Online Dating History
Online dating history can be traced to fairly recent technological developments. The advent of the internet and the natural increase in socialization that it caused have given online dating a huge boost. Among the doors the internet opened, love and romance was one of the widest. But if we put online dating history in the context of matchmaking as a whole, we see that it is only a technologically advanced version of something that has been going on for ages.
Saint Valentine's Day is one of our most popular romantic holidays. It both celebrates the actual successful couple in matchmaking, and it also promotes romantic get-togethers... and I might say very effectively given the commercial impact of that season on us all.
Some say that Valentine's Day derives from an ancient Roman ritual called the Lupercalia. It was a celebration of the beginning of spring and it represented a sense of purification. As part of the rituals associated with the event, the young single women of the city would write their names on pieces of paper and place them all in a very large urn. Then in turn the young single men would pick a name from the urn and would join whoever they picked for the rest of the year. Our Roman forefathers were low tech, but effective at matchmaking.
Online dating history and evolution are tied to technological development. On the verge of the invention of the press and the newspaper, we had printed matrimonial services. Like online dating, they also carried a stigma of being tools of the "desperate" so nothing new there. Then came the telephone, and personal ads on the newspaper relied on this "new" technology for future contacts. After that we had VHS and video matching. We have to agree though that the internet has had a catalyzing effect on the precision, breadth and accessibility of these types of services, bringing a level of legitimacy to them that has never been seen before.
When we look at the annals of online dating history it is widely held that Match.com was the first online dating service. There were other services at the time, but they were focused on international dating and had a "mail order bride" quality to them.
In the ensuing years a massive proliferation of sites inundated the market. Matchmaker.com and Lavalife.com headed the list, and by 1996 there were more than 16 online dating websites listed on the Yahoo directory. During the internet boom of the 90's large corporations acquired online dating sites and made them part of their portfolio, largely legitimizing the business. This generated in turn significant growth in the sector and the funding of even more of these types of sites. Today making a list of 100 online dating sites is an easy task!
In recent years technology has provided online matchmaking with additional tools in the form of matchmaking questionnaires and profiling methods. In this way sites like eHarmony.com and Chemistry.com claim to base their results, or their suggested matches on scientific research. On the other hand we can also say that online dating has come full circle, with sites like Craigslist and Yahoo Personals gaining popularity. These sites offer standard personals akin to what you find in regular newspapers.
Online dating history has been tinged with stigmas, prejudice and deception; but it has also led the way to millions of lasting and loving relationships that otherwise would have never been conceived, no pun intended. Technology has been a major support for the matchmaking industry. I wonder if we can still call matchmaking an art.
If you are interested in specific niche dating sites like Jewish dating services or Asian matchmaking sites then continue to browse our articles, you are sure to find what you need.