A matchmaker is a person or a company or a website which facilitates introducing people for the purpose of marriage. Matchmaking is more common in societies where arranged marriages are the norm like Hindu, Muslim and Jewish societies.

In the medieval era the priests in catholic societies acted as an advisor and a matchmaker. Social dances like line dance and square dance have been used in some societies like North American societies as an informal means of matchmaking.

Due to changes in technology, especially communication technology the matchmaking process has changed drastically. Many dating websites, matchmaking websites and chat forums have sprung up in the recent past. Most of these websites contain profiles of people, photographs, habits, marital information, number of children, smoking and eating habits, partner preferences and other related information.

The most famous of the sites, which promote dating, and matchmaking are match.com, ecrush.com, americansingles.com, cybersoulmate.com, jdate.com (for jews), blacksinglesconnection.com (for colored people), doyou2.com, thespark.com, secretadmirer.com etc.

There are some Christian sites also which promote matchmaking in a religious manner like adammeeteve.com. Most of the sites charge a few dollars to give contact details of any response. Some sites have been charged with placing pictures of porn stars to increase popularity of the web site.

Matchmaking is a delicate process in human relationships. Generally it happens that even if two people are attracted to each other, they do not take the first step of initiating a relationship for fear of rejection, shyness, societal pressures etc.

To remove the awkwardness of unwanted responses and romantic overtures and pain of rejection a revolutionary method of dating has been recently introduced. It is called anonymous matching. In the method of anonymous matching, a person confidentially gives response to other profiles. The computer matches and reports to a pair of users who have given response to each other (two users who reciprocate interest). To give this report the website usually charges an amount.

By this method of anonymous matchmaking the chances of rejection is greatly reduced. To increase the chance of two users matching, the responses are usually restricted to identical geographical location. Ecrush claims that by this system they have achieved more than 600,000 legitimate matches out of 1.6 million users.

Chat forums like cybersoulmate.com and netrelate.com, myspace.com have also achieved considerable success wherein people chat online routinely and gradually a relationship develops.

To increase the number of responses it is vital to post a clear and recent photograph along with a positive profile. It is observed that the chances of a response increase by 6 times if a photograph of the person is posted. A realistic expectation of partner preference also increases the number of responses.