telecommunications

As of 2011, 83% of American adults own a cellphone and 35% own some form of “smartphone.” This equals more than 300 million mobile phones currently in use, up from 86 million just a decade ago.

With the coverage of cellular networks expanding rapidly across the developing world, researchers are investigating how the access to information that mobile phones make possible can be leveraged to help alleviate poverty.

While online social contact can be traced back to the 1980s, online dating began to gain more prominence — and participants — around 1997, according to a 2011 study by the Oxford Internet Institute. The incorporation of Web 2.0 interactive technologies and database support helped online dating to steadily expand: Before 1997, only 6% of singles searched for potential companions online; after 1997, 30% of singles did.