THE PRAGUE POST — Feb 8 — www.seznamka.cz has 1,100 new ads and 6,000 new responses appear each day, according to Jan Rychnovsky of Tanger Infosystems. Another, www.rande.cz, has 100,000 users, with closer to 250,000 paid and registered members in total. Rychnovský estimates that around 1 million Czechs are Internet daters — an estimated 1 million to 2 million residents have Internet access at home. As in much of Europe, there are more singles in the Czech Republic than ever before. Marriages here declined 45% between 1989 and 2003, an average of 3% each year, according to the Czech Statistical Office. Most online daters still tend to be male: ~65%, 35% women, according to Seznamka estimates.
The full article was originally published at The Prague Post, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: I met my girlfriend in Prague at the time of the 2005 internet dating convention and spent two months there. Online dating is a new phenomenon. I'll ask her to comment as I know she gave it a shot.
I was thinking a lot lately, why is the number of singles so high? Young people want to be independent, have fun, study, have a career and travel. Looking back before the year 1989 we didn’t have so many opportuinities for travelling or a career in the Czech Republic because of communism… After Nov 17th 1989 everything has changed and the point of life is not only to get married and have kids…
Now as we are getting older, we found out that we are missing something and have a feeling that we have to ‘catch our train’… and we are not looking for a flirt only, we are looking for the right one, for a partner to spend our life with, for a father (mother) of our kids. Our requirements are higher and higher and we grow more picky. We know exactly what we are looking for… Where to find him (her)? It seems to be so easy but it is not. Especially in such the big city that Prague is. People here are more individual and impersonal.
So online dating has become very popular in the last five years. It saves our time firstly, and it is anonymous and easy. Seznamka is the biggest one in the Czech Republic but the popular is *Rande.cz* among my friends. You can add your profile there (age, hobby, picture, even your property and exactly what you are looking for). If you are willing to pay some money, you can become a VIP member and have your picture on the main page. After that, especially when you are a new member with a good picture in your profile, you can get a lot of messages and proposals for blind dates. Sometimes it is funny, sometimes scary but still a good opportunity to meet new people and make friends in our hasty lifes.
Irena Zakova
Sun Microsystems
serg@wmglab.ru