Swipe Right for Romance!

From the first-known personal ads, published in the late-1600s, to the dating apps of today, people have long been seeking assistance in finding that perfect mate.

The first personals were less about swoony, romantic connections than finding a mate who was of similar social standing, or widows or widowers with children who were looking for a mate to fill a space in the home. (Think, Sarah, Plain and Tall, although that takes place much later.)

In 1727, the first woman placed a personals ad. Instead of finding “someone nice to spend my life with,” Helen Morrison instead found herself committed to an asylum for four weeks by her town’s mayor. Apparently, a woman who would dare to announce publicly her desire to find a nice man must be insane.

In the early 1800s, aristocrats started embracing the personal ad as a means to finding a suitable mate. By the mid-1800s, the general public caught on and personals continued to grow. Of course, with it came plenty of scams, a tradition that continues today.

Fast forward to 1965, when the first computer dating service was introduced by a team from Harvard. For $3, you could fill out a questionnaire and be matched with potential mates. Sound familiar?

In the 1990s, chat rooms became a popular way of finding your person. Around that same time, the first internet dating site, Match.com, was introduced in 1995, where they matched people based on a number of factors, including hobbies, lifestyle, and location. (Today, Match.com has 30 million users, so they must have been on to something.) After Match.com came other competitors, like eHarmony and OkCupid, which have their own patented formula for finding true love.

Finally, in came the dating app in 2007. Zoosk was one of the first dating sites to offer a companion app, and suddenly, people could easily scroll through potential mates on their phones and on the go. And the now-ubiquitous swiping feature was introduced by Tinder in 2012, where you could just “swipe right” if you found a potential mate. 

In my new rom-com, Swipe Right for Romance, Juniper Parker is an app developer seeking to help romance-seekers find their ideal mate with a revolutionary dating app, Love Bug. Her last hope at success for her app is to win an app competition sponsored by Steel Enterprises. The biggest thing standing in her way? AJ Steel, the CEO of Steel Enterprises, who feels that another dating app is the absolute worst use of their resources. He might feel differently after the two are matched by the app. Is it a mistake, or are they destined to be?

I bet Helen Morrison would have loved to have given the Love Bug app a spin…

Swipe Right for Romance is available for pre-order on Amazon now!