i'm happy for your friends, but as a practical matter they are very likely outliers in the statistical sense.
to put it in the perspective of this forum, all of my VC buddies put online dating plays in the category of domain specific search. that's a fairly sterile way to look at the process of finding a life partner, don't you think?
but beyond that, there is no credible statistical data, i.e. stats not produced by the companies themselves and peer reviewed, that would indicate these services produce anything like a non-niche impact on the occurrence of marriage in the US.
there are however numerous more deliberate commentaries on the topic of technology and its impact on the social fabric of culture. one of my personal favs is "Alone Together" by Sherry Turkle.
The more interesting question in all of this is why exactly online dating functions are even viable. IMHO the fact that people, particularly in the business we are in (i'm assuming you are in the software biz as well) spend so much time chained to a desk that they cannot go out and actually interact physically with other human beings is the point of my original response.
ha! no shit. after almost two decades of marriage i laugh my ass off at this online dating stuff. what a farce. it's a perfect metaphor for the shallow cesspool our culture has become...
my daughters high school issues ipads and delivers all work assignments and makes textbooks available both on the ipad and in hard copy if the student wants it.
her use pattern is weighted significantly towards the digital content. the only place i see her fall back to the textbook is in math.
of particular note though is the app that is used in her Chinese language class. Without a doubt the most well implemented use of the ipad platform for any app i have yet seen anywhere.
this is the future. i'd probably assert that these studies, if run in another 2-3 years would be quite different in their findings. they will be issuing the ipads at the middle school here i believe next fall.
this conversion is going to happen...only a question of time.
bingo. the small biz segment is crazy expensive from a cust. acquisition standpoint. you have to raise a fair amount of dough to get a sales beach-head established. aside from intuit and the credit card cartels there aren't a lot of folks who have succeeded in getting scale there..
square may have a good run in that space, but they really are just an optimization play on the cc processing flow..nttawwt....
my reaction to the article: no shit! there have been books written on this subject (i.e. Last Child in the Woods). we expect children to behave like adults starting at about age 8 in the U.S. we over schedule them and expect collegiate level study discipline at about age 11.
we have built an infrastructure that serves only to make people fatter and more sedentary, moreover, we as technologists have facilitated, through such shit-shows as facebook and my_space before it, the continued decline in actual physical activity pursued by kids.
there's soo much culpability to go around on this topic that its hard to even know where to begin. as a parent i am continually disgusted by how we as adults abuse and destroy the childhood phase of life.
and we wonder why kids are so fucked these days and our obesity rates are growing in near logarithmic(ok, maybe not quite logarithmic...) fashion...
to put it in the perspective of this forum, all of my VC buddies put online dating plays in the category of domain specific search. that's a fairly sterile way to look at the process of finding a life partner, don't you think?
but beyond that, there is no credible statistical data, i.e. stats not produced by the companies themselves and peer reviewed, that would indicate these services produce anything like a non-niche impact on the occurrence of marriage in the US.
there are however numerous more deliberate commentaries on the topic of technology and its impact on the social fabric of culture. one of my personal favs is "Alone Together" by Sherry Turkle.
The more interesting question in all of this is why exactly online dating functions are even viable. IMHO the fact that people, particularly in the business we are in (i'm assuming you are in the software biz as well) spend so much time chained to a desk that they cannot go out and actually interact physically with other human beings is the point of my original response.