We believe that today no one has any doubt that the future of dating and building relationships lies within online dating. But it was not always so. Twenty years ago, few people could imagine applications like Tinder or Badoo, but today they are very common.

Let’s go back in time for a second — to the 2000s-2010s…

These years were a period of rapid development for digital music and video game consoles. The first e-books and smartphones appeared — on January 9, 2007, the first iPhone was released, which completely changed our understanding of what a mobile phone could do. Also at this time, more advanced satnav systems began to be widely used. And, of course, the start of the 2000s was the era of the social network..

Online Dating Then and Now

The real pioneers in the web dating industry are Match and eHarmony. But they never managed to become truly massive in their early years.

We mentioned the release of the first iPhone in 2007 for a reason. It was this event that marked the beginning of the era of smartphones and useful applications. At this moment the era of dating applications began:

• 2009 — the release of the Grindr application
• 2012 — the release of the Tinder application
• 2014— the release of the Bumble application

At the same time, other dating services appeared that use a variety of technologies for finding the perfect couple — from express dating using swipes to large questionnaires with dozens of questions.

At first, interest in online dating was really massive. And the sites themselves developed quite rapidly. But over time, development slowed down, and global IT giants just began to buy up the most promising projects. For example, today Match owns almost all the most popular dating services: Match, Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish and others.

A powerful impetus for a new stage in the development of online dating was unexpectedly provided by the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic and its accompanying strict quarantine. Having lost the opportunity to meet and communicate offline, people went onto the internet. This resulted in rapid growth in the number of users, increased competition and the desire of developers to offer something non-standard.

This resulted in the addition of cam chat functions to most dating applications, the implementation of voice messaging, the appearance of vaccination status on some sites, and much more. At the same time, another format of online dating has found a second life — webcam chat. This refers to a site or application with a main function to connect you via video with a random user. A huge variety of cam to cam with girls are available to modern users: Camloo, Tinychat, CooMeet, Joingy and others. Each with its own interesting features and original functions.

During the pandemic many dating apps and live cam chats showed an increase in their audience size of 30-50%, or even more. In general, this has been a rather positive tendency, because online dating is the future. The sooner we realize and accept this, the easier it will be to adapt to the next evolutionary steps in the online dating industry, and they will be very noticeable!

What Will Happen to Online Dating Next?

Of course, it’s difficult to offer any sure forecasts in the changeable modern world. Nevertheless, we are ready to share some assumptions and thoughts that we consider quite realistic for the foreseeable future.

Machine Learning Technologies and Artificial Intelligence

As Coffee Meets Bagel CEO Dawun Kang says, “People often don’t know what they want. They are not completely sure what exactly they expect from new acquaintances and whether they are ready for a serious relationship.” According to Kang, machine learning and artificial intelligence will help more objectively assess the goals and desires of a person, taking into account how much time they spend in the application, what profiles they view, and how carefully, how they respond to different types of messages, and so on. Similar algorithms are at work already, but so far they are rather primitive. In the near future, they will certainly be improved and perfected.

Genetic Matchmaking

Interesting fact: Over 26 million people took part in an MIT study to discover their family history. To do this, you just had to send a sample of your saliva to the laboratory.

If you think that such technologies are unlikely to be widely used in online dating, we’d like to convince you of the opposite. They are already in use!

For example, Pheramor, DNA Romance, and Instant Chemistry analyze users’ DNA to find the best matches for them. And the developers of the dating app eHarmony are convinced that by 2025 we will have a flurry of “laboratory love affairs”.

Metaverses

After Mark Zuckerberg announced the development of his own metaverse, interest in this topic all over the world skyrocketed. The ability to literally live in a virtual space, meet, have fun and even earn money there has greatly interested both ordinary Internet users and developers of all kinds.

Almost immediately, Tinder representatives announced that they had begun developing their own metaverse, the task of which was to “blur the boundaries between the offline and online world”. There’s no doubt that if the Tinder project is successful, other dating services will also quickly connect, and offer their vision of the metaverse for dating.

VR and AR technologies

AR and VR are still controversial technologies. On the one hand, everyone understands how promising they are. But on the other hand, they still haven’t found a really effective and creative implementation. Technologies and equipment for accessing virtual and augmented reality are still quite expensive. And not every modern user is ready to accept this format for a variety of reasons.

Nevertheless, we have no doubt that VR and AR will become an integral part of not only online dating, but our daily lives in general. Yes, this will take some time. But one way or another, augmented and virtual reality will not go anywhere, only penetrate deeper into our everyday lives.

Let’s Summarize

It hasn’t been long since the first dating sites and apps appeared. But even this short span of time has been enough for them to go through a lot of metamorphoses and significantly expand their functionality.

We are convinced that in 5-10 years online dating will change radically and not look anything like the way we know it right now. New technologies and formats of communication will appear, and dated ones will become a thing of the past. Naturally, large sites like the dating app Tinder or CooMeet webcam chat will continue to function, but they will certainly evolve and change beyond recognition.

In any case, we will keep following updates and the most interesting trends in the world of online dating. There is so much more to come!