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The Economist JANUARY 1ST-7TH 2011

Briefing Online dating Love at first byte
Online-dating sites have made it easier for people to click with one another. But they still leave something to be desired

FOR the lovelorn, the new year can be an unhappy time, as they cast envious glances in the direction of lovey-dovey couples at the season's parties. For online-dating agencies, it is a golden opportunity, as people who have spent the holidays ruminating over unsatisfactory or non-exist love lives log on in their thousands, hoping to find romance - idealy before Febuary 14th. "The period between New Year's Day and Valentine's Day is our busiest six weeks of the year," explains Sam Yagan, the boss of OkCupid, a big American dating site.

Once seen as the last resort for a bunch of lonely geeks, online-dating services have gradually shed much of the stigma formerly associated with them. Although they are still popular with tech types-julian Assaqnge, the mercurial co-founder of WikiLeaks, reportedly once maintained profiles on dating sites under the name "Harry Harrison" - they now attract millions of people from many walks of life. ComScore, a research firm, says Match and Zoosk, two large dating services based in the United States, saw 4.6m and 4.8m unique visitors respectively come to their American sites in November 2010. Meetic, Europe's biggest dating service, also boasts millions of users.

Blowing cyberkisses has become a popular pastime in emerging markets too. In countries and cultures in which arranged marriages are common, site such as India's Shaadi and BharatMatrimony, which boast many millions of clients, are a big hit with young people who want to influence how their marriage partners are chosen. And a number of sizeable digital match-makers, including Jiayuan and Zhenai, have risen to prominence in China. Deecan venture-capital firm that has backed several dating services, including Zoosk and BharatMatrimony, estimates that the industry's revenues from membership fees and advertising now amount to $3 billion-4billion a year.

Searching for that special someone
In addition to broad-based matchmaking sites such as Match and Zoosk, the online-dating world has spawned thousands of niche ones. Some, such as JDate, which is designed for Jewish lonely hearts, and AveMariaSigles, which focuses on Catholics, serve specfic religious or ethnic niches. Others appeal to rather less conventional interests. Vampire lovers can sink their teeth into the profiles on offer at Vampire Passions, while those obsessed with iPads and iPhones can hunt for their iBeloveds at Cupidtino, a dating site for fans of Apple's products.

The rise of these and other dating sites has been driven by several trends in society. One of these is that people now move around more often for work, distancing themselves from friends and family members who could play matchmakers. Another is that they are living longer, and hence more likely to look for new lover later in life. The spread of fast broadband connectivity in many countries has also encouraged people to dabble in online dating.

Academics who have studied the industry believe that it and other forms of electronic communication such as e-mail and social networks are starting to have a significant effect on the ways in which people find live. In a study presented at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting an August, Michael Rosenfield of Stanford University and Reuben Thomas of the City College of New York reviewed data from a survey of more than 3,000 Americans with romantic partners. They concluded that among heterosexual couples who met in 2009, the internet had become the third most common way of making initial contact - behind introductions from friends, but almost on a par with encounters in bars and restaurants.

Yet while looking for love online is no longer seen as a act of desperation, the digital-dating industry still generates plenty of ocntroversy. Its critics charge that sites' claims of matchmaking prowess are often greatly overblown. Mark Thompson, a former executive in the online-dating trade, now an author, believes that television ads showing starry-eyed couples boasting about how they found their perfect match online should carry warnings that such outcomes are hardly typical. Dating sites have also been accused of failing to take robust enough action to protect vulnerable users from fraudsters and sexual predators. Last year sveral elderly British women sent money to American soldiers whose profiles they had come across on dating sites, only to discover subsequently that the profiles were bogus. And there have been instances of rapists using dating sites to prey on women.


A megabit on the side
Then there is the fuss over sites such as illicit Encounters and Ashley Madison, which have sparked an outcry by matching people seeking partners for extramarital affairs. Outraged criticsd claim such services deliverately promote infidelity to further their commercial ambitions. In America Ashley Madison, which claims to have 8.3m registered members in nine countries, has been decried as "a business built on the back of broken hearts, ruined marriages and damaged families". In Britain the Sun, a tabloid daily, labelled it a "vile wevsite" when it set up shop in the country last year. Several critics have also accused it of exaggerating its ability to match cheats with one another, chronicling its alleged failings on websites such as ashleymadisonsucks.com.

Few other dating sites have provoked such a public backlash. But some sociologists, such as Millson Henry-Waring of the University of Melbourne, have given warning that electronic forms of communication in general - and gradually changing society's conception of relationships and marriage for the worse by endouraging people to view partners as commodities that can simply be traded in for better versions at the click of a computer mouse.

Dating executives retort that although the industry is not perfect, many of the criticism levelled at it are unfair. They acknowledge that some clients, who typically spend anything from a few months to a year before finding a soulmate or throwing in the towel, have frustrating experiences on their sites. But they point out that the web still offers important advantages over more traditional routes of finding a mate.

One is its ability to create large pools of potential partners that would be hard replicate in the real world. This explains why online dating has proven expecially popular with, for example, homosexuals. Another is the sheer convenience of being able to trawl through hundreds of profiles without having to leave the comfort of your home. Meeting someone via the web is also safer, they argue, than trying to pick up a date at random in a bar. Users of dating sites are typically encouraged to report suspicious behaviour and some sites employ sophisticated software designed to flag bogus profiles.

Online matchmakers also claim their record of producing successful unions is better then critics give them credit for. for instance, eHarmony, a prominent online-dating service, touts the results of a survey conducted on its behalf by Harris Interactive, a market-research firm, that concludes it was responsible for an average of 542 people getting married every day in America between the start of 2008 and the end of June 2009. EHarmony claims to have accounted for almost 4.8% of all American marriages in that period.

Such studies, coupled with advertising campaigns playing up the possibility of finding love online, have helped the online-dating industry to prosper. Some sites such as OkCupid and Plentyoffish are free to join and make most of their money from advertising. Others, including eHarmony, which presents users with potential partners using algorithms designed to identify compatibility, charge a subscription. The monthly fee for the American versionof eHarmony is between $19.95 and $59.95, depending on the length of subscription.

Not surprisingly, sites that cherge for their services and require people to fill in detailed questionnaires argue that they are more likely to attract those who are serious about finding love. But owners of fee sites say that is not necessarily so. OkCupid's Mr Yagan argues that the size of the fee that most paid sites charge is not big enough to act as an effective filter. And he claims that his own site has a very effective way of demonstrating a person's seriousness of intent, which involves promoting the profiles of those people who are most active on it.

There has been some speculation that both kinds of business model will be undermined by the rise of free social networks such as Facebook, which make it easy for people to share large amounts of personal information with one another. But Greg Blatt, the former boss of Match and the new chief executive of IAC, a holding company that owns the dating site, says studies conducted by Match show that many people prefer to keep their dating activity separate from socialising with their friends. Zoosk has even cleverly piggybacked on Facebook, enabling its users to import their details from the social network to populate their profile on Zoosk's fast-growing service.

中国の役人登用試験“科挙”を受けるべく勉学に励んでいる受験生を励ました文から引用しましたが、何という書かは忘れました。　解った人は教えてくださいませ。

記事はネットで婚活をしているデートサイトの紹介及び分析です。私も今年相手が見つからなければお世話になるかもね！
(2011.01.07 06:57:28)

高度な英文がぎっしり詰まっていて６分の１も読んでいないのにもう次の週刊が出てしまう。

仕方が無い実力不足を認めて隔週で購入しよう。
(2011.01.07 07:01:05)

Good afternoon.

午前の授業が終わり
休憩時間にお邪魔しております。

気温は低いですが太陽が出ている長崎です。
冬期講習会は明日までガッツ。

フィッシャーのレーシング板１９３ｃｍ
２００８年モデル未使用を半額以下の4.3万円で
手に入れました。
宅急便が届くのを待っています。

あとは、痛風発作の完治待ちです。

Have a happy day.
Thank you.(2011.01.07 14:47:20)

Dating sites have also adapted successfuly to different cultures. In India agencies such as BharatMatrimony provide remarkably detailed lists of criteria， including religion， caste， income and education， that allow people to make minute refinements to the description of their ideal soulmate. The services also let parents and relatives create profiles on other's behalf. Once promising partners are identified， they are often vetted by traditional marriage-brokers.

In spite of all this， loveseekers should still approach online dating with a healthy degree of scepticism. For a start， pools of potential partners are often much smaller than the big numbers touted by mainstream sites suggest. David Evans， the editor of Online Dating Insider， an industry blog， cites the example of a hypothetical site with 15m profiles in its database. Perhaps only 4m of these will be "active" at any time， he says - meaning that the profiles' owners have logged in at least once in the previous three months. Moreover， some services only let people contact paying members， which shrinks the audience still more. And given that most online daters look for partners who live no more than 25-30 miles away， the real pool of potential mates is often tiny.
(2011.01.07 15:13:48)

神風スズキさん
ステーキハウスにお食事に行ったら丸焼きの牛一頭だされた感じと言えば理解してもらえますでしょうか？
(2011.01.07 15:16:29)

エコノミストを教科書にしてから人気は急激に落ちた。

｢賢けりゃそれでいいんだ～　(英語の)力さえあればいいんだ～　ひねくれて星をにらんだ僕なのさ～｣
(2011.01.07 15:41:50)

1 geek: not on my dictionary
2 mercurial: (of people or their moods etc) often changing ， lively， quick-witted， like， containing of caused by mercuryマーキュリー神の、水星の、水銀の、快活な
3 emerging: emerge: come out or up (from water， etc)， come into view or prominence， become known現れる、抜け出る、
4 prominence: state of being prominent: jutting out， projecting， easily seen， distinguished or important突出した、卓越した
5 spawn: egg of fish， shellfish and frogs， toads etc.. (biology) white fibrous matter from which mushrooms and other fungi grow(2011.01.07 18:50:13)

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