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What’s the Valentine’s Day secret to a love interconnection?
Wed, 15th Feb 2017
FYI, this story is more than a year old

When it comes to love, we've all been victims of the missed connection. It's why those entries in Craigslist's well-known “Missed Connections” feature sometimes twist our stomachs.

Yes! We all remember that cute guy/girl at the airport Cinnabon. His/Her eyes never left ours while we downed a classic cinnamon roll. No! We didn't get a number. Now all that's left is regret.

We at Equinix believe the world needs fewer missed connections.

Equinix has been connecting the world since our founding, but we've only focused on data traffic. Now, just in time for Valentine's Day, we're expanding into romantic interconnection.

And all our new offerings have been tested and proven by a group of volunteers who self-identified as terrified daters. Here are some of our new interconnection products and services inspired by romance:

The Cross-Your-Heart Connect

This smartphone app uses Internet of Things sensors to detect your potential love interest via eye movements and by measuring your vocal cord tightness, forehead sweat levels and nervous blink-rate. Using real-time data analytics, it then determines what you would say to your possible connection, if only you could speak.

For instance, your target could receive a message in the app that reads: “My name is Tony, and I'm sitting 36 degrees to your left. I find you attractive. Would you like to meet for 10-cent wings at Chili's?

The Don't-Cross-Me Connect

This modification of the Cross-Your-Heart Connect is for customers ready for a relationship, but wanting to be upfront about their emotional vulnerability.

It does the same work as the “Cross-Your-Heart Connect,” but also communicates in a polite but firm way that any potential new relationship shouldn't be trifled with.

A message from the app to the would-be connection might read, “My name is Julie. Let's hold hands at the movies. If you break my heart, I'll relentlessly mock your Spotify playlists on Twitter.

The I'm-on-Cloud-Nine Exchange

You believe everything in online dating profiles, because trust is critical to any relationship. But some people lie. He calls himself a “transportation company owner.” His photo makes him look like Ryan Gosling and Jessica Alba have a 28-year-old son. But he's really a 48-year-old freelance bike messenger.

The “I'm-on-Cloud-Nine Exchange” links to multiple online dating sites and public records databases and compares the employment histories of thousands of prospects to their online dating claims in milliseconds.

It also combines dating site pictures with driver's license and passport photo archives, creating a more realistic composite. More accurate profiles mean less wasted time and fewer missed connections.

The Date-a Hub

Equinix has deployed “Date-a Hub” in 40 metro regions globally, focusing on urban areas with high concentrations of bars, dance clubs and supermarket produce aisles.

The “Date-a-Hub” interconnection node uses proprietary technology and low-latency connections to piggy-back on existing data traffic flows and boost connectivity so that it's faster than the speed of light.

As Einstein predicted, this makes it possible to travel back in time. In short, your missed connection in a “Date-a Hub” zone can't happen … if it never happened.

As much as we'd want to eliminate missed romantic connections, this is clearly just a Valentine's Day parody post.

The brand of matchmaking we do at Equinix is to effectively and efficiently interconnect our enterprise and service provider customers to the people, locations, clouds and data they love, worldwide. And we do that on not just one, but every day of the year!