The online dating scene, if you didn’t already know, is a multi-billion dollar industry and has been popular for quite some time. It hasn’t hurt to have films like 1998’s You’ve Got Mail, with Megan Ryan and Tom Hanks. While the movie itself goes well beyond online dating, it makes up a core aspect of the film, and hence its name. TBS channel was showing the movie yet again, and sucker that I am for the subtle chemistry between these two actors, I watched it over again for the umpteenth time. It made me wonder how, or whether, the movie would have been different if VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone calling had been available back then.

Well, Nora Ephron hasn’t yet made a movie called You’ve Got VoIPmail, but there are online dating sites popping up that integrate Skype PC-calling into the website. One example is Verbdate.

With Verbdate, you first download the Skype VoIP software, create a Skype profile, then sign up for a free membership on Verbdate. When you build your Verbdate profile, you enter your Skype username. When someone has seen your profile, they can send you a member email. If they want to actually talk to you, they send you a “wink”. If you’re interested, you in turn give them your Skype username, and they Skype-call you at an agreed upon time.

It’s an idea whose time has come. Verbdate’s unfortunate flaw is that the interface seems kind of awkward. The Google Maps mashup is a great concept, but my attempts to try it, repeatedly, were extremely frustrating. The general idea is that you pinpoint your city location on the world map, and then search for someone fitting certain criteria and who lives within a certain radius of you. Great concept, poor execution. The result is that, in my trials, I kept getting people who were thousands of miles away. (The site is Canadian, based presumably in the province of British Columbia, where the Google Maps seem to default for your starting pinpoint.)

Still, online dating is popular enough - take Markus Frind’s PlentyofFish, which generates US$10,000/day in ad revenue - that I don’t doubt Verbdate will work out their glitches. Either that or someone else will come up with a better site, possibly one that utilizes the video calling capabilities of Sightspeed.

Mad Money TV show host Jim Cramer (on CNBC broadcasting) is promoting Netgear Inc. (NYSE: NTGR) as the phone that could make VoIP actually work. In addition to wireless routers, Netgear makes the “Skype WiFi Phone” which allows you to make free calls to other Skype users around the world.

That means you can talk to people with Skype running on their laptop/ desktop computer or have another Skype phone - all for free. Skype also recently announced free calls within the United States and Canada for Skype users to landlines/ cell phones.

To give a clearer picture, here are the types of possible phones calls, and whether there is a cost associated:

• Caller and callee both have Skype, either on a Skype phone or a computer connected to the Internet. No charge for calls.
• Caller and called both live in the United States or Canada and the caller has Skype but the callee does not. No charge for calls - newly announced.
• Caller has Skype but callee does not, and at least one party does not live in the United States or Canada. Skype offers worldwide calling plans under the SkypeOut and SkypeIn options. SkypeOut lets a Skype user call out to a non-Skype phone. SkypeIn lets a Skype user receive calls from a non-SKype phone.
• Neither caller or callee have Skype. This is of course the traditional situation pre-dating VoIP.

Cramer added that Netgear Inc. has over US$5 per share in cash reserve, and that the quality of their Skype phone was going to payoff starting early 2007. Thus, he implied that the stock is a recommended buy. Contrastly, he repeatedly called Vonage stock not just a dog but a mongrel.

To my knowledge, Skype does not offer software that will run on a smartphone or Wi-Fi enabled smart PDA (such as the Palm Treo 650 and 700 series). My take on this is that cellular providers better get on the ball and figure out how to offer their customers Skype or lose their holding in the huge mobile communications market.

Tags: Mad Money, Jim Cramer, CNBC, Netgear, VoIP phone, Skype phone, voice over internet protocol, Vonage