation path, without much cognitive overhead and without much perceived risk.

If the search engine earns a reputation for abusing the results set (with ads or paid placement) she will go away. Don't underestimate the power of Google's "Ph.D." reputation amongst her and her regular-folk peers. They have ben granted tremendous authority.