Computerized dating services

Introduction

With so many dating website now operating, many are finding it essential to differentiate themselves in some way in order to compete and survive. One way to do this is to develop a special focus, serving a specific group of singles instead of all of them. Some have become very successful with this strategy. Some examples of how these websites and singles groups might be classified include the following areas:

the gay and lesbian market (i.e. Glimpse.com, others)

college students (collegeluv.com)

Jewish singles (Jdate.com)

Christian singles

Senior citizen singles

Speed dating

Silicon Valley executives

Millionaires, high income executives (many independent matchmakers cater to this group). There are many more potential classifications, everything from singles that like country and western lifestyles, swingers, skiers, by your astrological sign, you name it. A Scripps Howard study found that at least 41 dating services it examined had names with the words “Christian”, “Jewish” or “Catholic” in it.

It began at a Harvard University dance in 1964, engineered by two undergraduates. Nine months later 90,000 students had gone on dates set up by Operation Match. In 1967 the company claimed 200,000 applicants for that year alone; by 1973 they would claim 500,000 customers and 125,000 marriages.

Catering to the college students of Canada and the United States, Operation Match charged $2 to $10 for the privilege of filling out a questionnaire with 110 items, ranging from religious preference and TV habits to ideas on romantic love. The computer used by the service digested, tabulated and collated the results, and each client received a list with several names, addresses and phone numbers.

One writer reasoned that Operation Match succeeded because the students were already partly compatible: all were attending institutions of higher learning, and all were participating in campus life. Also, students are not in the same boat as the traditional "lonelyhearts." Coeds might go out on a computer-arranged date just for a lark, and those who found themselves paired with "undesirables" would be less affected by their ordeal than, say, a thirty-year-old "spinster."

How do they work

The first computer dating services started in 1957 as brick and mortar offices where single men and women flock to get a chance to meet their perfect match. They will be required to fill up a series of forms where they enter their personal information, just as we fill up today's online profile forms.

The dating service agency would then collect the forms and translate them into a format that could be read by the matchmaking program on the early versions of the computers. These are usually punch cards that are fed into the early versions of the IBM computers. The computers will then read the cards and compare the information with other cards to find a match. When the computer finds a match, its job is finished, and the humans take over the task of initiating contact between the matching single persons(www.lifetimesoulmates.com).

It may seem prehistoric and outdated to some, but the operations involved in yesterday's computer dating services and in today's online dating systems are ...