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May 23, 2012 | Author admin

History of Online Dating

Long before the first internet dating site ever appeared on the World Wide Web, the conceptual idea of dating using some form of media was gaining popularity. As an example classified ads were being placed in newspapers and a number of singles were finding their partners in this way. However, there was a stigma attached to the whole concept of dating in such an unconventional way. It was generally seen that the ‘correct’ way to meet someone for the first time was in person, or via an introduction.

The advent of the internet saw classified ads similar to those posted in the newspapers appearing on internet message boards. Chat rooms also became a popular place for singles to try and find a partner. A lot of this early online ‘dating’ activity was initiated by the individual ISP’s themselves, with companies such as America Online providing chat rooms specifically designed for singles for the purpose of dating. As such, well before the first fully fledged dating sites were launched there was already an ‘online dating culture’ taking root on the internet.

One of the first dating websites to achieve widespread brand recognition was Match.com which was launched on the internet in 1995. However, in reality its popularity was shared by Kiss.com, a dating site owned by the same individual as Match.com. Very quickly other dating sites soon launched bringing online dating into mainstream culture. By 1996, there were 16 dating sites listed in the Yahoo.com directory. As online dating gathered popularity, the stigma attached to this form of dating soon lifted, online dating sites very quickly became seen as an acceptable way to meet people, not the online version of the desperate newspaper classified ad. Further momentum was helped by the release of the film You’ve got mail [1998]in which the actors Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks found love over the internet. Showing these two attractive individuals succeeding with internet dating on the big screen really helped the image associated with the users of these dating sites to shift from a group of people who could never find a date in the conventional way to a group of normal individuals who had just chosen to use the internet to date.

In 2002, online dating changed in a radical way once again with the release of social networking websites such as Friendster and Myspace. Social networking allowed friends to connect from all around the world and people used these websites to find single individuals in their own area. Nevertheless, this service was not exclusively for dating, and despite the hype Facebook hasn’t as yet come close to challenging the popularity of the established dating sites.

Since the beginning of online dating on forums and in chat rooms, dating has come a long way. The internet has always been a very efficient way of bringing people together and will most likely always be used for internet dating in some form.

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