Dillon Vanderwoude
Professor Owens
Internet tools and technology
Social media has been in the works since the late eighties, ever
since the birth and spread of E-mail we have been working our way towards the
sites we have today. (i.e Facebook, twitter, Google+) Before I first had a Facebook
I used AOL to instant message my friends, and I used bulletin board systems to
get information from people much smarter than me. When Facebook was released in
2004, mostly college students had. A few years later I jumped on the train and
got one, cause everyone had one. Facebook became my homepage; I was always on their
looking at my friend's statuses and trying to come up with clever ones of my
own. There was most definitely a surge towards social media, a revolution. I
had hundreds of online friends and barely talked to any of them. Before anyone
had time to breathe Facebook became so large that if it were a country it would
be right behind the United States population wise. But the one topic I
would like to discuss specifically is online dating. Online dating has gotten a
lot more attention since the boom of social networking, and mostly all online
dating sites offer their own form of social networking. In 2008 online dating
sites pulled in a whopping 957 million dollars in revenue. Online dating has
become so popular in the last eight years that 1 in 8 married or dating couples
meet up because of them. They owe their success to the success of sites like Facebook
and twitter that have perfected clear communication and developing a very
trusting business with their clients. The very beginnings of online dating
started in the early 1700s when “desperate” single men and woman would pay to
get their information in the paper in hopes of finding someone. So while the
technology and dependence is new, the idea is very, very old. Online dating
sites have been around since 1995, showing up on yahoo and other sites. In 1998
these sites saw a boost in their demographics when the famous movie “You’ve Got
Mail”, featuring Tom hanks and Meg Ryan was released. Online dating has not
suffered since the 90s, with the release of social networking sites such as Facebook
and MySpace; they only continued to grow, pulling in millions of dollars every
year. Dating sites such as match.com and meetup.com are not viewed as silly
ideas anymore. Thousands upon thousands flock to these sites for connections
that maybe they don’t have time to make during their busy schedules. These
dating sites have Facebook and other social networking sites to thank for their
immense fortunes. Meeting people online is not seen as odd and creepy anymore.
My aunt and uncle found each other on match.com, and the only reason my aunt
signed up in the first place was that she very much trusted Facebook and other
social sites and saw this as a very safe place to meet someone. They now have
three kids and seem very happy. Online dating is an online service that can now
be seen as a specific genre of social networking on the level of Facebook and
twitter. The History of both these genres link up perfectly and would not be as
successful as they have been without each other.
Sources.
