Gelato = online dating, plus a dash of Facebook & a pinch of Twitter

By Ben Patterson / Yahoo! Tech

"So, think your perfect match is probably a '30 Rock' fan? Then check out Gelato, a new online dating site that lets you find potential mates who've, say, added '30 Rock' to their Netflix queues, mentioned it on Facebook, tweeted about it, or watched a recent episode on Hulu.

Gelato (which I first learned about thanks to the New York Times) bills itself as 'real-time search meets online dating,' and that's more or less on the mark. The idea here is that rather than trying to find that special someone based on the standard, sterile profile info (such as 'Favorite movies,' 'Likes,' 'Dislikes,' and so on), you'll probably get a clearer picture of a someone by checking out their latest Facebook updates, tweets, Flickr photos, and Netflix rentals.

So here's how it works (and don't worry, no one's going to be pouring over your Facebook updates without an OK from you first): First, you create a Gelato account and connect it to either your Facebook or Twitter profiles, and then you go ahead and add some of that generic info (relationship status, looking for, ethnicity, religion, politics, and so on).

All pretty standard, but here's where it gets interesting: You can then connect a variety of other accounts to Gelato, including feeds from your Netflix, Hulu, Flickr, Amazon, Pandora, and Last.fm. Once that's done (and you can specify whether you want all that activity public, or restricted to your Gelato friends), all your updates will appear in a 'lifestream' on your Gelato profile—and it's all searchable by other Gelato members (provided you've made your feeds public).

So, for example, if you want to find single guys in Seattle who've watched, tweeted about, rented, or otherwise mentioned '30 Rock,' you can do so in a Gelato search. Or ... if you're looking for single women in Manhattan who've been tweeting about (or listening to, in the case of Pandora and Last.fm users) the Black Eyed Peas, you can search for that, too. (Of course, the only people you'll find in Gelato's search results are fellow Gelato members who've agreed to make their various feeds public.)

Pretty cool, but as usual, there are a couple caveats. First: You should be comfortable with letting a third party (like Gelato) handle your Facebook/Twitter/Netflix/Hulu feeds and profile info (again, plenty of privacy options are available, and connecting your account to Facebook and/or Twitter is performed via Facebook Connect and Twitter's official APT). Also: Because Gelato is so new, there aren't a whole lot of people to choose from yet.

Still ... real-time searching for love? Nice. Why didn't they have this when I was single?"