Internet dating using Tagged

KYAYALETHU MPOFU
Correspondent | Friday February 26, 2010 00:00

These are the words of Mpho Preston a 32-year-old woman living in Botswana, her life changed when one morning she checked her email and found a 'join me' heading in her inbox, and in it she found an interesting social networking site called Tagged.

Tagged Inc. was co-founded in mid 2004 by entrepreneurs Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith, who wanted to build a 'Teen Yahoo or the next MTV'. Tagged.com is a social networking site headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States founded in 2004. It enables users to build and customise profiles, add widgets and videos to profiles, browse and upload photos, play online social games, give and receive gifts and tags, and meet other members with similar interests in age specific chat rooms.

The tagged phenomenon is steadily rising among young adults in Botswana as the site indicates more than 10,000 people use Tagged in Botswana second only to the Social Networking site Facebook in terms of users.

Mpho Preston first started using tagged in 2009 when her friend sent her an email to join, 'I first found out about Tagged when one of my friends sent me a link to join the site, once I got there I was surprised, then she briefly looked down as if to chuckle, 'I didn't know how popular it was with the guys, they are so forward I was shocked.'

Mpho found that when looking at the site it had a lot of interesting applications that she did not find on other social networking applications such as Facebook and the differences in using tagged as compared to Facebook are distinct, 'You see I use Tagged for different reasons than I would use websites like Facebook and really I use Facebook to keep in touch with my family and friends and I use Tagged to meet some good Batswana men.'

Primarily Tagged.com is used by its members purely for internet dating for people found in the local country. The positive thing about this sort of dating is that it connects people of different mindsets, people who live in the cities and towns can date people who live in the villages.

What usually happens is that a person uses Tagged, by posting an interesting profile of ones self then using the meet me application on the website to virtually meet a new person they have not encountered before. After the user gets a few responses from either girls or guys and the line of communication is steady and intimate they usually agree to meet in person.  Mpho caught on to this after a few weeks of using Tagged, 'I used the meet me application on the Tagged website and when perusing through the different profiles of both men and women I realised how shallow most people are in the depth of information they put out about them selves, and after I met a few guys I eventually gave out my number of which some experiences with these guys were enjoyable while others were not at all.'

Social Networking sites ranging from Face book to Tagged serve a purpose of helping people to meet on the internet but Tagged in particular has isolated it to age related chat rooms and the meet me game.  The problem with this is that tagged has in part fallen from the current constraints of what a traditional social networking site is used for. Tagged.com users in Botswana use it for one purpose and that is to help its members meet many potential romantic partners as possible.

Internet dating patterns amongst the youth of Botswana is steadily taking a turn for the worse because the same patterns are emerging among Batswana who use Tagged for relationships, though in real-life situations people are more honest. Mpho experienced this when using the website, 'What happened is I met him on Tagged  and his profile seemed pretty decent but when I met him he proved otherwise,  when we agreed to meet at his house because I initially thought I knew the guy in real life and I made a brave decision and went to meet him.'

After that she soon found out that she had made a mistake when the man who she had gone to meet was a creepy looking creature, 'So I knocked on his door and what stood before me was a skinny, scary creature with hideously long nails he looked like the vampire in Bram Stoker vampire.' Then she took a deep breath and went into the man's home and soon she was sitting on the couch with this young yet creepy looking man, 'We sat on the couch watching T.V. and he just looked at the T.V. and did not say a single thing at all, quiet as a mouse, needless to say I never called him again even though he still tries to contact me.'  

Other people use the website for the same services to date women outside the pool of people they know, for example a Motswana man dating a woman who lives in Johannesburg South Africa. Though the thought of leaving ones country for the sake of love is romantic the logistics and the risks of it must not be taken lightly. Palalane a 24-year-old living in Gaborone found out about Tagged from his friends and met a girl on Tagged who lives in South Africa, 'There was a chick in South Africa we met through Tagged and currently I'm still seeing this girl, she booked a hotel room in Johannesburg and we spent two days together, I will always have these memories.'

However there is a silver lining to using Tagged in that it helps many people find significant partners and the strength of the relationship can last months on the net without actually having to meet them, and it helps the user find out about what they really want in a partner. Mpho found out this the hard way after using Tagged for a few months, 'The only positive thing about this experience is that I learned what I really want in life, I don't waste my time with people who are not serious in life, so I decided to only talk to people on the website who I think I can have a conversation with,' then she smiled mischievously and continued to speak, 'like the guy I am currently dating who I met on Tagged, funny huh I didn't think I would either but I did, he is a Rastafarian who lives in Maun.'