Much had changed ever since the Soviet Union had passed away. One of the most important consequences of this occasion is that the world met Slavic people again. For more than 70 years they were under the opaque dome of the Soviet government. And now they are free to communicate with each and every country on our planet. Beautiful Slavic girls started searching for best matches somewhere abroad – attempts to escape the homeland are in their blood and genes. Of course, it brings us to the first branch of dating service development – the marriage agencies. They were extremely popular in the mid-90s and were considered as one of the most significant ways of creating a happy family. The target audience of the services appeared to be female clients, nevertheless, it wasn’t that popular among men. These agencies would offer to seek for the best match, no matter if she was looking for a foreigner or a Russian citizen. The result could not be predicted; somehow those girls were anticipating her couple to be rich and handsome.
The situation wasn’t that serene. A lot of affairs took place; the least awful of them would consist of amateur actors instead of sought grooms, fake dates and an expensive application placement in agency’s catalogue. Some bridal agencies appeared to be just pretty covers for hideous schemes of enslavement and conveying abroad, generally for sex slavery. These mechanisms still exist, but they are becoming more sophisticated day by day. Smart girls would ask a friend or a relative to visit the date with them so they would feel protected. But, particularly for Russia, society then was both angry and disappointed, so people would tend to believe anything they want to believe. It was a specific time.
If everything worked out, young marriage hunter found a partner and they want to move to partner’s native country –other kinds of troubles appear. A flipside of international dating occurs rough legal issues, such as obtaining of visa and citizenship. Popular countries among Russian girls (Sweden, Norway, the USA, the United Kingdom, France, Spain etc.) wouldn’t always be friendly to potential citizens. The concept of American man as the preferable couple has even become culturally fixated e.g. songs like “American boy”. As we can see, such phenomenon commonly has a real background. Another issue is connected to the Slavic tradition of an extended family: while moving to another country, a girl would ask her groom to take as many relatives with them as possible. Such request can frighten even the most loving man, for sure.
Next-gen dating services were brought up with the wide spreading of the Internet and personal computer. It’s a high level of comfort – to stay home and chat with people on dating sites, also much quicker and cheaper. And, as well, conversations in the net makes everything simpler, this fact may not be disputed. Since the end of the 90s, through the 00s and by now – online-dating services in Russia experienced dramatic growth of technological support. From schematic web-pages to stylish and multifunctional sites – and upon till now, the era of mobile applications. Last few years were the time of flourish for geolocation-based services, the demand had constantly been enlarging. Basing on data of J’son & Partners Consulting Company, Russian market of online dating is more than 50 million $ a year (http://m.lenta.ru/articles/2015/10/10/edating), it appears to be a good index in terms of Russian level of economic development. It seems that 2015 brought the crisis of activity in international dating services. Critics suggest it to be seasonal changes or statistical error, but it does not explain its fast escalation. Also, some specific platforms and applications may become useless and abandoned, but not the system of online dating in general. The Net is a fast-growing phenomenon, and for sure some critical changes may be involved.
Russian audience of international dating is one of the most unassuming markets, but not when it comes to the female part of it. Slavic girls today can be rarely presumptuous about themselves and strict about the partners they would like to meet. Although, it has to be noted that the greater part of mobile dating services users are men, but they are more interested in internal supply. What is important, men more often use spam-bots, sometimes manually filter tons of acquaintance applications. And to clarify the approach of Russian people to online dating, they don’t suppose it to be absolutely safe and dependable, they are concerned of anonymity and scams. Modern applications create a relatively comfortable atmosphere for dating though it can as well be a perfect field for financial affairs. Russian user would prefer not to pay for extra services within the freemium model, they suggest those functions to be an unnecessary superfluity.