Computer Matching Services

Almost as soon as computers were developed, they were used to match people for romantic relationships. The first widespread computer matching service was Operation Match, which was created in the mid-1960s by Harvard students in response to what they believed to be the evils of blind dates and mixers. They recruited students from several universities, charged them each $3, and had them complete self-ratings of looks, intelligence, and other factors. However, their computer was not powerful enough to process all of the data, and the business failed.

Computer matching was also used on university campuses in the 1960s and 1970s for the purpose of academic research on attraction. For example, in a classic study on attraction (sometimes referred to as the computer dance study), Elaine Hatfield (then Walster) and her colleagues matched incoming freshmen at the University of Minnesota for a night of dancing and, at intermission, had them complete a questionnaire about how much they liked their assigned date. A computer was used to assist with the matching of the freshmen for the dance, but the assistance was very basic: The computer generated random numbers for determining who should be assigned to whom for the date.

Over time, computers became faster, more powerful, more widespread, and small enough to be able to be placed on one's desktop. Then, the highspeed Internet was created. With these technological advances, a new generation of computer matching services was created, known as Internet matching services, online dating Web sites, and the Internet dating industry. http://Match.com was the first such site, launched in 1995. Currently, there are hundreds of computer matching services available on the Internet, some of them charging users a [Page 289]monthly fee and some of them free, generating revenue through advertising. Some sites are broad-based and open to the general population of singles, and some sites are focused on a specific type of membership (e.g., http://jdate.com, http://GayWired.com, http://Silversingles.com, http://FarmersOnly.com) or location (e.g., http://LonghornSingles.com at the University of Texas). This entry discusses public attitudes about Internet (computer) matching services as a way to meet partners, how common it is for singles to meet partners through these matching services and who uses them, how the matching process occurs, and the interface between computer matching services and the science of relationships. Online dating is a more general term to refer not only to meeting partners through Internet matching services but also to forming relationships in a variety of ways through the Internet, including chat rooms and social network sites.