LOS ANGELES: The modern dating scene has come to this: a text messaging service that provides random female subscribers in Los Angeles with messages such as 'Hello to all the beautiful ladies'.

Tech-savvy singles are now relying on cellphone-based services to find dates and friends. The programmes help users find strangers to exchange text messages with, and even locate, on a handset's digital map, nearby people looking to connect.

Mr Joshua Beaman, a 29-year-old sound engineer from Calistoga, California, signed up for one such service, Bouncephone. He soon started texting Ms Hattie Rohr, a 19-year-old in Wisconsin.

For months, they sent each other messages about music and movies, dinner and work, and the mundane things they did every day.

Although each exchange was wedged into the 160-character limit on text messages, he said that communicating with Ms Rohr seemed easy. So easy that he flew to the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, where she is now a student, to meet her - and they hit it off.

'I've paid hundreds of dollars for some of those online dating services,' he said. 'But I'd never found someone that I'm compatible with.'

First, there was phone dating, in which singles would read personal ads and leave each other voice messages.

Next came Internet dating, online matchmaking services made more popular by increased access to broadband. Now, with phones accompanying them everywhere, people are turning to mobile dating services.

'With a cellphone, you can do it any time, any place,' said Mr Bob Bentz, director of marketing and sales at Advanced Telecom Services, a company in Wayne, Pennsylvania, which offers a 350,000-member dating service called MatchLink Mobile.

Americans now send about 75 billion text messages a month, so it's natural that the medium has become a popular means of courtship.

Speeding the trend is the new generation of handsets equipped with full keyboards, faster Internet connections and global positioning systems that can pinpoint their users' exact location.

Juniper Research projects that the mobile dating industry will see US$1.4 billion (S$2 billion) in global revenue by 2013, up from US$330 million last year. Much of that business currently comes from Japan, where mobile dating is already very popular.

Nurturing a budding relationship or friendship in the limited space of text messages can be tricky. But Mr David Crystal, author of Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, said users can communicate a surprising amount in 160 characters.

'The more you text, the more you realise how you can be clever with your words,' he said. 'It's kind of an art form.'

People don't need to say much if they are using their phones to facilitate face-to-face interactions. That's the purpose behind MeetMoi, a mobile dating service that shows singles which potential mates are nearby so they can text each other to meet up.

It might seem creepy - an invitation for stalkers - that someone can know when you are nearby and message you. But the companies say strangers cannot see your phone number or exact location, only your proximity to them.

Some people might not like the pressures of being always available to strangers through such a device. It is socially acceptable to step away from the computer but not from a mobile phone, said Professor Walter Carl, assistant professor of communications studies at Northeastern University.

'Because there is perpetual contact, we feel like we always have to be present,' he added.

But Mr Beaman, the Bouncephone user, is not bothered. With a text message, you do not have to write as much as you do in an e-mail, he said, and it can be informal and short. If a text arrives while he is having dinner, he can keep flirting.

'I don't even have to stop chewing if I don't want to,' he said.

LOS ANGELES TIMES