Matchmaking has a long history in many cultures, especially in South Asia, where parents traditionally handled all of the matchmaking duties for their children. Parents actively searched for an advantageous match for their child, then negotiated with other parents in an effort to secure a marriage agreement. The children, both boys and girls, typically had little or no say in the matter.

While this kind of parental marriage arrangement is far less common than it was even twenty years ago, there is still a strong cultural sentiment that parents want and need to be actively involved in finding their child a mate. Seeking to fill this void online, Shaadi.com has become the “go to” matrimonial matchmaking website for parents and singles from countries where this kind of traditional matchmaking is still considered the best approach.

Shaadi.com International, and Shaadi.co.in the dedicated website for those living in India, give parents and their children the opportunity to post profiles online and then use their matchmaking tools to find potential mates. Many parents actually take on primary responsibility for creating a profile, posting it, and responding to inquiries, much like it used to be before the internet. Their children, though, are often taking a more active role as well, helping their parents to create a profile they feel comfortable and confident using.

So what’s the future look like for matrimonial matchmaking websites? It’s very bright indeed, if the experience of Shaadi.com is any indication. This approach is the fastest growing segment of the online dating world and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

News & Views Asian, Hindu, Indian, Matchmaking, Matrimonials, Muslim, Shaadi

There’s a new player in the arena of matchmaking and connecting singles using Facebook. Littlehint is a startup company that claims to have a new and better way of collecting your Facebook friends, sorting them according to which ones might be best matched for dating, and then making it easy for those folks to connect with each other.

If it sounds a bit like Thread.com you’re right because the basic idea is the same. What’s different, though, is the Littlehint is setting itself up with more detailed questions to answer as part of your profile and is also working feverishly to allow users to submit their DNA profiles as well. DNA matching for singles is the hottest, newest, and most unproven method of matchmaking in the business right now so it’s not clear if this is really a selling point for Littlehint or not.

The way Littlehint describes its process is that they ask a series of questions to determine your sociological characteristics, assess your personality and psychological tendencies, and then use a function called “degrees of separation” to connect you with friends via your Facebook page. The catch? Your friends need to fill out a Littlehint profile, too, for the whole thing to work.

Is this the wave of the dating future? Who knows. But one thing is for certain, we’re going to be seeing more of these types of online dating tools so you need to stay as up to date as possible if you want to make the most of online dating opportunities.

News & Views Dating Applications, Facebook, Matchmaking, Personality Testing

The world of online dating has its major, reputable operators, but also a whole array of not-so-reputable operators as well. One of the most common scams we see in online dating is the offering of different pricing schemes to different categories of people.

For instance, a site might offer a lower price to women within a certain age group, or perhaps a discount for men who fall within a certain category of age, location, or other vital statistics. They do this in an effort to attract certain kinds of people to their online services but according to a new law making its way through the State of Maryland government these types of pricing schemes are unfair and misleading.

Under the proposed new law the use of gender-specific pricing schemes will become illegal. What is not so clear at the moment is whether this law will apply only to those online dating members who live in Maryland or whether it will apply to any online dating service that does any business at all in Maryland. Under this latter scenario potentially every online dating service will have to abide by the law simply because they may have some members who live in Maryland.

I don’t know, this sounds like a good idea at first because goodness knows there are plenty of online dating sites that love to mess around with their pricing schemes. But really, is it realistic to expect a law in just one state, Maryland, to apply to all online dating sites out there?

What do you think?

News & Views Dating Law, Government, Illegal, Legislation, Pricing, Scams