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Crush or Flush: Hot or Not for Mobile Phones

Business 2.0,  Erick Schonfeld  November 13, 2006

On Monday, a wireless startup from Seattle called IceBreaker (run by some ex-Microsofties) will launch Crush or Flush—a mobile version of Hot or Not, with an added twist.  (Here's a link to the beta site for those who cannot wait). 

On your cell phone, you can cycle through pictures of men and women and either "crush" them or "flush" them.  You can search by location or by some of the self-describing tags people put on their profiles.  If two people crush each other, they both get a text message inviting them to chat with each other anonymously (via text, for now—with anonymous voice calling in the works). 

The company plans to eventually charge a few dollars a month for those chatting privileges (through the mobile carriers) once the service gets up and running.  To make it more viral, there is a"tell a friend" link that lets you send profiles to friends you'd like to set up.  And the mutual crush requirement should help weed out some of the creeps. 

Here is a video I shot in my office of a demo:

We're seeing this in a dating app first.  But how long before all social apps make their way from computers to phones?  It is happening already.  If the underpinning of a social network is instant messaging (another feature that will soon be added to Crush or Flush) and the presence management which that affords, then being able to contact a "friend" on their phone is even more powerful because people carry their phones with them everywhere they go.

What do readers think: will the dating set crush or flush this service?