In 14th February each year, people are known to celebrate Valentine's Day. On February 2014, Jana, a mobile rewards platform, conducted a survey to find out where people usually find their dates when they are online. The survey concluded that Facebook is not just a popular social network for people to reconnect. Facebook in emerging countries is also widely popular as a place where users find their match.
There are so many dating services that it's hard to know where to start. But in emerging markets, these dating sites are less common, and most are even unknown.
Jana ran a survey of consumers to learn more about their feelings on online dating. To ascertain which services and platforms are most popular, Jana provided respondents in each market with several options according to availability.
Jana surveyed 1,500 people age 18-30 across nine countries - Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa, and Vietnam - to find out which services people in each place favor for online dating. In all of them, Facebook came in at number one. Twitter was often a top contender as well. Furthermore, international dating sites like Match.com and Badoo did well against regional dating sites like Shaadi in India.
Other big names which showed up on the list were Twitter and MySpace. At least one of those two appeared in the lists of the top three dating sites for all nine of the countries which Jana surveyed. Both of them filled the second and third positions in four of the nine countries, with Twitter holding the second place and MySpace holding third.
People may wonder why were social networks like Facebook rather than dedicated dating sites at the top of the list in a survey about dating sites? According to Jana's blog post, many people perceive specialized online dating services as being "untrustworthy."
The survey is no surprise. Beside Facebook as the most widely used social network with the largest database of "people's information", it's also free and more open than most dating sites. Since the $2 billion online dating industry usually takes membership fee for about $20, Facebook that offers all of its database for free, with less "lies", easily came on top.
Participants added that the best part about online dating was the variety of people available, yet the worst part was searching through this list. Facebook is known to give information about its users, shown in their profile. Although these information can be hidden and falsified, the chances to find someone as a match is high.
Many of the participants said that they preferred Facebook because the majority of people were more honest than people on dating sites where they claimed it was easier to set up fake profiles and lie.
The highest proportion of people who had met someone online was in Vietnam, at 67 percent, whereas only a quarter of people in Brazil said they had gone on online dates.
It remains to be seen whether Facebook's global dominance will be tested in emerging markets as smartphone adoption increases and larger numbers of people go online for the first time, with apps and mobile browsers their primary internet experience.
As messaging apps become increasingly prevalent - particularly in Asia, where they rival Facebook and Twitter - they're also becoming popular platforms for dating. Friend suggestions, location-based chat and other features encourage connections with new people and the possibility to meet a date.
