If you’re driving down the road and see someone you want to contact (maybe it’s someone you’d like to date or someone who just cut you off in traffic) then save the license plate number. That’s right, get the license plate number and go on over to www.searchplates.com to look them up and send them an email. Searchplates.com allows you to send an email to someone if you’ve got their license plate number. If the person hasn’t registered yet on the site, they hold onto it for later use.
Or maybe it’s a scene right out of the movies and a common real-life frustration: Girl sees cute guy driving a convertible, smiles and gets a smile back. But off they each drive, never making any other contact. Or from his front porch, a car collector sees just the model and year he’s been trying to find drive by, in perfect condition. Would they be willing to sell? By the time he finds his keys to try to catch up with that hot item, the opportunity is lost. But in both cases there’s now a new plot twist available: The seeker uses the other car’s license plate to send a message on SearchPlates.com (www.searchplates.com) and bingo, contact… leading to Happily Ever After.
“Our system strikes the perfect balance between being findable and staying private,†says Scott Rose, Vice-President of SearchPlates.com, which launched several months ago and already has more than 2 million license plates registered on the site. “Using your cell phone, you can send a text message right then and there to any license plate, and if that license plate is registered on our site, the message gets immediately delivered to the cell phone linked to it. Or when you get home, you can log onto our web site and send a message that the other person will receive when they log in. But never would someone else get your real name or email address from us. That’s up to the two of you after contact is made.â€
If the other car has a license plate that’s not yet registered, SearchPlates.com hangs onto the information and notifies you when that plate has registered.
Besides dating or buying and selling cars, Rose says the site enables people to make new friends, recruit members for a car club, locate a business whose vehicle they saw and even complain to someone else about their driving. “This could cut down on road rage because they have a non-violent way to express their anger,†he says.
Use of the site is free. Anyone can register at www.searchplates.com just to find out whether or not someone has been trying to contact them through their license plate or enable two-way contact. All messages sent are both private and anonymous. Several of the technologies and processes involved in SearchPlates.com are patent pending.