« Previous |
Main
| Next »
Sweet on Tweets: Finding Love on Twitter
July 17, 2009 2:34 PM
ABC News On Campus reporter Kirby Kristen blogs:
It may just take 140 characters and some wit to land a date, or so it seems for Alayna Messer. She hasn’t had any luck finding the right guy in Austin, but online, it’s a different story.
“I didn’t try to meet him on Twitter to go out with him,” Messer, 25, said. “I just really liked his tweets.”
Messer randomly discovered Jason, a Los Angeles resident, while trolling the micro-blogging site. Their relationship began with Twitter and then blossomed to other social media outlets. According to social media tracking company, HubSpot, approximately 4.5 million people have used the site.
“So it was Twitter, to Facebook, to iChat, so it was really like a social media of hooking up,” Messer said.
People like Messer are trading dinner and a movie for a computer and a latte, but when it comes to dating, using iChat and other sites isn’t as unconventional as one may think. According to technology market research company JupiterResearch, online dating sites are projected to increase to $1.9 billion in revenue by 2012, an increase of 16% over the previous five years.
University of Texas Professor Dr. Jorge Pena teaches a class this summer about computer-mediated communication.
“These stories about people falling madly in love with one another, even though they’ve never met each other, have been circulating since I have memory of the Internet,” Pena said. “So I don’t think it’s really such a new phenomenon.”
Pena warned that cyber-dating can be dangerous because online personas may be deceiving.
The multiple-identity case of Jeffrey Marsalis highlights those risks. For years, Marsalis misrepresented himself to women using fake identities that ranged from astronaut to CIA agent. He also met women online, where he falsely identified himself as “Dr. Jeff” on his Match.com profile. Marsalis, who was not a doctor, drugged and sexually assaulted women he met online. On June 30, he was sentenced to life on rape charges. He is serving his time in the Idaho State Penitentiary.
“You’re engaging in selective self representation or strategic impression management. Depending on whoever is looking we may downplay or highlight certain attributes about ourselves,” Pena said. “But at the same time the whole point is to meet face-to-face, so how much can you lie in that situation?”
Messer’s friends agree with Pena and think she is crazy for pursuing an online relationship. Messer, however, is more worried about what to do when she picks Jason up at the airport for their first date.
“I am so excited,” she said. “I really like him, which I think is so weird. How do you like someone that you meet on a social network? But at the same time I feel like in this day and age, I mean, meeting someone online, there aren’t barriers.”
Pena says barriers that one may encounter in face-to-face relationships, like rejection, are lost on the Web.
“Someone might be a little concerned about approaching someone at a bar and then being rejected by that person,” Pena said. “Having the possibility of looking for a large number of suitors where you can screen their profiles to see if they match with you or not while not really engaging in a conversation may be less embarrassing.”
Nonetheless, Pena is wary about finding “happily ever after” on the Web. “I hear more often about people meeting each other online, thinking that they share so much in common, and finally when they get to meet face-to-face, something is wrong with that person,” Pena said.
“It’s a weird situation that I never thought I would be doing, but a lot of people have told me that it’s not so weird anymore,” Messer said. “Even a year ago it would have been more weird.”
User Comments
Post a comment
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
