Practicum-Danielle #3

African American Dating Websites

I am going to list and explore the 3 popular dating websites for African American men and women BlackPlanet.com, Blackscene.com, BlackSingles.com, and Afrointroductions

.com.

Although the websites all cater to African American singles, many of the sites try to distinguish themselves from the others by finding a niche. Just as Jdate is for Jewish people, some of these sites such as Afrointroductions.com market themselves as having the ability to find you a Carribean woman. Blackscene.com tries to use expressive words in their marketing, such as being able to put you in touch with an Ebony man or woman.

Most of these sites, like all dating sites, say that registration is “FREE!”. However, once you go to the site to register there is a fee, usually anywhere from $4.99-$39.99 a month. In addition, each site asks you to create a member profile, upload a picture, and then encourages you to chat with other singles from the site. For instance, Blacksingles.com gloats that its message boards are crowded an the site attracts over 10,000 people a day.

I found an article about how a persons race effects the messages they receive on online dating websites. The following information is an encapsulation of some of the data found on this site: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/

~Black women are the most likely to respond-they write back the most “In many cas

es, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and, overall, black women reply about a quarter more often that other women”

~Statistically, men write Black women back less frequently. They receive the fewest replies from all ethnicities, including Black men.

~White males reveive the most replies from all ethnicities.

~ White males reply less frequently than all other ethnicities. “The average reply rate of non-white males is 48.1%, while white guys’ is only 40.5%.” (That is about 20% ess often).