Online dating is a system that enables people to find and introduce themselves to potential connections over the Internet, usually with the goal of developing personal, romantic, or sexual relationships. An online dating service is a company that provides specific mechanisms for online dating through the use of Internet-connected personal computers or mobile devices. Such companies offer a wide variety of unmoderated matchmaking services, most of which are profile-based.
Matchmaking is the process of matching two or more people together, usually for the purpose of marriage, but the word is also used in the context of sporting events such as boxing, in business, in online video games and in pairing organ donors.
A social networking service is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections.
BlackPlanet is an African-American social networking service for matchmaking and job postings; it also has forums for discussion on political and social issues.
Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service based in Menlo Park, California, and a flagship service of the namesake company Facebook, Inc. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.
Criticism of Facebook has led to international media coverage and significant reporting of its legal troubles and the outsize influence it has on the lives and health of its users and employees, as well on its influence on the way media, specifically news, is reported and distributed. Notable issues include Internet privacy, such as use of a widespread "like" button on third-party websites tracking users, possible indefinite records of user information, automatic facial recognition software, and its role in the workplace, including employer-employee account disclosure. The use of Facebook can have negative psychological effects that include feelings of jealousy and stress, a lack of attention, and social media addiction that in some cases is comparable to drug addiction.
Badoo is a dating-focused social network founded by Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev in 2006. It is headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus and London, United Kingdom, with offices in Malta, Russia and the United States. It operates in 190 countries and is available in 47 different languages, making it the world's most widely used dating network. The app is available on iOS, Android, and the web. Badoo operates on a freemium model, whereby the core services can be used without payment.
The Facebook Platform is the set of services, tools, and products provided by the social networking service Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook.
Google Friend Connect was a free social networking site from 2008 to 2012. Similar in practice to Facebook Platform and MySpaceID, it took a decentralised approach, allowing users to build a profile to share and update information via third-party sites. These sites acted as a host for profile sharing and social exchanges.
Chatroulette is an online chat website that pairs random users for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website begin an online chat with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection. According to The New York Times, the site is intensely addictive. In February 2010, a few months after the website was created, about 35,000 people were on Chatroulette at any given time. Around the beginning of March, creator Andrey Ternovskiy estimated the site to have around 1.5 million users. According to a survey carried out by RJMetrics, about one in eight spins on Chatroulette yielded "R-rated" content. Parody shows such as The Daily Show and South Park have lampooned this aspect of the service, and nudity has become an established part of the site's notoriety. In spring 2020, Ternovskiy appointed Andrew William Done, Australian tech entrepreneur, as the CEO of Chatroulette. Done has previously founded companies like Simple Machines in Sydney, Australia, and operated as CTO for multiple tech start ups, such as Goodlord in London. Following product changes in spring 2020, and enhanced by the COVID-19 Pandemic, Chatroulette's user numbers have more than doubled between 2019 and 2020. Due to a big relaunch of Chatroulette in June 2020, including new features and a more reliable and modern platform, user numbers are expected to continuously grow.
Facebook has been replacing traditional media channels since its founding in 2004. Censorship in the media, especially on Facebook is because of a variety of reasons, since Facebook accepts all kinds of content, with little or no moderation, and displays what people post publicly, this practice can sometimes threaten oppressive governments especially in totalitarian regimes while also propelling fake news, hate speech and misinformation thus undermining the credibility of online platforms and social media. Many countries have banned or temporarily limited access to the social networking website Facebook, including Mainland China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Use of the website has also been restricted in various ways in other countries. As of May 2016, the only countries to ban access around the clock to the social networking site are China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. However, since most North Korean residents have no access to the Internet, China and Iran are the only countries where access to Facebook is actively restricted in a wholesale manner.
Censorship of Twitter refers to Internet censorship by governments that block access to Twitter, or censorship by Twitter itself. Twitter censorship also includes governmental notice and take down requests to Twitter, which Twitter enforces in accordance with its Terms of Service when a government or authority submits a valid removal request to Twitter indicating that specific content is illegal in their jurisdiction.
Since the arrival of early social networking sites in the early 2000s, online social networking platforms have expanded exponentially, with the biggest names in social media in the mid-2010s being Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. The massive influx of personal information that has become available online and stored in the cloud has put user privacy at the forefront of discussion regarding the database's ability to safely store such personal information. The extent to which users and social media platform administrators can access user profiles has become a new topic of ethical consideration, and the legality, awareness, and boundaries of subsequent privacy violations are critical concerns in advance of the technological age.
Zorpia is a social networking service with customers in China. Zorpia is one of the few international social networks with a Chinese Internet Content Provider license. The social networking site reports 2 million unique users per month and a total worldwide user base of 26 million. Jeffrey Ng is the company's founder and CEO of Zorpia. The privately funded company is based in Hong Kong and has 30 employees.
Twoo or Twoo.com is a social discovery platform launched in 2011 by Massive Media. Users create profiles, upload pictures and chat with other users. The website and app is available in 38 languages and counted 181 million users in 200 countries in December 2016.
VPN blocking is a technique used to block the encrypted protocol tunneling communications methods used by virtual private network (VPN) systems. Often used by large organizations such as national governments or corporations, it can act as a tool for computer security or Internet censorship by preventing the use of VPNs to bypass network firewall systems.
The Facebook like button is a feature on the social networking website Facebook. It was first enabled on February 2009. The like button enables users to easily interact with status updates, comments, photos and videos, links shared by friends, and advertisements. Once clicked by a user, the designated content appears in the News Feeds of that user's friends, and the button also displays the number of other users who have liked the content, including a full or partial list of those users. The like button was extended to comments in June 2010. After extensive testing and years of questions from the public about whether it had an intention to incorporate a "Dislike" button, Facebook officially rolled out "Reactions" to users worldwide on February 24, 2016, letting users long-press on the like button for an option to use one of five pre-defined emotions, including "Love", "Haha", "Wow", "Sad", or "Angry". Reactions were also extended to comments in May 2017, and had a major graphical overhaul in April 2019.
LoveRealm is a Christian social networking platform built to connect Christians across the globe. It was founded by triplet brothers and medical doctors Dr. Yaw Ansong Jr. and Dr. Yaw Ansong Snr. The company originates from Accra, Ghana, and has team members from across Europe and USA. The social network is currently in open beta.
MeWe is an American alt-tech social media and social networking service owned by Sgrouples, a company based in Culver City, California. MeWe's light approach to content moderation has made it popular among conspiracy theorists, particularly the anti-vaccine movement, as well as American conservatives. The site gained popularity in Hong Kong in November 2020.
The advent of social networking services has led to many issues spanning from misinformation and disinformation to privacy concerns related to public and private personal data.
