Dating 2.0 the new Catch Phrase for Online Dating?

It seems like the term "Dating 2.0" is becoming a new catch phrase. It has appeared in some recent online dating articles from such popular websites as Wired and Time. Techcrunch seems to have started it all with an article from last year about thirteen sites that supposedly offer high tech features (at least that is what the title would suggest). There are some good sites listed in the article but most of them have very small user base and seem to just concentrate on one small unique feature that would seem almost to be a fad rather than a useful tool for matching potential couples online. I guess only time will tell.

As with the term "Web 2.0", which means a second generation of websites that have evolved to offer a more interactive and an over all better web site, I would assume Dating 2.0 refers to the second generation of dating websites which offers a much improved online dating experience. In my opinion dating sites that offer just a classifieds approach to dating would be Dating 1.0 (see this [story: News-Yahoo-Personals-Home-Page-1998 story] for an example of Yahoo in 1998). Dating 2.0 sites would offer such features as messaging, video and text chatting and complex matching software. If we use these criteria, Dating 2.0 has been around for over 5 years now and almost all popular dating services today would be a part of the 2.0 category.

So in reality we are not waiting for the Dating 2.0 generation anymore, it has already been here for a while. We are now waiting for the 3rd evolution of online dating and what it will bring to the dating experience. I have the perfect name for it, we can call it Dating 3.0 ;-)