Dating System

Dating is a form of courtship, and may include any social activity undertaken by, typically, two persons with the aim of each assessing the other's suitability as a partner in an intimate relationship or as a spouse. The word refers to the act of meeting and engaging in some mutually agreed upon social activity. Traditional dating activities include entertainment or a meal. In many cultural traditions, a date may be arranged by a third party, who may be a family member, acquaintance, or professional matchmaker. Internet dating has become popular in recent times.

Dating system is any systematic means of improving matchmaking via rules or technology. The history of dating systems is closely tied to the history of technologies that support them.  In this article I'm concerned with actual 'systems' that do more than simple introductions, and where interactions are often strongly structured, down to the details:

• "Computer dating" systems of later 20th century, especially popular in the 1960s and 1970s, before the rise of sophisticated phone and computer systems, gave customers forms that they filled out with important tolerances and preferences, which were "matched by computer" to determine "compatibility" of the two customers. The first large-scale computer dating system, The Scientific Marriage Foundation, was established in 1957 by Dr. George W. Grane. In this system, forms that applicants filled out were processed by an early IBM card sorting machine.

• "Video dating" systems of the 1980s and 1990s especially, where customers gave a performance on (typically VHS tape) video, which was viewable by other customers, usually in private, in the same facility. Some services would record and play back videos for men and women on alternate days to minimize the chance that customers would meet each other on the street.

• "Phone dating" systems of about the same vintage, where customers call a common voice mail or phone-chat server at a common local phone number, and are connected with other (reputed) singles, and typically charged by the minute as if it were a long-distance call (often a very expensive one). A key problem of such systems was that they were hard to differentiate from a phone porn service or "phone sex " where female operators are paid to arouse male customers, and have no intention of dating them, ever.

• Online dating services of the 1990s and today, which may incorporate a form-, video-, or audio-/phone-based component, integrating them into a single "profile" and providing multiple means to communicate (including the telephone).

• Speed dating , a system of meeting typically 20 potential partners in a bar with 3 minute 'interviews'