Hashemian Blog Web Tools, Financial Markets, Technology Thursday, April 24, 2008 Religious Contextual Ads  Sometimes contextual ads can reveal interesting facts about a site and its visitors. For some time I have noticed that Google Adsense has been displaying a certain banner for a site targeting Muslims seeking marriage partners. Personally I don't mind religious ads on my site. It's all about business. I consider myself an agnostic (as in, I can not with certainty prove or disprove the existence of god or the validity of any religion,) but I have a liberal view towards faith. People should be free to choose whatever creed works for them as long as they don't force it on others. I don't know what algorithm Google employs in targeting Adsense ads, but I must assume they strive to maximize click-through rates. It's possible that many of my site's visitors are Muslims (or Moslems, as Persians pronounce it), or perhaps my middle-eastern last name, Hashemian, triggers these banners. My bet is on the latter. To the algorithm, I'm just an unknown visitor from the U.S. who happens to be visiting the site. At any rate, there must be some religious profiling at work here. I haven't seen any Christian or Jewish or Hindu-oriented ads on my site. Certainly I haven't seen anything for matching Agnostics or Atheists. If the site helps two Muslims find each other and become a couple, that's cool with me. But if the marriage produces a male child (or female, for that matter,) I only hope they resist the temptation to have their child genitally mutilated, or in euphemistic term, circumcised. islam,agnosticism,atheism,marriage,dating,circumcision,persia,iran,adsense Labels: adsense, religion, social <Religious Contextual Ads> // posted by rh 0 comments Thursday, March 08, 2007 Marriage Proposals by Email?  Maybe I'm over the hill, or perhaps being married for years has blinded me to newer dimensions of matrimonial romance. An online dating site is one thing, but an online marriage site is a completely different matter, at least to me. So imagine my surprise when I saw this Google Ad (to the right) on this very site tonight. I believe Shaadi is an Indian site. Actually the word in Persian translates to "happiness". Maybe the process of finding a bride is different in India. Perhaps this site is more frequented by parents looking for suitable spouses for their children than potential bachelors and bachelorettes. Maybe this is just a gimmicky marketing line to draw people into a dating site. Whatever the case, the site seems to be a popular one, judging by its Google and Alexa rankings. I just can’t see how one can meet a potential life-long mate online and send a proposal via an email. Well, going by the tag line, not just one proposal, but multiple ones. It's like a statistical dartboard. Throw enough darts at the board and one is bound to hit bull's eye. If I were single, I might've given dating sites a try. I'm sure in some instances people end up finding a partner through those sites. But I would hesitate using a site like this one to find a wife. This site certainly ups the ante, by purporting to take care of the whole process, save the actual vows. On second thought, many marriages are long distance these days, so maybe a site like this can handle all the details, complete with a virtual ceremony. Come to think of it, this could be an appropriate complement to a site like Second Life where a bunch of avatars get together to witness two avatars exchange their vows in a virtual chapel. They could buy a house and furnish it using Linden dollars, have a bunch of avatar kids and grow old together in virtual bliss. Who knows, divorce rates could be much lower in the land of flying sprites than that in the real world. What would the virtual divorce and prenup lawyers do with all their free time? marriage,online dating,divorce,second life,shaadi Labels: marriage, social <Marriage Proposals by Email?> // posted by rh 1 comments

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