People are now looking for love a lot different than how it happened 20, 30, or 40 years ago. Online dating has made the process a lot simpler, although its critics often invoke downsides like the impossibility to fully know someone unless you meet him or her in person, the fact that a lot of people using dating apps lie about who they are and what they want, and the examples could continue.
We’re not here to contradict them, as online dating clearly has its downsides. But overall, it still represents a great way of making yourself a relationship due to the fact that it provides you with a much larger area of selection. Perhaps the online dating realm will never be perfect, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. The IoT (Internet of Things) can surely be useful in this area, and we’ll immediately learn how.
What is IoT (Internet of Things)?
The term refers to a system of interrelated computing devices, digital and mechanical machines, people, objects, and even animals. The main concept of a network of smart devices was discussed as early as 1982. Although they communicate with one another without human intervention, they are assigned unique identifiers. Oddly enough, more IoT devices than people have been connected to the Internet since 2008.
The IoT has the potential to change online dating
The IoT could allow dating platforms to capture more smart data about the users using the multitude of IoT devices available in your personal environment: smart watches (giving information on your exercise and sports habits), smart home speakers (likely to know what type of music and news channels you listen to) and other connected devices and services. They all have the potential to know and share something about you (hopefully with your consent!). The more data such apps gather, the better. The reason is simple: to create matches between users that are as close to perfection as possible.
Smart data can even discover life priorities or tastes from certain domains by simply tracking your behaviour while using certain apps, and the IoT will simplify that process.
Jonathan Beber, who’s the Director of Research and Development at eHarmony, declared: “The more [dating services] get to know you, the stronger our predictions will be.”
If you can imagine how smart devices such as your fridge could provide valuable data about how you can be the ideal match for someone else on a dating app, it means that you’ve surely understood better how the Internet of Things (IoT) can help us find love a lot better.
Do you think that IoT can become too intrusive? Well, it depends on which one of the sides you’re in, as it can act in your favour or against you. One study shows that 50% of those who look for a relationship online choose to find out as many things as possible about their future date before meeting face-to-face for the first time. As we admitted earlier, a lot of people aren’t honest while using a dating app, and the involvement of IoT is another way to overcome the unpleasant scenario of meeting a lying person.
There are countless interesting dating apps available out there, and it all depends on you to decide which one suits your needs the most. Omegle and Chatib are generally recommended for starters, as it’s simple and straightforward. You’ll immediately be put in a video chat with another person, and you can even set up a topic of discussion before starting the conversation.
The online dating industry is growing fast and it aims at improving its efficiency through the integration of new technologies such as the Internet of Things – to know you better through the automatic collection of data on your habits and preferences – as well as the Artificial Intelligence – to extract valuable information from all the data collected and use it to make smarter matches.
We can easily guess that this evolution will come with concerns on the privacy and security of all the data used through the whole process. This subject is already heavily debated so let’s hope that a proper legal environment will be set to protect consumers while allowing new technologies to improve their lives.
