Sunday, December 16, 2007

Social networking for an ideal match?

Social networking has become a buzz word these days with number of providers and users increasing every minute. To give a few examples facebook.com mainly consist of teenagers in the US from the age of 17-23 and orkut.com from Google has attracted crowds from South America and India.

Arranged marriage is still one of the most common ways of getting engaged for Indians and for Indians abroad its a challenge to find the perfect match thousands of miles away. Over the last few years Indian matrimony websites like bharatmatrimony.com or shaadi.com have flourished.

Through their paid services one can get introduced to a potential match and then start a conversation. Often times when its difficult to find information about the other person its quite likely that the other person is a member on orkut for example. Sometimes it might take you for a surprise that the other person might be connected to you via a friend of yours. Then its the feel good factor then that the person your getting introduced to is not a complete stranger.

Orkut offers something called Testimonials which could play an important part here to find out what others think about the person.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Social networking is what has drawn my otherwise tech-unsavvy parents to explore the internet - in the hopes of match making for their reluctant daughter (to be read as yours truly!!)
So while I use Orkut and Facebook as a way of keeping in touch with my friends and family - they use it as a method of sourcing and screening for "A suitable Boy"!!
Boy, I am even frightened of posting good snaps of me on my profile now - incase they get used against me! I thought running away to Australia would help me escape all this - This was one social phenomenon I had not bargained for!! :)

InqFinance said...

Shruti: Well said. Do your parents go into Orkut/facebook as well?
You can post your snaps and password protect them may be.
Even though physically Australia seemed tons of miles away with the electronic world you are still close.