Leave it to the Americans to come up with a hundred variations on something like dating and the matching of singles! American singles trends are ever changing and usually end up making their way far outside of America. In this article we’re going to have a look at some of the current American dating practices that are helping people fall in love or even just get their freak on.

Online Dating: You would have to have been living under a rock to not at least have heard of online or computer dating. It basically refers to meeting people online for the purposes of dating. It usually refers to the use of actual online dating sites to meet people, but you can actually meet other singles online just about anywhere from chat rooms to forums to personal ads. It’s been big since the internet started making it’s way into people’s homes,  but thanks to movies like ‘You’ve Got Mail’ which helped turn all of us singles into hopeless romantics who believe that love by the light of a computer monitor is possible, it has become HUGE!

Speed Dating: One of the most recent American dating inventions; speed dating got its start (supposedly) in a little café in Beverly Hills. How it works; a bunch of single men and women are sat at tables in a venue and are made to take turns stopping at each person for a timed period of under 10 minutes to have a ‘mini date’. The premise being that you are exposed to a bunch of people of the opposite sex, many of which you’d never have met otherwise, and then you can pick those that tickled your fancy and put their name on a list. The organizer then collects the lists and looks for matches. If the person whose name you wrote down also picked you, then that’s a match! Your contact deets will be exchanged and you’re free to go from there. It’s quick and easy, loads of fun, but its success rate isn’t really known yet.

Telephone Dating: Most people are familiar with telephone dating services because of the sexy commercials that air on television and radio late at night. This whole phenom actually started out with what was known as ‘party lines’. Remember those?? You would call a number, be billed per call or per fee and then be placed on a conference call with dozens of people all chatting at once. Most of the callers were single and looking which led to flirting and eventually dates and so on. From that emerged telephone dating which allows you to call in, buy a membership (ladies are free) and record a personal greeting. Members could listen to the various greetings based on the age group of their choice and press a number to send a person a message or request to chat live. These sites are not nearly as popular since internet dating came into play but are definitely still out there and going pretty strong. A good thing for those who don’t like or just don’t have the internet I suppose.