This could be framed as an interesting crypto/information hiding problem.
There is a certain amount of information that you don't want to disclose publically to said interesting potential romantic/sexual partner (i.e., whether or not you are interested, whether you are gay/straight, whether you are poly, etc.) and the other potential romantic/sexual partner similarly isn't willing to disclose said informally for all of the world to see. However, if the answers to these questions would indicate that there might be a potential for then --- and only then --- should this both parties be notified about this fact.
It's probably possible to solve this using Realy Clever Mathematics, but it's a lot easier with trusted hardware. So consider what would happen if people could purchase devices (probably integrated into cell phones, eventually), where the device would send out an a message with an ID number to all other participating devices over bluetooth (assume that all protocol exchanges are encrypted so that only trusted devices that do not "cheat" can decrypt them). Each person who participates in this is registered with a central, secure server which associates with your ID number the following information: a low-res picture, whether you are gay/straight/bi, whether you are poly or not, whether you are interested in people who are gay/straight/bi/poly, etc. So when someone sees someone which interests them, they excuse themselves, and their device sends the ID numbers that it has received in the past 10 minutes to the central server, which sends back the low-res pictures. That person then selects the picture for which they are interested, and only if the other person also subsequently indicates an interest do both people simultaneously get notified on their cell phone, via an SMS message, that there is a match.
The operator of the server, of course, can also make a mint collecting material suitable for blackmail, unless the privacy provisions prohibit it, which would be no fun. :-)
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There is a certain amount of information that you don't want to disclose publically to said interesting potential romantic/sexual partner (i.e., whether or not you are interested, whether you are gay/straight, whether you are poly, etc.) and the other potential romantic/sexual partner similarly isn't willing to disclose said informally for all of the world to see. However, if the answers to these questions would indicate that there might be a potential for then --- and only then --- should this both parties be notified about this fact.
It's probably possible to solve this using Realy Clever Mathematics, but it's a lot easier with trusted hardware. So consider what would happen if people could purchase devices (probably integrated into cell phones, eventually), where the device would send out an a message with an ID number to all other participating devices over bluetooth (assume that all protocol exchanges are encrypted so that only trusted devices that do not "cheat" can decrypt them). Each person who participates in this is registered with a central, secure server which associates with your ID number the following information: a low-res picture, whether you are gay/straight/bi, whether you are poly or not, whether you are interested in people who are gay/straight/bi/poly, etc. So when someone sees someone which interests them, they excuse themselves, and their device sends the ID numbers that it has received in the past 10 minutes to the central server, which sends back the low-res pictures. That person then selects the picture for which they are interested, and only if the other person also subsequently indicates an interest do both people simultaneously get notified on their cell phone, via an SMS message, that there is a match.
The operator of the server, of course, can also make a mint collecting material suitable for blackmail, unless the privacy provisions prohibit it, which would be no fun. :-)