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Dating and Social Networking

This article is a light hearted view of dating and social networking from past to present day and the impact the internet has made to peoples lifes.

Author: Patsy O'connor

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Remember the days when people would be tingling with excitement on a Wednesday at the thought of the weekend ahead? What would happen and what discos would be visited and what pubs would be trawled. Keep in mind the internet and mobile phones were in their early years back then.

Usuaully people would do the groundwork during the week, chatting up and smooth talking the girls and boys. As usual it was the lads that did most of the chasing. Friday would arrive and school or work would come and go, and much of the gossip would be pointed towards the weekend ahead.

The girls would be panicking over what to wear and the lads would usually try to find the most suitable clean items from the dirty laundry. Make up and hair cream would be applied and people would think nothing of walking or cycling 10 miles to go to a disco or bar in the hope of meeting that special person. Eyes wide with excitement and the thought of remaining sober long enough to be able to hold an intelligent conversation together proved quite a task in those days. The girls would clutch gigantic handbags, white knuckled at the thought that their future husband could be only steps away and the lads would be strutting about chest out like the proverbial peacock, pint of guinness in toe. Even in Ireland in the 80’s matchmaking was done subconciously, even if people did not realise it.

It still exists in some shape or form and people still flock from all over Ireland to the famous Lisdoonvarna festival where in the older days pig famers and spinsters would flock from every corner of Ireland in the hope of meeting that one person to change their lives, and of course the music and the thought of pouring 20 pints of creamy guinness back ones neck.

This brings me to the change in all aspects of relationships and dating throughout the late 90’s and to the present day. A few years back I was sharing a house with a good friend of mine and computers were an issue for him and, the internet being a mind boggling mass of zeros and ones. By trade he was a tv and satellite installer and come Wednesday the repititve strain injury would have been a possible issue due to the fact of numerous texts flying backwards and forwards in the hope of lining up a few unsuspecting young ladies for the weekend. With his thirst and skill for chatting up women of all walks of life he could obviously see the internet was an untapped source that could save him a small fortune hitting the clubs and bars, not to mention the multiple hangovers to deal with.

After a period of time he mastered the internet and its huge realm of escapism became his new playground. Sometimes I would get up for a drink in the middle of the night and find a Homer Simpson shaped hole in my couch in the shape of this new Internet dating guru looking bleary eyed from spending numerous hours flirting on the computer.

After a few years I decided to develop my own site, but aspects of the Internet change very fast and of course the internet is as fickle as a Roman mob. First of all I started to look at sites that seemed to be too over complex and obviously there are a huge number of pay sites out there, each seemed to offer you all singing all dancing sites with all the bells and whistles. You sign up for a basic profile and then you start getting bombarded with emails from women who look like they should appear on Spice Platinum. Alarm bells started going off in my head straight away. The in the middle of my analysis dating took a huge turn on the internet, free sites started appearing and paying seemed to be a thing of the past.

In the middle of development I had to scrap some of my ideas as yet another phenomenon happened on the Internet, social networking sites started appearing. I studied a large number of them and huge volumes of people started to use these sites for social networking but upon further investigation I could see that basically people were using these “friendship tools” as a guise for dating. After many late nights and numerous bottles of Jameson I decided to stick to a simplified version of my original plan and trim down my site, make it free, keep it simple to use and easy on the eye.

I have looked at hundreds of sites over the years, read numerous articles from CEO’s who obviously are paper pushers who have no talent for design or flair and probably do not know the difference between html and PHP. I do not want to make millions from the Internet, I just wanted to design something that was easy to use and would give people a lot of enjoyment. I have also been lucky to have a girlfriend that has supported me through all this when most of my time and effort was focused on research, analysis and designing the site.

Also I have been very lucky to find an incredible developer who managed to transform all my ideas into reality and for both of them I could not have created the product I wanted. It still needs fine tuning but doesn’t everything! Check it out and I appreciate feedback from anyone, www.dateandmate.net. Oh yes if my satellite friend reads this, you still owe me 300 euros for the internet bill!

About Author

Patsy O'Connor Director http://www.dateandmate.net

Article Source: http://www.1888articles.com

Dating and Social Networking