Is Online Dating Out And Mobile Dating In?

Oh, how times have changed. It seems like only yesterday that we were furtively checking our Nerve Personals accounts at work, trying to decipher a profile's mix of hobbies and interests to determine whether or not someone was a sweetie or a psychopath. This Love Buzzer met her husband on Friendster. In the early stages, when people would ask us how we hooked up, we would glance shamefacedly at each other and mutter something about Dunkin Donuts. Now, people are having Tweetups willy-nilly and searching for quick hookup opportunities on their iPhones. Lord, do we feel old. Read comScore's Top Dating Sites

Recently, the founders of Skout—a mobile app that allows you to search for singles nearby—conducted a survey amongst their customers in order to determine how open people were to taking online dating into a more mobile realm. While such results would most certainly be skewed (um, these people are already using a mobile app to find dates?), the findings are also a testament to how far dating has come in the past few years. Fifty-one percent of the customers surveyed had met another single person IRL ("in real life," in case you're not in the know) after contacting them on their iPhones. 4 iPhone Apps That Could Save Your Relationship

So what does this reveal about our dating habits? Are we collectively less concerned with the once-existing stigma of having to use a dating site to meet someone? Even more thought-provoking: Why are we being so much less cautious when it comes to meeting up in person? Have we grown so accustomed to approaching everything with a fast-food mentality that we now want even our dates served up in five minutes, as unhealthy and possibly dangerous as those rendezvous may be? Or have we discovered e-mail back-and-forth doesn't hold a candle to meeting someone face-to-face, so why waste our words?

This Buzzer screened her now-husband for months before agreeing to meet him in person, and she'd do the same thing today. Though, at the end of the day, all that vetting certainly didn't reveal his most aggravating quirks. 10 Items Of His We'd Like To Toss

So what do you think? Are we approaching this mobile dating thing like old fogies? Are the risks are worth it?