History of Internet Dating Services
Dating has changed drastically since its inception. It once consisted of first date proposals and fathers making
deals with other fathers about whom their daughters will marry. But recently, in the past three decades,
dating has become more of a process; during this process daters weed out people who they feel aren’t marriage
potential even if the discarded numbers are large. Even more recently, the combination of these generational
changes resulted in one type of service that caters to all types of daters, the Internet dating service.
The first online dating service (www.Match.com) was created in 1995 and, as of 2002, has had 26.6 million people
registered (Rosa, par. 17). The services were initially very simple and only matched people based on profiles of
likes and dislikes but now many dating services have evolved, having specific requirements for memberships. For example,
www.veggiedate.org is an online dating service that caters specifically to vegetarians and requires a declaration of
vegetarian strictness when setting up a personal ad on the site. In America alone thousands of Internet dating services
exist and all of them have the same purpose, to give everyone in the world the freedom and flexibility to date who they
want and when they want. 