By Sid Astbury Jan 26, 2012, 3:06 GMT
Sydney - He remembers the moment like it was yesterday. Daniel Hua, then a 20-year-old law student at Sydney University, felt his pulse race when a fellow commuter looked at him with more than passing interest.
'There was a girl standing on the platform and then my train departed the station. That got me thinking: if I was single and if I wanted to pursue it, how would I?'
The answer, seven years in the making, is iTiggy.com, the latest missed-connection website offering help to those who yearn for a second meeting.
'People have this inherent fear of being turned away, of being rejected,' Hua, 28, said. 'What my site does is take away the burden of regret - the feeling of 'What if?' - and it gives people the pleasure of knowing they did everything they could possibly do to find that person.'
Hua, a criminal defence lawyer, is late to a business opportunity that really opened up in 2007 after a New York missed-connection made it into newspapers around the world. Patrick Moberg set up a website called nygirlofmydreams to try and find a woman he exchanged glances with on a Manhattan street. 'I was just drawn to her uncontrollably. I had to find her,' Moberg said after finally hooking up with Australian Camille Hayton.
Internet entrepreneurs jumped on the commercial possibilities of sites that offered hope to the lovelorn and vicarious romance for others. A general bulletin board on Craigslist did well, prompting others to hone in on particular missed connections through sites like bump and wemetonaplane.
Bump, which last year had a successful 1-million-US-dollar capital raising, lets people get together by posting the licence plate numbers of their cars.
Imagine: you are alongside a driver who smiles nicely and might be your type. Get on the internet and say when and where the lingering glances took place, give your licence number and wait to see if your fellow motorist is interested in following things up.
And so it goes with wemetonaplane. 'His name is Paul and he is an Irish electrician that lives in the northern suburbs of Brisbane,' a recent posting said. 'We sat next to each other on the plane from Bangkok to Brisbane last week. We shared stories and he looked through my holiday pics. We arrived in Brisbane and I was too shy to give him my details and I think he may have had the same problem. If you know this guy or are Paul, send me a message.'
It needs some explaining why Paul and his fellow airline passenger did not offer at least an email address.
Hua, in suggesting reasons why people instantly attracted to each other do not swap details, said that 'the popularity of social networking has had some part to play in it.' Many people nowadays feel more comfortable behind screens when they explore a new relationship.
Chance encounters with potential life partners can be powerful. Hua related how a fellow lawyer hung on to a bit of potential serendipity. 'He's 51 and he was able to recall with pinpoint accuracy an instance that he had when he was about 20,' Hua said. 'It forced me to wonder why people hold on to these memories.'
Missed-connection sites offer an anonymity that would have saved a Canberra civil servant public humiliation and an official telling-off. He emailed thousands of colleagues soliciting their help in finding a girl he met at a party. She did not remember him and was not interested in meeting him.
Also last year, Julia Cross launched a public campaign to reprise a romantic interlude she had with a fellow Londoner Martin O'Kane while on holiday in Ibiza, Spain. O'Kane said he was 'flattered' but not interested.
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