The New Dating Game

I have to admit I’ve been off the market for some time (sorry all you geolocation groupies who keep leaving me your IP address on napkins at trade shows), but it appears that a lot has changed when it comes to dating these days. Unfortunately, I think I’m stuck in the days where you passed a note asking “Do you like me?” with a bunch of choices— hoping to avoid the embarrassing “as a friend” box being checked. But enough about my ancient and pathetic dating life, I have an actual point here…

Television started changing the dating rules by giving us the “The Dating Game” (and, yes, “The New Dating Game”) along with “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette.” However, the Internet completely transformed the way people meet and connect through the success of online dating networks such as eHarmony and Match.com. In fact, according to The Nielsen Company, dating sites have grown from 24.2 million unique monthly visitors in January 2006 to 30 million as of January 2010.

In 2002, a Wired magazine article forecast that, “Twenty years from now, the idea that someone looking for love without looking for it online will be silly, akin to skipping the card catalog to instead wander the stacks because ‘the right books are found only by accident.’ Serendipity is the hallmark of inefficient markets, and the marketplace of love, like it or not, is becoming more efficient.”

And, efficiency is a big play in today’s dating game because we all know the world is flat (thanks to Thomas Friedman – no relation by the way). Just as the Internet has allowed us to interact and communicate globally, social dating networks, such as Badoo.com, have found that connecting locally still has its advantages.

Badoo runs a location-based social website service in more than 200 countries around the world and needed a way to provide its more than 90 million users with access to services focused on their locality and local language. To meet these location-based needs, the company turned to IP Intelligence and geolocation solutions.

You might say it was a match made in heaven. Badoo can now more easily connect users within their local communities—whether it’s through a mutual language, sharing of relevant content, or the promotion of community events. And best of all, since IP addresses are not personally identifiable, your overly clingy blind date can’t use your IP address to track you down. 