The modern dating space can be traced back to 1994 when the first modern dating website was launched. You may remember the name – Kiss.com. One year later, Match.com was launched and from there on the online dating space grew into the behemoth it is today.
Before Match.com and Kiss, we had mail order bride services in Eastern Europe, telephone dating services around the world and dating agencies in the UK. You may remember the latter – you had to sign up to an agency who would match you with people. This created the hilarious skit in The Office (2005) when David Brent met a woman for lunch in a pub.
Before the era of dating agencies and mail order brides, people tended to date friends of friends and people they met based on recommendations from family. This old way of doing things still happens today and is arguably more common than online dating.
Dating for the over 40s has, of course, evolved too. Dating for over 40s has boomed since the first dating sites entered the world and you now have hundreds to choose from (including us). This is good because it increases the chances of you finding love.
Fast forward to today, and a new breed of dating services have come out. These are app-based and don’t have a website per se, but a splash page that tells you to download an app.
A good example is Tinder, although this is more for casual dating and it is almost certainly best for people under 40. People over 40 are far better served by dating services like ours, with our database of members and wide search filters allowing for higher-quality results.
The future of dating for the over 40s
If 1995 was the year online dating took off with Match and 2012 was the year app dating took off with Tinder, what does the future hold for dating?
We see the future as an evolution on what we have now. Thanks to 5G connectvity, latency will significantly reduce with live video streams, so we can definitely see a new type of dating service emerge that puts video chat right at the top of its feature set.
For us, it’s business as usual. Our dating platform will always be here to provide a reliable way for people over 40 to meet each other and (hopefully) find love.