Our New Mission

When we starting .dating online dating was still rather new, after all it was about 8 months ago, ages and ages on the Internet.

Our interest was as much to promote what I saw as a valid new social activity that promised to help build community as anything, certainly that was a bigger gain than any money made via adsense.

The site has been fun watching something start out small suddenly become an established part of life, and from the perspective of this blog I got to watch it happen.

But now that 25,000,000 Americans a year visit online dating sites the issue is not getting it going, its monitoring the good, bad and ugly.

So we are extending our mission to look more and more at negatives of online. When we started the negatives were simple:

1. It might not work.
2. I will meet freaks and losers.
3. Everyone will think I'm a freak or loser.

Safety was the greatest issue, as it remains so today. But new dangers are emerging:

1. Online dating sites may work to built more shallow short term relationships with the promise of always someone new in the aim of extending subscriptions. You may become less likely to find love.
2. Companies may use online dating services to collect marketing data or promote products, specifically alcohol and tobacco consumption.
3. Dating by matching does not work, we need to discover someone who has things we didn't even know we wanted. People have to learn what they are looking for in the process of meeting people, they don't just get matched up on the print out.
4. Online dating could be a form of government, business, and other jerks getting to know sensitive information about you.
5. I like Microsoft, but I don't see why companies that big have an interest in online dating.


With online dating established I am going to be a bit more critical of the trends that are going on, more social studies and less cheerleading. Online dating is here to stay, it does not need promoting but watching.