Abstract
For long, online dating sites have claimed the role of changing the dating landscape for the better. In this article, we are going to review (a)how online dating sites aim to gain more users and (b)whether the online form of online dating promotes better romantic outcomes than the conventional dating many people are used to. In the second part, we may not have to analyze any online dating platform specifically, but the online dating market as a whole. To better understand how online dating sites aim to lure more users, we are going to use gender as a way in which they better differentiate users and use their strengths and weaknesses to earn more users.
Similarly, to gauge whether this form of dating is better compared to the old-fashioned way of finding a lover, we are going to consider the three primary fundamental services that the sites aim to offer: access, communication, and matching. Access is the point at which the users are exposed and given the opportunity to review partners to which they would have never been able to find under normal circumstances. Communication is the opportunity to access different forms of communication-based on the used of computer medium to interact with the potential partners before having to meet face-to-face. Matching is the use of any sort of mathematical algorithms to find potential partners for users.
Introduction
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs puts love as a fundamental human need, hence the search for love. However, conventional methods of meeting possible companions are slowly becoming replaced by the development of online dating. Since the very beginning, the internet has played a significant role in social interactions. The developments of online dating sites such as Tinder and Bumble has aided in the search for a soul mate. The online dating system works with people presenting themselves online in search of a personal, romantic, or sexual relationship. Tinder was founded in 2012 by Jonathan Badeen, Joe Munoz, Justin Mateen, Chis Gylczynski, Dinesh Mrjani, and Whitney Wolfe. Bumble was founded by ex-Tinder founder, Whitney Wolfe, in 2014, after a bitter exit to add a more feminist perspective to Tinder’s system (Mcdonald & Koning, 2019). Unlike Tinder, which allows anyone from both genders to initiate a conversation, Bumble only allows women to start the conversation. In both similar systems, users must enable their location in their smartphone, thus granting the app access to that information and filter who they are presented with by gender, distance, and location. Some of the main determining factors in online dating are gender, profile photos, and introduction. Each of these factors is the basis for matchmaking in the industry. Another basis for analyzing online dating platforms is its user retention. User retention is the ability of a company to retain users over time. Customer retention programs are founded to help the company to retain as many users as possible, often through customer loyalty. The primary role of any company is to attract as many customers as possible and try to retain as many of them as possible. Online dating sites rely on basics such as attention, incentives, quality services user testimonials and such. But to retain them needs the company to offer the best in the industry. This can be gauged by the way the company provides services of access, communication, and matching. These are the basic principles that will give the user the best experience, giving the online dating company an advantage over its competitors, retain the users for the future and possibly have users refer them to their friends. For the better part of any online dating user experience, online dating sites have altered the necessary romantic acquittance process and the process of compatibility. For instance, whereas the traditional method of finding a romantic partner involves the experience of meeting them and then slowly getting to know them better by learning various facts about them, online dating often involves users knowing a variety of facts about their matches and potential romantic partners before meeting them in person. Additionally, rather than relying on village elders, family, friends and relatives to give their opinion on whether two romantic partners are compatible, the final verdict is given to a mathematical algorithm in the hopes that it will grant both the potential romantic users the ability to learn facts about each other before even meeting in person.
SECTION 1:REVIEW ON GENDER
Gender plays a fundamental role in the online dating world. There are diverse ways to commence a relationship, with traditional factors suggesting that men are always required to make the first move. Though with the arrival of other online dating platforms such as Bumble, which claims to be ‘100% feminist’ to upset this form of gender stereotype. Bumble is an online dating app that prevents routine gender roles by having heterosexual women to communicate with their matches. These tools are known as counter-heteronormative dating apps. Bumble is made to attract women who wish to use the dating platform as an empowerment tool. The empowerment can be presented as a hypothesis, in the form of method and as a result (Tanner & Tabo). Users can use the stage to discover other people’s, accomplices or improve their professions (Tanner & Tabo). Bumble needs women to connect with their partners, saying that this has led to a higher rate of coordinated customer visits in the industry and a small number of complete episodes of provocation and abuse. In July 2017, Bumble had 18 million customers, with around 55% of these customers as women. Ages 18 to 25 are the largest amount of the female population and makeup 60% of the female population out of the total population, while women aged 25 to 35 are the second largest users (Tanner & Tabo). In Bumble, women exclusively initiate the first contact with the men that they are matched with (Mcdonald & Koning, 2019).
This has brought Brumble under criticism as it would appear that they are less feminist than Tinder. The graphic interface of Tinder is obvious and straightforward, which increases the demand among online dating users of the application. It presents one user at a time for the user to view the next person; they must make a decision: to like or dislike the person they saw. Tinder correspondence consists of only two phases. The first step is to select possible accomplices/partners. The other person may take hours or days, depending on their use of the application (Lopes & Vogel 2017). Research shows that Tinder has failed in dissecting the traditional gender inequality and fails to cater to the expectations and needs of women in online dating. Tinder, on the other hand, has been very successful in bringing people together and moving forward in collaboration.
Tinder allows any of the parties to initiate contact, which gives it more of a plus in addressing the gender stereotype idea. Online dating has also provided women with an active role in romantic interactions.
In different surveys conducted, it was also noted that men typically outnumber women in online dating platforms. Though this may also be attributed to the fact that men outnumber women across many IT contexts. Men find online dating to be efficient, even though they find those using the service as desperate (Riaz & Ruhela, 2019). This may also be due to the fact that men mainly are looking for short term relationships with little commitment as opposed to women who claim they are after non-romantic reasons such as friendship or possible romantic partner, which often means a long-term relationship (Riaz & Ruhela, 2019). When using the Tinder app, users often swipe either left or right to like a person that they have been matched with based on appearance. Men typically consider appearance in their pursuit of online pairing while women are after stability in anticipation of a life long partner (Riaz & Ruhela, 2019). Women prioritize financial properties and other aspects over appearance. Women view attractive men as being less dependable and are prone to cheating. However, women still do not mind an attractive man, but will still be incentivized by his assets. This has not done so much to get rid of gender stereotypes, thus leading to the pressure of trying to fulfil these shoes. Men and women often mislead each other based on the information they provide on online dating apps such as Tinder and Brumble. For instance, the men may offer information about their occupation, lifestyle that is untrue to impress potential female users (Riaz & Ruhela, 2019).
Similarly, women may post pictures that are digitally enhanced while making their profiles. Though this is not exclusive to women, men have been known to show their muscles, sometimes by overestimating them (Graff, 2018). This shows the extent online dating users will go to impress each other.
When it comes to age, men typically prefer younger women or of similar age to them. Opposite from the men, women users prefers older male candidates. Women start with an older preference, which only broadens as they get older. It is, however, clear from researches that older women prefer younger men. This form of preference can still be attributed to their socio-economic status (Buxmann, Krasnova, Baumann, Abramova, 2016). Women’s choice to financially stable men makes most of their pairing towards more older men users. For men, a younger youthful look is an attribute to physical attractiveness. If you include the fact that fertility in women gets lower with age, it only fuels the age preference in men (Buxmann, Krasnova, Baumann, Abramova, 2016). Generally, women are more lenient on their partners’ age so long as they are dependable and financially stable.
When it comes to gender and sexuality, when registering, the users of both online dating sites are required to state their gender. With the decision of Tinder to list only one gender binary, Bumble decided to allocate its users many gender binaries to apply from. Though this is probably as a result of the previous criticism of having a “narrow understanding of gender” (Mcdonald & Koning, 2019), when it comes to sexuality, many online-dating sites have conformed to the traditional gender binary of heteronormativity. The difference between the understanding of gender in both Tinder and Bumble when registering for the service. In Tinder, when one registers as a male, the mathematical algorithm will automatically assume that one is seeking a female partner and will automatically select a female match (Mcdonald & Koning, 2019). In Bumble, their use of nonheterosexuality in their online dating platform will not assume this but will offer a variety of different options.
Studies have shown that online dating offers people the opportunity to get out of regular gender dating encounters. When women connect to the internet, they can be emphatic and secure indirect relationships without leaving their comfort zone.
SECTION 2: REVIEW OF THE SUCCESS OF THE OUTCOMES OF ONLINE DATING PLATFORMS COMPARED TO CONVENTIONAL METHODS OF DATING
For a long time, humans have been left to acknowledge the challenges of finding a romantic partner in the traditional way and that sometimes they may require to enlist some help. In the modern world that we are living in, even as these challenges have been acknowledged, the means and resources that are now available have improved with the introduction and widespread use of the internet (Finkel et al.,2012). To better research the impact that the use of the online dating platform has had on the development of romantic human relationships, we are going to examine three fundamentals of online dating sites: access, communication, and matching in detail.
Access
As mentioned earlier, access is the point at which the users are exposed and given the opportunity to review partners to which they would have never been able to find under normal circumstances (Finkel et al.,2012). Dating sites use ‘profiles’. These are web pages that are required to store information concerning the potential clients (partners) that are supposed to be browsed by other users. This means that online dating users have access to a wide range of potential partners than they could ever have in the offline world. This could mainly be attributed to a large number of users in the thousands, and probably millions stored in their sites (Finkel et al.,2012). In theory, users can contact as many of the users located in the sites as possible, though practically, not all of the users that they are granted access might reply. This means that the access that the users get about the potential partners may not guarantee successful results in finding a romantic partner, rather it simply serves the purpose of alerting one user to the existence of a variety of users. Another emerging issue in online access is data mining of user information. Any information stored online is privy to being accesses by unknown individuals or companies who use the data to market or get information about someone. There is always a risk of a data breach of servers containing information of clients (Albury et al., 2017). Though some companies such as Grindr have made public their acceptance of responsibility associated with security breaches when they are brought to their attention, others are still not ready to accept responsibility for breaches in data, or abusive user behaviour. There are also emerging issues in access to these online dating apps is underage usage. Official figures from Tinder report that 7% of their users in the world fall under 18 years which is the official age limit in most online dating apps and that they are not allowed to interact with over 18 users (Albury et al., 2017). But this is worrying despite the difference in ages of consent in countries. There is still a risk of children lying about their ages on online dating platforms and leading to horrible consequences for adults caught interacting with them, and they are left with nobody to blame. Additionally, there is some fear that the client’s data on online platforms have generated interest from government intelligence agencies. Many digital companies are rarely in a discussion about their involvement with law enforcement, including intelligence agencies, in providing them or restricting them access to their user database (Albury et al., 2017). This because they fear that they may lose clients if they admit to giving useful information. Though some may find access to information about someone in dating sites to be helping in connecting people, the fact that everyone’s data is out there to be seen is not something to take lightly. As a result, there is a need to develop legal, educational and policy responses to access of online user data that is facilitated by the growth of online dating.
Communication
Communication is the opportunity to access different forms of communication-based on the used of computer medium to interact with the potential partners before having to meet face-to-face (Finkel et al.,2012). There are various ways of communication in the online dating landscape. Forms such as e-mail and more straightforward methods such as ‘winks’ are methods used to convey messages such as interests in someone. Similarly, users may prefer the use of text-based messages, chat and webcam interaction to allow users to hear and see each other (Finkel et al.,2012). In this instance, it has been proven that the use of communication like texts and e-mails for purposes of online dating before actually meeting face-to-face can benefit individuals (Phillips, 2017).
Matching
Matching is the use of any form of mathematical algorithms to find potential partners for users (Finkel et al.,2012). One of the main assumptions made by the matching algorithms is that the selected partners will experience better romantic pairing compared to other couples as a result of being matched from the beginning (Finkel et al.,2012). If this algorithm is proven to work, then there will be a smaller pool of potential partners that will direct users to this pool with the eventual outcome that they will match and achieve success in their relationship (Finkel et al.,2012). One thing to note is that despite many of these sites offering a certain degree of access and communication, they may not necessarily provide matching.
Conclusion
Further studies on online dating are expected to provide additional information on the preferences of both men and women in platforms such as Tinder and Brumble to improve the experience. This is because of the increasing reliance on dating apps as being a standard way of developing a romantic story. Though there is a lot of information provided from interactions between online uses in regards to gender such as both genders, preference to physical attributes, socio-economic status, age etc. The emergence of feminist online dating apps that give women the upper hand in initiating relationships in order to create a safer environment for women. This form gives women a sense of psychological empowerment while searching for friendship or a romantic partner. Understanding of behavioural patterns such as observing men is more active in online dating than women, less selective, motivated by physical appearance while women are generally less motivated by physical attributes rather than economic status, and long-term relationships help to develop profile options better. The addition of filters to enhance photos used has created a better experience not only for women but occasionally for male users.
It is also a fact that we have to acknowledge is that romantic relationships can be triggered anywhere. We have to appreciate the lengths that the online dating platforms will go to ensure that we find a partner. But we have to be careful about how our information may be used as well. As the concept of online dating matures and evolves, it becomes more likely that we may encounter our romantic partners using the online platform. This will mean that the psychological science of cupid arm will have its effect on our romantic lives.
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