Social media hasn’t just altered the way we stay connected to people, it has also transformed the way we meet people. Social media has had a huge impact on the way we find love or the way we date. Online dating in today’s age is become a norm on how people meet their special someone and fall in love.

Online dating has increased in popularity resulting in 17% of marriages last year meeting from dating sites. The percentage of people who are engaged and dating, who met from online dating sites is even higher. The stats are increasingly rising; eHarmony has 20 million users on it alone. To view more of these statistics visit article, “Is Social the Future of Online Dating“.

While traditional dating sites like eHarmony and Match.com attract many users because of their known popularity and brand recognition, alternative dating sites are emerging and growing in popularity. People are no longer only going on dating sites to meet someone and get married, today these sites are used to meet someone for company and are popular for people seeking the casual hookup. One example of an alternative to online dating is an application called Tinder. Tinder finds matches based on your location and you see the age and picture of someone and you decide if you like them or if you don’t. If you decide you like them and hit “like” and that person “liked” you back then it will match you guys and you have the option to start a conversation. Another increasingly popular alternative is Hitch.com. It goes off of LinkedIn profiles and you can browse profiles of singles that also sign up and send them smiles and get to know them more. These new alternative sites combine the traditional dating sites where strangers are matched together and social networking sites where you maintain relationships and reconnect with old friends, to form a mix where people meet new individuals based on their location and mutual friends they may share.

Online dating has begun to loose its speculations and no longer is a means for only the desperate to seek relationships. Today millions of people are finding love online and the sham of it has almost disappeared entirely. These dating sites platforms are changing along with social networking and have started to combine social networking along with online dating platforms.

Another great article to view on this topic is “How Social Media has Changed the Way People Find Love Online” written by Samantha Owens Pyle