Online dating is so last year. Now, if you’re thinking romance, look to your mobile phone. Match-making companies are creating new services that allow people to post their dating profile online and then automatically receive a text message on a GPS-enabled phone when a match is nearby, say, at a coffee shop around the corner.

The phenomenon, also known as “mobile romance,” already has arrived in China, home to some 430 million mobile phone users. Most Chinese wireless service providers offer dating services to drive text message usage, which in turn creates revenue, according to Liu Bin, an analyst with BDA China Ltd., a Beijing-based telecommunications consulting firm.

Similar services are also cropping up in the United States. Dodgeball, which Google bought last year, alerts people to the locations of their friends and potential dates via text messages on their cell phone.