tOur primary question is:

         Online dating appears to be becoming increasingly accepted by society, as well as a popular mode of daters (of all ages).  Why has this transition from meeting and courting in the physical world changed into meeting, dating, and courting in the virtual world? 

Questions that we have that, which will guide us to answer our primary question: 

Some of our secondary questions are listed here, based upon each individual place we tend to target for our study.

-Why has the transitions emerged into dating in the virtual world

-Why are people comfortable with dating in the virtual, are they more comfortable dating in the virtual than the physical, or is it the same?

- Is there any specific age group that online dating has become the most popular among?

- What is the main reason why people use online dating?

- What are the predictions of the future use of online dating and what it will become? 

What we plan to study in order to answer our primary question:

-Facebook

-Eligiblegreeks.com

-Secondlife

-Research articles

-Survey(s)

Our approach:

-Read blogs about online dating, from both sides to see what other people say about the topic.

-Watch different advertisements on online dating to see if it is trying to reach a certain type of person, or age.

-Do a survey of random people and see their thoughts on online dating (come up with a set of questions :if they would ever use an online dating site, why or why not, why do they think people find this a better way to date.. etc.)

-Interview people we know who have used online dating websites.

-Observations, discussion, and a possible survey in world, in SL.

Articles we plan to use to help guide our research as well with the answer to our question(s):

We will use alot of online tools, such as youtube videos of advertisements, blogs about online dating, the online dating websites themselves, and SL. In addition to the online tools, we intend to find scholarly articles, and statistics about the online dating phenomenon.  We hope to find articles which link our interviews and survey results to other studies. 

To find the articles we are going to search journal articles as well as technology articles.

Presentation Ideas

Wiki page with links to video advertisements, screen shots of blogs (or excerpts from the blogs)-as well directly from the dating websites themselves, videos we find about online dating or possibly of an interview of someone who has successfully online dated.  We also hope to be able to create a catchy video ourselves by mixing these together

Sources for Final Project

Becoming A Member: DateHookup.com

Becoming A Member: Eligiblegreeks.com