Technology has already transformed virtually everything in the planet and online dating hasn’t been left behind. We have seen the emergence of things like location-based dating apps, aided by the emergence of smartphones and internet connectivity that has changed the way we connect. These days, finding a date online is as easy as ordering a pizza but what does the future hold for online dating? How will technology change the way we date in the coming years? Will the Internet of Things, otherwise known as IoT revolutionize online dating? Well, let’s look at some of the possibilities.
What’s IoT?
For starters, what the heck is IoT and why is it generating so much buzz? Now, IoT is simply a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people. They are assigned with unique identifiers, thus they communicate together without any human intervention. Amazing, right? We have already seen the beautiful side of IoT applications in the form of smart homes, wearable tech, smart cities, smart grids, connected cars, smart retail, smart farms, the industrial internet just to mention but a few. The projections indicate that IoT is bound to get even bigger in the coming years. For instance, one study by Gartner projected that the revenue that is generated from IoT-enabled services and products will be in the excess of $300 billion by the year 2020. But, what does this mean to the world of online dating? Well, let’s dig deeper.
How IoT Will Revolutionize Online Dating
Perhaps you are wondering where IoT meets online dating. It’s simple. It’s all about data, or rather access to a plethora of data. Compatibility matching is driven by smart data and they are already at work today. In fact, dating platforms already know more than you can imagine. No wonder you see top dating sites scrambling to get the best analytics and data science experts into their teams. If this is the case today, we can only imagine how things will pan out once IoT is at its peak!
The range of data that IoT will allow smart dating platforms to capture will surely be enormous. Besides, data generated from these networks will tell a lot about our behavioural traits. Wearable tech, for instance, will generate vital data like location, app use, media preferences, user photos, spending patterns, exercise patterns, sleep patterns, mood and much more. These will come from smart clothes, smart lenses, sleep wearables, smart fitness technology, smart watches etc. From the capture data, data scientists will create algorithms which will be able to extract not only info in the realm of traits and attitude but also dimensions for compatibility. For example, they can discover your life priorities, temperament levels etc. and use them to find a perfect match.
The same can be said of Smart Homes which will be a reality in many parts of the world in the coming years. These homes will also churn out data that say a lot about the persona in us. We are talking about a networked home featuring devices like smart body analyzers, smart appliances, smart mirrors, smart entertainment, smart security, air quality analyzer, car charging stations, smart toilets and much more. Again, from these, experts and machines learning algorithms will be able to tell more about your personality. As an illustration, from your clothing style, dating platforms can be able to tell how you view yourself, how much you value your style-based on the money you’ve spent on clothes and then pair you with someone who is more or less of the same traits.
Smart homes will also tell the kind of diet you fancy, a feat that could also impact on the way online dating compute compatibility metrics. IoT will not just show what you love putting in your fridge but how you love consuming your food which may be used to tell multiple personality insights.
It will also be easy to tell how clean you are based on the model of the smart home keeping in mind that we all tend to have differing standards pertaining to hygiene levels. This means that such data can provide a new angle for matching people.
Energy usage data could also be leveraged to show your frugality and how concerned you may be about the environment. The former is known to be a useful in the early parts of relationships particularly how people interact. This may predict, how a person will pick a location data, the money they can spend etc.
Wrapping Up
Long story short, IoT is and will create such a huge amount of data that dating may be revolutionized forever. Of course, critics of the use of computerized matching algorithms have been saying that human beings are not predictable reliably but with IoT, the accuracy will change that perception for the better. The future is certainly bright for online dating with new technologies like IoT.