Twenty years ago, in the San Francisco neighborhood then called Multimedia Gulch, a state-of-the-art server from Sun Microsystems began to run a program that would one day lead to more than a million newborn babies. The machine belonged to a startup called Electric Classifieds, which had plans for a series of sites on the rapidly growing web that would mirror the sections of a newspaper’s classified listings. The first section to launch would be the personals, on a site called Match.com. “Match.com would be the test case to show potential partners and others that the underlying technology worked,” says Fran Maier, the site’s marketing director at launch and later its general manager, who later went on to lead the Internet privacy group TRUSTe for more than a decade. Today, Match is the largest operator in what market research firm IBISWorld estimates is a $2 billion dating industry. Roughly 1 in 10 Americans have used at least one online dating service, and most Americans have a generally positive view of online dating as a way to meet new people, according to a 2013 study from the Pew Research Center. After changing hands a few times in the late 1990s, Match is… Read full this story
- Rug hooking is a classic Canadian skill that is becoming more art than craft
- Community works to make compassion the theme of Sandy Hook anniversary
- When five espressos was the ultimate expression of love
- 13 of the biggest mistakes you’re making on your dating profiles that stop you from finding love
- Canada: This is our Sandy Hook Moment
- For many families, ’tis the season for matching jammies
- ‘Eat Pray Love’ liberated me, says author
- US court rules families can sue gunmaker over Sandy Hook shooting
- US hits dating operator over ‘fake love interest’ messages
- 20 weird psychological reasons someone might fall in love with you
How Match.com Has Helped Us Hook Up And Find Love Since 1995 have 314 words, post on www.fastcompany.com at October 18, 2015. This is cached page on MMOR. If you want remove this page, please contact us.
