The Algorithm Method: Love in the Social Media Age
Social media has made finding love easier: reconnecting with your college sweetheart on Facebook, broadcasting emotions on Twitter and maybe even finding your soul mate on a mobile dating app.
Americans will spend near a billion dollars on online dating in 2011. A 2002 article by Rufus Griscom in Wired stated, "Twenty years from now, the idea that someone looking for love without looking for it online will be silly… Serendipity is the hallmark of inefficient markets, and the marketplace of love, like it or not, is becoming more efficient."
A survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found that two-thirds of divorce cases have used evidence from Facebook. Dating sites and social media outlets facilitate infidelity and exploitation in a relationship as efficiently as they bring couples together. Plus smart, professional 20-somethings are sexting with abandon. See gaffes by Anthony Weiner, Tiger Woods and et al. Are these technologies a blessing or a burden? Will the personal and professional continue to collide in dramatic ways?
Presenters
Andrea Miller is the founder and CEO of YourTango, a digital media brand dedicated to love and relationships. YourTango offers award-winning content, community and connections to relationship experts. No matter which lovestage its users are in--single, taken, engaged, married, starting over, or complicated--YourTango helps them live their best love lives.
Andrea is featured frequently in the media, including multiple appearances on The Today Show, The Early Show, Better TV, CNN, E!, Fox News, ABC, and radio stations across the U.S., as well as in national publications such as USA Today, The New York Post, The Los Angeles Times, and Business Week. Here is a recent appearance on The Today Show. Andrea is a frequent panelist and guest speaker on industry panels as well as classes and events at Harvard, Columbia, Fordham, Wharton and NYU.
Andrea is a graduate of Tulane University (B.S. Mechanical Engineering) and Columbia Business School (M.B.A.) where she was the managing editor of The Bottom Line, the school’s student newspaper.
Prior to launching Tango, Andrea’s career was in finance and consulting, including positions with Goldman Sachs, ICF Consulting and Enron’s international finance team. While with Enron, Andrea was based in Mumbai, India for three years.
Andrea is a licensed private pilot and actively working on her black belt in karate. She served as one of the original co-heads of the New York Chapter of 85 Broads, an independent global network of female professionals and students. Andrea also actively seeks to promote entrepreneurship among women; she is the co-founder of the Women Entrepreneurs Network, an active network of females who represent some of the tri-state area’s most talented and promising young entrepreneurs, affiliated with Columbia Business School.
Andrea lives with her husband and son in New York City.
Helen Fisher, PhD, is a Biological Anthropologist at Rutgers University. She studies the evolution, brain systems (fMRI) and cross-cultural patterns of romantic love, mate choice, marriage, adultery, divorce, gender differences in the brain, personality, temperament, business personalities and the biology of leadership styles. She has written five internationally best selling books, including WHY HIM? WHY HER?; WHY WE LOVE; ANATOMY OF LOVE and THE FIRST SEX. She is currently Chief Scientific Advisor to Match.com and Chemistry.com, for which she designed their on-line questionnaire now taking by 10 million Singles in 40 countries. She also orchestrated the design and academic interpretation of the Match.com 2012 Singles in America national survey. She lectures worldwide; among her speeches are those at the World Economic Forum at Davos, TED, United Nations, Smithsonian Institution, Salk Institute, Harvard Medical School, American Association for the Advancement of Science and The Aspen Institute. She publishes widely in academic and lay journals and she is the most widely quoted scholar in the field of love in the world today. For her work in the media and the business community, Helen received the American Anthropological Association's "Distinguished Service Award." (For her full Vita, see her website: helenfisher.com)
Michael is a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded four successful internet-based media companies. He has a passion for creating, managing and growing companies from the ground up. Michael’s first foray into entrepreneurship came with the founding of University Wire, an Associated Press-like network of more than 700 student-run newspapers that is now owned by CBS Corp. Building on his growing experience in the online space, Michael next founded GOLF.com, which was purchased by Time Warner’s Time Inc. division in January 2006. Michael is currently the chairman and CEO of Buddy Media, Inc., a New York-based company whose Facebook management system is used by global brands and agencies. Michael graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. with a B.S. and M.S. in Journalism in 1996. He is a regular contributor to Advertising Age, MediaPost, Fortune and iMedia Connection, among other publications, and frequently is called upon to speak at industry events including the Monaco Media Forum, the Consumer Electronics Show, OMMA Global, Web 2.0 Expo and iMedia Brand Summit.
Monday, March 12
