Online dating trends - what are the options?
Online dating (in whatever form) has been around since the very beginning of the Internet. The earliest online dating behavior was exhibited through the use of online chatting (ex. IRC), and slowly progressed to more sophisticated solutions (matchmaking sites), but it has now evolved into a more complex online social environment through social networks. If you've been wondering how to make the best use of the Internet for online dating, the following may be useful.
An interesting post on Mashable attempted a breakdown of top 5 trends in online dating today. In my opinion the author pretty much nailed it. It comes down to these:
- more hookups - majority of Americans have used an online dating service or other dating related site to flirt and possibly engage in a relationship with someone.
- niche dating - with more than 92 million singles in the US, your chances of meeting someone compatible should be high right? Well, not necessarily, if you take the general approach (you'll simply end up with millions of potentials, and you'll be stuck pretty soon). Niche dating sites offer singles a chance to narrow down their choices towards people who are more like them (if likeness is what they want), and improve online dating success chances significantly; we now have online dating sites for pretty much any social group of singles you can think of - just type it into the search box on your favorite search engine and voila!
- different dating flavors - interracial, interfaith, inter-party (well, it's the election season); peace and love among singles of all kinds.
- social networks and non-dating sites - social networks are probably the closest to online dating sites, as they provide for all the basic needs singles have in order to meet others - contact, communication, searching according to preferences; sites like Facebook and MySpace have been used by singles since their beginning to meet other interesting people, many of whom end up together in an intimate relationship, simply from having expressed and connected over something as trivial as joining the same activity group, or sharing the same music preferences (sometimes the simplest thing is the connection).
- online communities - the emphasis here is on sites that are oriented towards reuniting people who have gone to the same high-school, college, university; many of these sites allow their members to set dating preferences and see others' personal relationship statuses.
Theoretically, every online profile you posses can be enriched with your dating status information and personal preferences - be it a social network, dating site, personal site, business community network (like LinkedIn). Most (if not all) of these sites offer some kind of communication channel between members, and like I pointed out earlier - all you basically need for online dating is a profile and a communication tool, and you're set! So, if you're thinking "what's the right way to approach online dating" the answer is there is no right way, there are simply ways to do it. As with many things in life, you have to try things and see what happens, so go and try - online dating is almost everywhere on the Web.