New York:
Lori Cheek was walking through the meatpacking district of Manhattan when she spotted a handsome man sitting with friends amid the dinner crowd outside Pastis.
As she neared his table, she flashed a diminutive black card.
"I nestled it in his French fries," she said, "and kept going."
As Cheek, 37, disappeared into the July night, the man plucked the card from his fries. It read: "Look up. You might miss some thing." Below, in smaller letters, were the words "find me," a code and the address of a new website for singles.
Move over, Match.com. This is the next generation of online dating. Unlike traditional dating sites where members spend hours on computers writing autobiographies and scrutinising photographs, a raft of newfangled dating tools are striving to better bridge the gap between online and real-world romance.
Some companies offer a combination of flirty cards and webpages. Others operate dating applications that use the global positioning systems in cellphones to help local singles find one another. All of them contend they are superior to big online dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony.com be cause meeting people is faster, more organic and less formal. And participants are not limited to a database of members: the world is their dating pool.
"It's almost like you're shopping online," said Cheek, "but you're shopping in real life."
At the same time, these hybrid dating tools still enable users to keep their names and personal in formation private for as long as they like.
Cheek, an architect who works part-time in sales for a high-end Manhattan furniture company, founded one such venture, cheek'd, which had its debut in May. Users receive calling cards to dole out to alluring strangers they encounter in their everyday lives, be it in a club or in a subway on their morning commute. Recipients of the cards can use the identification code printed on them to log onto Cheekd.com and send a message to their admirer. A pack of 50 cards and a month's subscription to Cheek'd, where users can receive messages and post information about themselves, is $25. There is no fee for those who receive cards to communicate with an admirer through the site.
Each Cheek'd card has a sassy phrase like "I am totally cooler than your date," or, for those with no regard for subtlety. "T'm hitting on you." Cheek is dreaming up specialised card sets, too. One for New York City singles will have lines like "I live below 14th Street" and "I hope my five story walkup won't be a problem."
Card users said companies like and Cheek'd are emboldening them to approach people who might otherwise have been missed connections. They also appreciate how the companies reverse the online dating process - observe someone in person first, then send an electronic with false advertising on dating Web sites.
Pack of 50 cards and monthly subscription to Cheek'd, where users can receive messages and post personal info, is $25
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