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Swipe left, swipe right: is the future of relationships in dating apps?
Online dating services have emerged over the past decade to become a common way to meet potential partners. Those who rely on these services to find love share their stories
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Rising up: Bumble is not as popular as Tinder just yet, but it has a good amount of users already in Indonesia. Trix, for one. (Unsplash/Courtesy of Good Faces Agency) (Unsplash/Courtesy of Good Faces Agency)
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i>Online dating services have emerged over the past decade to become a common way to meet potential partners. Those who rely on these services to find love share their stories.
Online dating can be traced back all the way to 1959 when Jim Harvey and Phil Fialer started Happy Families Planning Services as a class project at Stanford to match 49 men and 49 women. It was not until 1964, however, that computer-generated matchmaking was made available to the general public when Joan Ball started St. James Computer Dating Service.
Fast forward to today and the most popular dating services are Tinder and Bumble, both of which are mobile-based. The two dating apps are also the most popular in Indonesia. Prior to the introduction of the two platforms, online dating services were relatively foreign to Indonesians.
As online dating in Indonesia has been traditionally conducted using social media and multi-feature chatting apps such as Facebook, Line and MiChat, it was not until recently that the two apps started gaining popularity, especially among the youths.
One dating-app user is 20-year-old Jessica, not her real name. Currently living in Surabaya, she used Tinder back when she was studying in the United States.
"I only used it for four months. I think it has its positives and negatives," she said. "[Among its positives, for instance], Tinder helped me differentiate between guys that I want, or I don't want to be with, things [that I look out for] in a guy."
A social adventure
