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Speech Outline for speech on the history of internet dating....

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Online Dating: A Brief History and Overview Jackson/ Imani/ Group 12/ Speaker 1 Purpose Statement: To explain what online dating is by outlining the history, the processes used to form a match, and the future of online dating. I. Introduction Attention Getter: Twenty years from now, the idea that someone looking for love won't look for it online will be silly, akin to skipping the card catalog to instead wander the stacks because the right books are found only by accident. (Griscom 2002) That quote is from an article written in 2002!? It’s only been sixteen years since it was written but their prediction is spot on. Relevance Statement: Online dating is now the second-most-common way for couples to meet. Orienting Material: Online dating has become a highly marketable service with the plethora of apps being created and the many websites that cater to the niche markets. There are websites and apps that cater from everyone to those looking for farmers to those who are older in age. There are even avenues in which you can find a sugar daddy or even an extramarital affair. The Internet has made dating more accessible and inclusive to the masses. But what are the origins of online dating? How did we get here? When I think of how my parents met versus how my generation is meeting there is such a stark contrast. Credibility Statement: As a millennial, online dating is the most familiar way to find a partner. I think of my friends and their struggle to find someone worth their time and energy and I think of the TV and Internet ads we are constantly bombarded with. To love and be loved is one of the greatest desires of man. And to meet this need online dating has emerged to solve all our problems or so we hope. Thesis: And so to better understand the anomaly of online dating my group and I have researched the history of online dating, the processes of finding a match online and we have begun to look into the future of online dating. Transition: To understand anything you must first understand its history. II. Body (1) One might think that online dating started in the age of computers, but its history actually goes back farther than that. The first known form of online dating can be considered as the personal advertisements posted in newspapers in the early 1700s. A. Printed personal advertisements were especially prevalent when unusual circumstances caused groups of unmarried individuals (predominately men) to be isolated from potential partners. (Finkel, Eastwick, Karney, Reis, & Sprecher, 2012). Personal advertisements really gained traction in the 1970s even with ratios of men to women being equal. Their increasing popularity can be contributed to a rise in age at first marriage…a growing dependency on media for information in general…and a consumerist shift in society toward a service economy (Finkel, Eastwick, Karney, Reis, & Sprecher, 2012). In these printed advertisements the authors would describe themselves and some of the desired characteristics they wanted in a partner as well as the type of

relationship they wanted. Although these personal advertisements were very prominent, only a small number of people actually reached out to meet a romantic partner. B. Video dating emerged in the 1980s following the creation of the videocassette recorders. It allowed members to provide profile descriptions and photographs and then participate in a videotaped interview. To make their choices among dating prospects, members conducted an initial screening based on the prospects’ photos and profile information and then viewed the videotapes of those who most interested them. Although this made dating more tangible for consumers, video dating, like personal advertisements did not become the mainstream avenue to meeting partners. (2) Just like personal advertisements followed the creation of the newspaper, online dating followed the development of the computer. A. The first online dating actually predates the Internet. For a mathematics course at Stanford University in 1959, a group of students programmed an IBM 650 to match 49 men and women. The men and women completed a questionnaire assessing characteristics like age, height, weight, religion, personality traits, and hobbies, and the students wrote a program to calculate the difference score for each possible male–female pair. The pair with the lowest difference score was selected as the first and “best” match, but as fewer couples remained in the pool, the couples had larger difference scores and made for some “odd couples” (Gillmor 2007). B. In the 1970s, other dating companies wanted to make computer matching work and be able to reach an audience interested in purchasing their services. Unfortunately, these ventures into the business of computer dating also failed. The computers were not equipped to handle data from many users, and there was no Internet platform for efficiently communicating with customers and obtaining data from them (Finkel, Eastwick, Karney, Reis, & Sprecher, 2012). C. As computer capabilities improved a new generation of computer dating appeared. We categorize these online dating businesses into three generations: (a) online personal advertisement sites, (b) algorithm-based matching sites, and (c) smartphone-based dating applications. (Finkel, Eastwick, Karney, Reis, & Sprecher, 2012) a. The first generation began in 1995 with the launch of Match.com. Match provided singles with many options for posting and browsing online personal advertisements. Match and other sites like it had an expansive user base that motivated the creation of niche sites that cater to helping their users find common matches ranging from everything from hobbies, to race to disability status to age to sexual orientation. b. The second generation began when eHarmony launched in 2000, with “science- based” online matching systems, also referred to as algorithm-based matching or compatibility matching. These sites

distinguish themselves from the sites focusing on online personal advertisements by claiming to take a scientific approach to matching (Finkel, Eastwick, Karney, Reis, & Sprecher, 2012). c. The third generation began in 2008, right after Apple Inc. started its App Store. The App Store provided a platform where independent companies could create software programs, called “apps,” for the iPhone. Soon other smartphone makers began to make their own apps that use the Internet and global positioning system (G.P.S.) to alert users of potential partners nearby. These mobile dating apps have become so popular that according to eHarmony’s website a whopping 40% of Americans use online dating and 20% of current committed relationships began online. (eHarmony, 2018) Transition: Learning about the origins of online dating gives us a better understanding of how online dating became so prevalent in our society but to even better understand online dating, we have to know the actual processes that help make these much sought after matches.

References eHarmony.com (2018, November 22). 10 Online Dating Statistics You Should Know. Retrieved from https://www.eharmony.com/online-dating-statistics/ Finkel, Eli J., Eastwick, Paul W., Karney, Benjamin R., Reis, Harry T. & Sprecher, Susan (2012). Online Dating: A Critical Analysis from the Perspective of Psychological Science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1) 3-66. doi:10.1177/1529100612436522 Gillmor, C. S. (2007). Stanford, the IBM 650, and the first trials of computer date matching. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 29, 74–80. Griscom, Rufus (2002). Why are Online Personals So Hot? In Wired Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2002/11/why-are-online-personals-so-hot/...