Matchmaker.com
| Founded | 1986 |
|---|---|
| Owner | Avalanche, LLC |
| Industry | Online dating service |
| Website | Matchmaker.com |
| Alexa rank | 325,796 |
Matchmaker.com is an online dating service. Prior to the internet, it operated via dial-in. It was founded in 1986, making it the oldest of the existing online dating sites. It is owned by Avalanche, LLC.
Members would complete a questionnaire which consists of several multiple-choice items as well as some essay questions where you can fill in more specific information about yourself such as "What are your hobbies and interests?" or "What would you ideal first date be like?" When one searched for a potential match, matches were ranked according to the percentage of identical responses you have to the responses in someone else's profile in the multiple-choice section of the questionnaire. You could also sort your match list by distance from your zip code to the zip code of the matches.
Matchmaker.com originated from a Bulletin Board System created by Gregory Scott Smith in San Antonio, Texas in March 1983. It began as a dial-up system running on a single Apple II+ with a modem. Shortly afterwards, it was ported to a Microsoft Xenix–based Tandy 6000 microcomputer and re-written in MBASIC, and then re-written again in C by programmer Jon Boede. It was originally conceived as a pen-pal network for everyone. There were no membership fees and the system operated on user donations.
In 1985, the system was relocated to Houston, Texas and operated on four dial-up lines. The following year, two other systems were networked and allowed users in San Antonio, Texas and San Jose, California to join the "date-a-base".
The original site started in 1986 was in the form of a Dial-up Bulletin board system. Each system catered to a geographic area (code) allowing users to find like interests. The original BBS based system only catered to local computer savvy users within a local telephone area code. However, exchange of email between systems and profiles was later implemented using sendmail and uuencoding making uucp and, ultimately the internet, the Matchmaker network backbone. The Matchmaker network was featured in the first edition of "!%@:: a directory of electronic mail addressing and networks" as one of the larger email networks prior to the rise of the Internet.
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