Matchmaking platforms are widely accepted among younger generations. Photo: TUCHONG

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In recent years, the digital revolution in social interaction has led to significant changes in the landscape of romantic relationships. Dating options have shifted away from local social networks to a romance market characterized by spontaneous encounters and self-directed interactions. This market organizes romantic relationships through self-regulation, gradually integrating intimate experiences into the logic of digitalization. The author’s studies of various matchmaking communities show that matchmaking platforms function as the infrastructure of the romance market. The structural characteristics of contemporary intimate relationships can be understood by analyzing the organizational structure and emotional culture of these platforms.

Role as infrastructure

The infrastructural role of matchmaking platforms is reflected in three key aspects: resources, channels, and spaces. Firstly, platforms attract a large user base and aggregate a wealth of dating information and matchmaking resources through a freemium model. Secondly, platforms access users’ personal data streams via flexible APIs, rapidly expanding matchmaking channels based on users’ social behavior and networks. Thirdly, media technology allows platform users to seamlessly switch their communication between public and private, virtual and real, making platforms fluid spaces for interaction. Mediated by matchmaking platforms, dating turns into the systematic allocation of matchmaking resources by the romance market. 

Organizational structure

Matchmaking platforms exhibit convergence in their infrastructural functions but differ in their organizational structures, which can be categorized into “cascade” and “integrative” types. Administrators occupy the central position in cascade-type platforms, which are integrated into administrators’ multiple social media accounts and rely on their personal media marketing efforts to facilitate parallel operation. Dating information is disseminated through a centralized “point-to-multipoint” model, with administrators collecting and distributing information.

Integrative-type platforms, embedded in users’ personal data streams, create personalized data profiles once users access the platforms. They generate representative identity labels by superimposing data profiles and distribute dating information through refined management of these labels, enabling personalized recommendation of standardized information. Dating information is disseminated through a decentralized “point-to-point” model, wherein each user is a node in the platform’s dissemination network, each node constitutes an interface leading to the platform’s functional interface, and each user’s social relations serve as potential dissemination channels for the platform. Interpersonal dissemination of information and structural expansion of the platform are integrated, substantially diversifying platform customer acquisition channels.

In practice, cascade and integrative structures may intermingle. Many matchmaking platforms initially adopted the cascade structure and acquired traffic from third-party platforms. However, as platforms expand, some transition to an integrative structure, developing WeChat mini-programs and even specialized applications to enhance their traffic acquisition capabilities. This organizational flexibility and diversity grant the matchmaking platforms the dual role of both “formal intermediaries” and “daily social media,” accelerating their penetration into private emotional lives and making them a widely accepted dating channel among younger generations.

Emotional culture

Matchmaking platforms are cultivating a project management-style emotional culture, transforming romantic relationships into systematic projects which involve overall planning and progress monitoring of romantic social activities. The goal is to help users rationally select excellent partners and develop high-quality intimate relationships through standardized selection and matching processes.

For example, an online relationship program offered by a matchmaking platform and priced at nearly 1,000 CNY attracted more than 2,000 paying students over the course of a year. The program focuses on fostering a project management mindset, segmenting the dating process into five stages: selection via software, interaction on WeChat, face-to-face meeting, individual assessment, and determining the best candidate.

This project management approach relies on three mechanisms: self-presentation, value evaluation, and traffic conversion. First, users are required to present themselves using metrics provided by matchmaking platforms. For instance, they divide their profile into sections such as basic information, hobbies and interests, personality traits, and family background, using structured text and images to project a positive image. This approach aims to increase visibility in the competitive market. As those metrics are built upon gendered notions of an “ideal partner” and cater to homogenized market demand, the carefully chosen language often obscures individual uniqueness, leading to a standardized effect that renders everyone indistinguishable.

Second, users need to assess their market competitiveness by comparing themselves against quantifiable group standards. Matchmaking platforms encourage users to create detailed checklists, distinguish between advantages, disadvantages, and bottom lines to generate a digital profile of their ideal spouse, and calculate their matching success rate by taking platform statistics into consideration.

Third, matchmaking platforms apply the “traffic logic” of the digital economy to the management of intimate relationships. Users are encouraged to view themselves as a platform, attracting traffic by managing their digital identity and its dissemination channels, expanding their market presence. The platform then performs batch screening and tiered conversion of this traffic. They begin with converting public traffic into private traffic by shifting communication from the platform to WeChat, then convert online traffic to offline interactions. Superficial connections are converted into deep ones and eventually to intimacy through multiple face-to-face meetings. Each meeting can be considered a careful examination and paves the way for the next round of conversion, with the aim of expediting the formation of an “ideal intimate relationship.”

Liu Zixi is an associate professor from the School of Sociology and Anthropology at Xiamen University.

Edited by WANG YOURAN