Online Dating - How The Village Matchmaker Turned Into A Dot-Com
Matchmaking - bringing like-minded strangers together with romance in mind - has been around for centuries. Anyone who has seen the classic musical Fiddler On The Roof remembers Tzeitel, the eldest daughter, singing, "Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make me a match!" Indeed, there was a village matchmaker who made her living arranging courtships between young men and women.
As time passed, family members and friends of young people took on matchmaking duties. Many single men have an aunt or cousin who are always trying to pair them up with the friends' daughters and nieces. More than one blind date has resulted from a well-meaning aunt arranging a meeting between two acquaintances. Sometimes it works out; more often than not, it doesn't.
Online Dating Is Big Business
Online dating services are today's version of the village matchmaker. The industry has grown into a 500 million dollar business, with the number of dating web sites increasing by 38% every year. The most successful sites are the ones with the most members.
One reason large commercial online dating sites are more popular than smaller niche dating sites is that singles seem to believe that the more people they have access to online, the greater the chance that they will meet their true love.
Another reason for the popularity of the large sites is that, with so many members, these sites have the resources to invest in new technology for their members, like online webcam chats and advanced filters to narrow the field of prospective matches.
Does Online Dating Lead To Marriage?
Online dating has an impressive success rate. Almost 7 million adults who use the Internet for dating services have gone on to date someone they met online - that's 43%.
As one might expect, the numbers drop when you look at how many online set-ups resulted in long-term relationships or marriages. Three million adults, or 17% of online dating singles, report that they have married or started a long-term relationship with a partner they met online.
Online Dating - It's Not For Everyone
Some singles will never be comfortable with online dating. They don't like the idea of communicating online with someone they don't know, or they think online dating is only for the desperate and lonely.
Others, however, know that online dating is just another way to meet people, and they welcome the opportunity to gather information about a potential date from a position of relative anonymity before they commit to revealing their identity.
Online dating is indeed today's version of the village matchmaker.
