Love on cyberspace not restricted to just marriage

Washington, Jan 8 (ANI): Marriage is not the only measure of success among people looking for love in cyberspace, a new study has claimed.

Rachel Magee and Christopher Mascaro from The iSchool at Drexel, College of Information Science and Technology, and their advisor Dr. Sean P. Goggins, completed a study that takes a closer look at the success stories of online daters.

Their results point toward a more accurate interpretation of why people decide to use online dating technology, why they choose a specific site and what they consider a successful online dating experience.

"We each had used online dating sites, and were both fascinated with how and why people use these services," Newswise quoted Magee as saying.

"We started to look at the research out there, and realized that what was missing was research into what constitutes successful online dating experiences. This is an extremely important part of most people's lives, and we wanted to look at the big picture," she said.

The Drexel study examined data gathered during a two-week sample period in the spring of 2011 from success stories listed on the dating sites Match.com, eHarmony and OkCupid. The researchers looked at a random sampling of 20 percent of the success stories from each site.

Their findings concluded that a vast majority, 84 percent, of users who reported "successful" experiences on eHarmony where referring to marriage. By contrast, 46.7 percent of the reported success stories from Match.com were marriage stories and only 23 percent of the success stories on OkCupid were about marriage.

"What we found in our research confirmed some of our experiences and anecdotal evidence, that certain dating sites fostered certain cultures and the range of success stories indicated as much," Mascaro said.

"Our findings also indicate that even with the proliferation of technologically and mediated social networking sites, real world social networks still play a significant role in technological adoption and mate selection," he said.

Each of the sites broke down their results into three categories of success - dating, engaged and married. An analysis of the data revealed that most users who had a successful experience on OkCupid, considered dating to be successful with slightly fewer stories of engagement and the fewest stories in the category of marriage.

The frequency of stories for both eHarmony and Match.com increased in each category from dating to marriage. (ANI)