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Timeline of online dating

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This is a timeline of online dating services that also includes broader events related to technology-assisted dating (not just online dating). Where there are similar services, only major ones or "the first of its kind" are listed.

Full timeline

Year Service Notes
1690 Personal advertisements first appear in British newspapers
1959 Happy Families Planning Services Started by Jim Harvey and Phil Fialer as a class project at Stanford.

Used a questionnaire and an IBM 650 to match 49 men and 49 women.

1963 Ed Lewis's matching program (no name) Ed Lewis at Iowa State University used a questionnaire and an IBM computer to "to optimize the meeting potential at dances".[1]
1965 Operation Match (part of Compatibility Research Inc.) Started by Jeff Tarr and Vaughan Morrill at Harvard. Used a questionnaire and an IBM 1401 to match students. There was a $3 fee for submitting a questionnaire.

"By the fall of sixty-five, six months after the launch, some ninety thousand Operation Match questionnaires had been received, amounting to $270,000 in gross profits, about $1.8 million in today’s dollars."[1]

In the 1960s there still was no stigma about computer-assisted matching.

1965 Eros (Contact Inc.) Started by David Dewan at MIT. Used a dating questinnaire and Honeywell 200. "In one distribution of questionnaires, he drew eleven thousand responses at $4 each, or $44,000 in gross profits, about $250,000 in today’s dollars."[1]
1965 The New York Review of Books personals column Slater writes:

Classifieds made a comeback in America in the 1960s and 1970s, encouraged by the era’s inclination toward individualism and social exhibitionism. “Everybody was letting it all hang out in other ways,” said Raymond Shapiro, a business manager for the New York Review of Books, “so suddenly it was okay to display oneself in print. It was very important to be ‘self-aware.’ So you’d get ads like: ‘Astrologer, 27, psychology student, desires to establish non-superficial friendship with sensitive, choicelessly aware persons who are non-self-oriented, deep, and wish to unearth real, personness relationships.’ ”[1]

1968 Data-Mate Questionnaire-based matching service started at MIT.[2]
Early 1970s Phase II A "computer-dating company" started by James Schur.[1]
1974 Cherry Blossoms' mail-order bride catalog Slater calls Cherry Blossoms "one of the oldest mail-order bride agencies". Started by John Broussard.
1976 Great Expectations Video dating service started by Jeffrey Ullman.[3][4] The service achieved some notability, but it never overcame stigma.

There were also apparently other video dating services like Teledate and Introvision, but it's nearly impossible to find anything about them online.

1980s messengeries roses (pink chat rooms) Chat rooms for dating started by Marc Simoncini. France.
1984[5] Matchmaker Electronic Pen-Pal Network A bulletin board system for romance started by Jon Boede and Scott Smith. Matchmaker grew to 14 local BBSs throughout the US. Eventually people lost interest as BBSs lost out to the World Wide Web, and Matchmaker was superseded by Matchmaker.com.
1989 Scanna International Mail-order bride service focusing on Russia and Eastern Europe.
Early 1990s Patricia Moore Group An "offline matchmaking service in San Francisco" started by Trish McDermott.
1995 Match.com Started by Gary Kremen.
1997 JDate
1997[6] Lavalife
2000 eHarmony Online dating service for long-term relationships.
2002 Ashley Madison Founded
2003 PlentyofFish Online dating site started by Markus Frind.

Significant for being (one of the first?) free dating sites.

2003 Proxidating Dating service that used Bluetooth to "alert users when a person with a matching profile was within fifty feet".[1]
2004 OkCupid
2006 Badoo A "dating-focused social networking service" (Wikipedia).
2006 SeekingArrangement A sugar daddy/sugar baby site in the US.
2007 Skout A "location-based social networking and dating application and website".
2007 Crazy Blind Date Blind dating service started by Sam Yagan.
2008[7] GenePartner Matching service based on "DNA compatibility".
2009 Grindr (initial launch)
2011 LikeBright Online dating site by Nick Soman.[8]

By 2014 the site shut down.[9]

2012(?) Highlight Slater calls it a "location-based dating app", though this doesn't seem to be its main function (it seems more social than romantic).
2012 Tinder Dating app.
2012 MissTravel.com Dating service for people seeking companionship when traveling.

Started by Brandon Wade.

2015 OpenMinded Dating site for "monogamish" people, started by Brandon Wade.[10][11]
2015 Ashley Madison hack Personal information of Ashley Madison users stolen and released; see Ashley Madison data breach for more.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Slater, Dan. A Million First Dates.
  2. ^ Lawrence Krakauer writes about his experiences here.
  3. ^ Ullman's LinkedIn.
  4. ^ LA Times article that Dan Slater references.
  5. ^ Slater, Dan. Wikipedia seems to give a slightly different year.
  6. ^ Slater calls Lavalife a copycat of Match.com, so it ought to have started after 1995. This page gives 1997, but Wikipedia gives 1987 (while still including it in the category Category:Internet properties established in 1997).
  7. ^ TechCrunch.
  8. ^ GeekWire article.
  9. ^ GeekWire.
  10. ^ Bustle.
  11. ^ https://www.openminded.com/
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