Now and the future of Dating on the Internet
The Dating Scene Indicators that evaluate the strengths and effectiveness of Marketing activities are primarily focused on conversion rates based on the mapping of target areas. The main focus of marketing over the years has been to become its most efficient self by reducing the subset of targeted consumers and increasing the sales thereof. If earlier, to kill a bird,a man would have to throw ten stones, now he could kill two birds with one. This occurs because the man now knows the pattern of the birds as he has been observing them for a while and knows exactly how they would behave and react. This advancement in cognitive recognition is essentially what Artificial Intelligence would be doing as well. When we go on the world wide web, along with the information, we desire, what is thrown at us is a lot of information in the form of varying types of advertisements. Most of these advertisements, however, fail to yield any results and thus they constitute to as noise, that humming buzz that you hear when the radio frequency channel is set to just one decimal place lower than what it is supposed to be. The aim of Artificial Intelligence is to reduce this noise as much as possible and to enhance and magnify the information that has a higher chance of a conversion.
Dating apps today are such a flawless part of our lives that we had almost forgotten what dating was like before the first dating website came about to be. In 1995, Match, the dating website, was launched by Kremen and T.Ong. At that point, Match took away two of the major issues the dating industry faced then, that of control of processes and economic barriers. It worked on a subscription model and didn’t indulge in any form of profiling-social, economic, cultural or religious. It was another example of the testament that ‘technology is the greatest equalizer’. MSN and AOL chat rooms served as good online spaces for people to be connected but soon gained the reputation of just catering to the demographic that was too intelligent or socially awkward to go out. The lack of verification led to instances of bullying or wives spying on their spouses, and they soon became unpopular.
Over the last 50 years, the patterns of social interactions, ranging from neighbours to distant acquaintances has been balanced out by the presence of various mediums over the web. Social media helps in establishing relationships and means of connection in situations which were previously very unlikely. People now have better access to communicate with people who are not in direct relation to them, such as distant friends, who, studies have shown, are much more likely to be dated by people as they are more comfortable. A significant portion of inter-racial couples also claims to have met through one of the major apps. Tinder, which is one of the class leaders has more than 50 million active users and claims that 12 million ‘matches’ occur every day. In five years from now, we would be communicating with our devices differently. The communication of the device to us is going to be highly analytical and adaptive. It is going to be powered by technology that will give us suggestions and make decisions on our behalf. This will have a profound impact on dating apps. The apps will be making suggestions to us based on things like who seems to be the most compatible, whose schedule fits in best with yours, what common interests are shared by you, what are your affiliations and also several temperaments. The Artificial Intelligence engines will take into account several variables and spew out the results that possibly will have the best chances of conversion. The market for dating apps has gotten very crowded recently and has witnessed a fair share of rises and falls of several apps, the ones that have stood the test of time have been successful in marketing themselves and getting regular users on board. App developers have been able to decode the problems that were being faced by the demographic and have come up with tweaks and changes to their apps to tackle them. On some apps, only women can send the first message in case of a match. Verification has become a norm, it adds to the profile credibility and increases the chances of a particular profile standing out. Blockchain technology has been a critical element being used in the programmes of these apps for double-ended secure verification as well as data privacy, reducing the chances of misuse of the users’ data significantly.
Long before the internet got involved, matchmaking in India depended on word-of-mouth recommendations, references from priests and marriage bureaus, or directly through newspapers’ classified sections. It wasn’t until the late 1990’s that websites such as Jeevansathi.com and Shaadi.com were introduced, encouraging Indians to look online for the right arranged marriage matches. This marked the slow beginning of a significant cultural shift. Parents were now uploading details ranging from age to ‘gotras’ and complexion to shoe size on these portals. Unlike in most cases where the introduction of technology and digitization leads to a reduction in primitive practices, this website preserved them, leading to no social betterment. The introduction of dating apps has played a role in another significant cultural shift; the millennials have been able to take over the control from their parents and have made ‘partner-hunting’ a personal activity. This has lead to a rise in inter-cultural and inter-religious marriages in the country and the meaning of arranged marriages is changing now from a complete arrangement to a sort of introduction and approval situation.
The inter-linking of data from all dating apps would lead to a more secure and safe experience for the users. The verified users’ activities would be tracked, and any suspicious or undesirable activity would lead to a negative assessment of a particular user’s profile. The apps could share this data among themselves, and this would lead to a giving the users an undisclosed score. Much like the concept of ‘credit score’ in the United States of America, this score would unlock certain privileges for users or keep certain users out of the ecosystem to make the entire network more conducive and welcoming. This would also encourage more and more people to join the network and hence increase the number of overall matches to increase, leading to more satisfied users.
The fusion of augmented reality and virtual reality into online dating ecosystems could lead to some great results. The users will be able to create their own ‘avatars’ and modify it with their details, and the AI engines would be able to calibrate the ‘avatars’ as carefully as possible to the users. Now in this digital space, two users could interact and be able to judge their compatibility with each other. Augmented reality could make long distances seem short as it could give the users at two edges of the world an experience to make them feel like they are near each other. Algorithms could take two people, run their compatibility tests ranging over longs spans of time, lets say equivalent to ‘10 years’ and give out results in seconds making predictions and preventing divorces or separations in the future leading to better success rates of marriage and thus better overall happiness of people.
The new apps that are being developed should keep pace with the new developments and be aware about the changes in tastes and preferences of users. Primarily, the main factors separating dating apps doing well from those not doing to well are: 1) Women Safety 2) Data Privacy 3) Interactive Interfaces 4) Verification of users Some apps that have done well over the past couple of time are now dying out due to reasons such as non-adaptability, verification loopholes, tarnished reputations and social stigma. The apps can very well offer slightly different features depending on the geographical norms and cultures to get more users onboard. Human beings will find one way or another to find one another; it is now up to the developers to find the right match with the users.