There used to be plenty of stigma attached to online dating, but current numbers don’t lie: More people are now beginning to accept (and use!) online dating sites as a legitimate matchmaking tool.

The Internet has made inroads into practically every facet of human life, but nowhere is its application more mind boggling, and yes, questioned and stigmatized than in helping people find love.

Estimated to be worth billion, online dating is a robust and fast growing industry. As of 2009, there were approximately 1,400 online dating sites in North America alone. When it comes to playing Cupid between strangers on opposite sides of the globe who would otherwise not meet each other if it were not for the Internet, it appears that existing online dating platforms have only scratched the surface.

Various technologies continue to emerge to improve the way people meet potential mates online. It used to be that online dating sites mainly relied on users’ personal information and interests in matching couples, today, there are such things as mathematical algorithms and facial recognition, video dating, and virtual dating (blends online dating with online gaming).

Online dating as we know it today came to the surface in the 90s, but its roots date back to the 1700s when the first matrimonial service was set up. The service ran ads by singles who had limited opportunities to find a companion.

Even before the Internet was created, singles were able to connect through newsgroups and bulletin boards services, but these encounters were only considered incidental. The first service that was created specifically for the purpose of dating was Matchmaker.com which started as a dial-up bulletin board system. Matchmaker.com became a full-blown Web dating service in the 1990s and now has 7 million users.

Match.com soon followed suit and is credited as the first actual Internet dating service. By mid-90s, a host of online dating services have sprouted, like eHarmony and Yahoo Personals.

There was so much stigma attached to the Internet being a medium for romantic connections, with people who used these services viewed as desperate and foolish. Remnants of that stigma still exist today, but online dating has become so popular many are now willing to push their skepticism to the backseat and try it for themselves.

What’s there to like about online dating? Many free singles dating services offer more variety and the bonus is that, one doesn’t have to leave the confines of the home to go search for a mate. Even those too shy to strike a conversation with people in the real world often experience less anxiety chatting up strangers on the Web.

Online dating also appeals to middle-aged individuals who hate the harsh predictability of the club dating scene: the younger ones get hit on and pair up more frequently and quickly, often leaving the older ones feeling like an outcast. The Internet offers an age-friendly, more neutral alternative.

In America alone, 40 million singles—that’s about 40 percent of the adult American singles population—use online dating services. And online dating companies find that when it comes to finding romance, Americans don’t put a ceiling on how much they are willing to spend. In 2007, Americans splurged 0 million on web dating services, pushing online dating to the second spot next to pornography as the highest industry for paid Web content.

Nearly 20 million people access at least one online dating Website on any given month, and online dating factors in about 120,000 marriages that take place yearly, says Online Dating Magazine. In stark contrast, experts say those who prefer to sit on a bar stool only has a 2 percent chance of actually landing a date.

Web dating is no longer a fad—it is becoming a tradition and, whether one likes it or not, it’s here to stay. Wired Magazine predicted in 2002 that in 20 years, it would be silly, if not unthinkable, for anyone to look for a mate and not give online dating a try.

Whenever we wonder about Internet dating, many of us automatically imagine Plentyoffish as well as Match.com. Specifically in the previous year or so though, mobile phone engineering along with dating applications have integrated with numerous online dating sites which are now using the huge reach of Twitter and Facebook for a reliable and extremely focused online dating and social option.

Considering that the World Wide Web is commonly used and recognised inside cultures as being a core social instrument, men and women both new and experienced are enjoying the mechanics of recent interaction products. When compared to basic internal online messaging programs online dating services used to supply to their members, dating on the Internet is now developing into a dating innovation.

Pretty much all the high profile social sites or web logs have got an online dating web page link nowadays by incorporating an affiliate or joint venture kind of agreement with one of the leading edge online dating sites. Prime time Television nowadays incorporates Internet dating TV ads (consider that a decade ago!..certainly no!!), the widely used online dating applications get tens of thousands of downloads per day, search visitors associated with free online dating sites belong to the top 5 visited markets worldwide.

Dating online is big, massive and, the idea continues to develop momentum. It also tends to make a good deal of logic to blend social network sites with this particular strategy. Thus, exactly what is the deal with the dating scene concerning Twitter and Facebook?

The theory behind interacting with men and women via Twitter is a straightforward one which is in line with its current 140 – character principle. Online dating with Twitter is concentrated around a customer’s specific location as well as age category. Members can easily restrict or broaden their particular lookup to any specific town or suburb worldwide. Twitter Internet dating enables participants to publish a user profile and picture very similar to a standard online dating website. An association among two attracted tweeters can be simply initiated by just hitting a control button in order to twitter update your motives.

Internet dating through Facebook assumes a bit more detail. Through selecting one or more dating websites applications, an individual can easily incorporate his or her Facebook information straight into their own dating user profile inside the application. Out of the five-hundred million Facebook customers, 29% happen to be single, and so if you try to ponder the massive pool of single people you will have access to, possibilities to make new friends via Facebook would appear limitless. Facebook has currently overtaken Google when it comes to page views or website visitors, and if you’re searching for a destination to date, Facebook seems to be the spot to hang out in.

Can this social advancement cause the end for the regular online dating service? Evidently not, the Internet dating industry proceeds to report typically 5% growth annually primarily based around the previous 5 years (at the time of 2010). Young single people are generally informed, these people recognize that sites such as Facebook is much more associated with a friendship-networking notion in contrast to online dating sites being a highly focused matchmaking network. And furthermore, who’s got only one profile nowadays? It’s really a typical circumstance for single people to sustain several dating profiles throughout a wide array of community networks.

Online dating companies are facing increasing pressure from rival organizations in addition to a forecast of an industry slow down. Online dating has become a mega industry during the last five years, and in order to maintain sustainability, the big dating sites in the U.S. are focusing on less saturated markets in both India and China.

Despite the fact that the online dating industry has tipped the billion dollar mark with annual turn over, the big four dating giants in the U.S. have reported that growth has slowed by 5% during the past three years. In contrast, much less populated countries are reported to be recording significant growth within online dating. For example, dating sites in Australia have been receiving more than 2.6 million visits per month as of March 2011. Compared to data in 2008, visits to online dating in Australia were less than 2 million per month. Per capita, Australia has one of the highest rates of online dating usage in the world.

Even though the larger U.S. dating services are turning to fertile markets like Australia and New Zealand in order to recover lost ground in the U.S, the main focus is aimed at mass populated nations like China and India. Despite the fact that China and India contain more than 70% of the world’s population, 80% of these citizens live in poverty. Despite this, young Chinese and Indians are paving the way for a new generation of social technology enthusiasts and the market in Asia is ripe for new businesses.

Certainly there is room for new players to enter the online dating sector within Asia, however the American’s will need to invest in substantial research to overcome translation obstacles and to understand how dating customs in Asia contrast to the west. Parts of Asia are already highly technologically advanced and have a substantial head start on their own native market places. Social eccentricities stand as the biggest hurdle for foreign investors looking to enter the social networking and online dating scene within Asia.

One common denominator between diverse cultures is that despite cultural variation, romantic endeavours have been proven to be extremely profitable from a business point of view. And regardless of economic down turns, online dating continues to remain as one of the few recession proof industries of the 21st century. One advantage the American companies have on their side is the willingness of Asians to adapt to western culture and this is certainly the case with online dating.

Nevertheless, any mainstream or major transition between Western and Chinese social culture will only transpire through new generations. In China, arranged marriages still play a significant role. Chaperone dating and parental supervision is still very much a pivotal role in the matchmaking environment. Such traditions can still be integrated into online dating whereby subscribers would have the option to go into a pool of singles for modern dating or traditional dating.

Online dating has revolutionized the way in which we interact, and regardless of culture or tradition, the concept can be developed in an acceptable way.