How to make 2.6 million dollars? Make a time machine and go back seven years.

A big thanks to Twitter for introducing me to Mashable and this latest development.
Mobile Social Networking is the current buzz trend of marketers, business folk, and techies alike. The patent (number 6618593) just sold for 2.6 million.

The patent covers mobile social networking – set to be one of the hottest tech markets this year. It covers location aware devices that connect to a remote server and allow users to make connections with other users based on distance and other factors. This is the system that a lot of the existing mobile social networks use: you say you’re interested in dating hot girls who dig World of Warcraft (ok, it’s a longshot), and the system alerts you when a matching person is in your vicinity. Loopt is a current example. We’re not sure who bought the patent, or whether they plan to go after those making use of the tech. The guys who filed it, however, were geniuses: they came up with this stuff 7 years ago.

So what does this all mean, or I should say, what’s the big deal?

The field of application of this patent is essentially mobile social networking and mobile dating. Both markets are soon to explode, especially in the US with million of users on the verge to shift from PC to cell phone to manage their digital social life. These mobile applications are the obvious next steps for websites such as MySpace, Facebook or Match.com. Several start up companies are already launching their services.

Money and technology and the future are the deal. And looks like the patent author is invisible, or at least for now.

While the buyer’s name is not disclosed according to the rules of these IP auctions, one can imagine it might be a large online social networking portal wishing to lock the market with a strong patent, or a company specialized in the monetization of intellectual properties willing to license this promising asset to the various players on the market. But for now the only people making profit out of it is the group of inventors who filed this innovative patent seven years ago.

Here are some of the Mobile Social Networking sites to make you salivate:–Twitter, Dodgeball, Socialight, Frengo, GotZapp (No longer in beta, it’s live! Thanks Josh for the update), ImThere, Groovr, and JuiceCaster.