Kathryn's Blog: Technology, Academia, and Dating
I love to read articles about online dating. Used to be, they were few and far between, but now it’s hard to keep up. I particularly like to see research into the whole phenomenon. But sometimes the pros just muddy the waters, like the following article that just appeared in “Psychology Today.” Read it below, followed by my comment that I posted on the site.
Why Online Dating Is a Poor Way to Find Love
by Key Sun, Ph.D.
Published on July 29, 2010
Some people believe that recent research on online dating/matching sheds a new light on understanding attraction, love, and romantic relationships. I argue that, however, although the internet has helped few find romantic relationships and marriages, the research has overlooked various defects and problems associated with this type of “contact.” I will examine a couple of them.
The research findings can be summarized as followings:
1. Online daters tend to fill in the information gaps with positive qualities in a potential partner; on the other hand, everyone wants to make the self appear as attractive as possible to potential dates by exaggerating the self desirable traits.
2. There are gender differences in both preference and messaging behavior on online dating sites. Women weigh income more than physical characteristics, and men sought physical attractiveness and offered status-related information more than women.
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3. The service users preferred similarity on a variety of (mainly demographic) categories (including child preferences, education, and physical features like height, age, race, religion, political views, and smoking).
It is accurate to say that the research findings showed some behavior and attitudes of the online daters who joined the internet community with different motivations, expectations and backgrounds, but it is inaccurate to assume the behavior and attitudes reflect real interpersonal attractions. This is because the online dating/matching (as provided by the commercial websites) lacks the basic ingredients for developing real love. The most evident problem involves its use of several categories (plus a few photos) for the daters to predict and decide the effectiveness and success of their further interactions with one another. This type of artificial “contact” contradicts the process of meaningful interpersonal interactions (to be explained), which generates love and attraction.
To explain the problem, I need to first elucidate the ingredients for love and the meaningful interactions.
The basic ingredients for love
As demonstrated by studies on interpersonal attraction, creating and maintaining love involves validating communications between the partners on a variety of issues, including understanding and concern for the partner’s personal and emotional needs, developing companionship, physical attractiveness, cultivating and nurturing physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual well beings, respecting, supporting, accepting and encouraging, expressions of appreciation and affection: sexual pleasure and fidelity, commitment, shared activities, as well as the absence of controlling and blaming, among other factors.
To accomplish the above tasks, the partners need to engage in the meaningful interactions (face-to-face interactions, including both verbal and nonverbal communications), which allow one person to give to and receive from the other. (Although online daters may be able to exchange messages after they pass each other’s initial screening on the basis of evaluating the category-based information, the process is the opposite of the interaction-based attraction). The meaningful interactions depend on two factors: (1) the right opportunities (the right time, place, persons, and further communications) and, (2) the right mind (absence of biases about the self and others).
The right opportunities are significant. Although psychological research on attraction has identified several variables, such as disclosure reciprocity (revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others), mutual eye gazing, mutual reward, similarity and physical attractiveness, these variables are worthless unless people who possess the attributes and tendencies have the opportunities to implement them to the targets of attraction.
On the other hand, the right mind is more important factor. Why have some individuals who have encountered good opportunities of meeting their ideal mates lost the chances to develop the desired relationships? The answer is that mostly they have the dysfunctional mind, with the emotional baggage of fear, anxiety or other mental conflicts and past hurts in interpersonal situations. They fear experiencing invalidation from the target of attraction because they use superficial categories to define the self and others as well as to predict the effectiveness of their possible relationships, ignoring the affection messages from the real people who are attracted them. All categories are just the maps or substitutes of social reality, not the reality its. When people use categories to predict an interaction (but not pay attention to the other’s real communications, they will produce two outcomes:
a), avoiding love from right individuals, and,
b) approaching the wrong person(s).
This kind of distorted cognitions can only be rectified through the regular and meaningful interactions, which help individuals find out that they are worthy others’ love and appreciation.
The problems with online dating
It is clear that online dating has at least two problems. First, it is an opposite of face-to -face interaction. Second, it does not help heal the emotional pains of some online daters. Online dating is a category-based, rather than an interaction-based process. In the category-based process, one uses some concepts to predict both possibilities of acceptance and rejection by the others. It is an artificial type because both rejection and acceptance by the daters are not about the rejection and acceptance of real persons, but of the imagined or perceived attributes of their categories.
People never fall in love with categories (even eHarmony’s use of personality traits as the basis of matching does not represent real diverse human experiences and characteristics), because only real interpersonal process can create the feeling of love. Love is created and maintained by the process of meaningful communications (including validating accurate perceptions and invalidating inaccurate perceptions of interpersonal reality). Online dating cannot do so. Additionally, love is highly individualistically based. One loves another person because the Mr. Right or Ms. Right is unique individual in one’s eyes.
I make a distinction between online communications and online dating/matching. New computer technology has greatly expanded people’s potential and freedom to communicate with one another, some of which may generate love and romantic relationships, but online dating/matching, at least in its current format, has restricted the freedom. My reply:
Forest vs. Trees
Submitted by Kathryn Lord on July 30, 2010 - 7:07am.
I’ve been a romance coach since 2002 and a psychotherapist for more than 32 years. Seldom have I read a denser or more confusing article than this one, and I have read thousands.
Yes, some of the criticisms are accurate, like discarding a potential mate simply based on height. But what Internet dating sites have done so well is bring huge numbers of interested singles (most of them singles, anyway) together in the same place.
It was not that long ago when it was difficult to identify even one single and appropriate individual. Because there are so many potential candidates, the chore becomes whittling down the numbers to a manageable pool. Height, location, behaviors (non-smoking, for instance), and interests all provide search parameters that decrease the numbers.
It is more helpful to think of dating sites like the Yellow Pages in the old fashioned paper phone books. You find categories you are interested in and then scan those listed. In the Yellow Pages, some businesses have a simple line ad with their phone number, others have a big, good looking ad that draws more attention—and customers. The Yellow Pages is a directory only. It is up to the business and the customer to do the deal.
This is so weird. Phone bumping? I am continually astounded by what phones can do, and the applications that people conjure up to make it happen.
Bump Goes Cross-Platform With New Android App; Upgrades iPhone Version Too
by Jason Kincaid on Nov 11, 2009
It’s a big night for Bump Technologies, the mobile software startup that recently landed a round of funding led by Sequoia Capital. The company makes mobile apps that let users share their contact information (and other data) simply by tapping their phones together. Up until now the app has been available for the iPhone only, where it’s developed quite a following, and tonight it’s launching on Android as well. The iPhone is getting some love too, as Bump’s 1.2 update was just approved by Apple (you can grab it here).
The updated iPhone app includes a ‘Friend Compare’ feature that looks at the address book and Facebook profiles of you and the person you’re bumping with to see if you have any mutual friends, which can be a good way to break the ice if you’re meeting someone for the first time. The app now also includes deeper Facebook integration, allowing you to send a notification to yourself through Facebook when you bump someone (this seems like it would serve as a good reminder for following up). You can also choose to publish an item to your friends’ News Feeds when you Bump a new contact. Finally there’s the addition of a Bump history, which lets you see at a glance who, where, and when you’ve met all of your contacts (you can use filters to search through the history quickly).
The Android app is still a bit behind the iPhone (it doesn’t have the features mentioned above), but it does have everything Bump 1.1 has, which includes support for both contact and photo swapping. Better yet, Bump is cross-platform, which means that you can bump an Android phone with an iPhone and it should work seamlessly. This is where the real potential of Bump lies — if the service can establish itself on more mobile platforms, it could potentially become the de facto way to swap contacts, photos, and other media between phones with next to no effort required. You can grab the new Android version here (you’ll want to visit the link from your Android phone).
Looks like the next must-have tool for singles is the iPhone or iPad. If you don’t have one, look at how others are using theirs to aid their social life and plan dates.
Forget the Sex Apps - Users Turn To iPhone For Dating, Health
by Mark Walsh
With Apple clearing out all those sex-themed apps from the App Store, it makes you wonder what else people are doing with their iPhones. According to a new study by Greystripe, plotting romance and staying healthy are two of the more popular activities. The mobile ad network found that more than half (51%) of iPhone and iPod touch users turn to the devices to help plan a date, and 39% for health-related inquiries.
When it comes to hitting the town, 43% said map applications like Google Maps were the most helpful when planning a date, with 13% citing review apps like Yelp and 12% using banking apps. Among iPhone and iPod users who are not in an exclusive relationship, 16% turn to social networking apps such as Facebook to hook up. But apps specifically geared to dating aren’t so hot—only 2% use speed dating or online dating apps.
The iPhone is also emerging as a popular health tool. Among people who said they use their phone for health-related purposes, 48% use it to search for outdoor activities, 36% to search for doctors, 35% to look for pharmacies, and 23% to find hospitals.
Looking at health-related apps, Greystripe found fitness programs were the favorites—with 40% downloading them, followed by diet apps, at 28%, and medical apps, 27%. Between the two Apple devices, iPhone owners are 16% more likely to use their phones for health-related inquiries than iPod users. That makes sense since iPhone owners tend to skew older than iPod users, 45% of whom are under the age of 25.
iPhone users are also 17% more likely to be involved in household purchasing decisions than the iPod crowd and to be higher income-earners, according to Greystripe. Its findings were based on survey data from network users in the fourth quarter of 2009. The company serves ads in more than 2,000 applications across the iPhone/iPod and Android, Nokia and Java-based phones.
Sheesh. A big problem for habitual texters is the ready availability of their cell phones to dash off whatever occurs to them. Not good, for the most part. As one of my friends said about Twitter, “I really don’t care about your having a cup of coffee.” See this app below designed to protect people from their dumbness.
TigerText: An iPhone App for Cheating Spouses?
By Belinda Luscombe
Tiger Woods, if you’re reading this, remember that you’ve been through what mothers call a “valuable learning experience” and you’re probably a “better man for it” and so on. Having said that, an iPhone app that launched on Feb. 25 could totally have saved your hide.
Called, coincidentally enough, TigerText, it allows users to set a time limit for a sent text to hang around after it has been read. When that life span has been exceeded, the message will disappear, say the developers, from the recipient’s phone, the sender’s phone and any servers. The message cannot be forwarded anywhere, stored anywhere or sold to any tabloid for an undisclosed sum. (See a brief history of the Tiger Woods scandal.)
It works like this: when, say, a prominent politician sends his mistress an iPhone message via TigerText, the mistress will be prompted to install the app. When she has done so, she can read the message, but she can’t keep it. In fact, the message is never actually sent to her phone; it’s stored on TigerText’s servers. After the politician’s specified time span has elapsed — anywhere from one minute to five days — the message ceases to exist. There’s even a “delete on read” setting, which counts down from 60 after a message is opened and erases its text at zero. (See the top iPhone applications.)
For those who need an even more comprehensive way to cover their tracks, the “delete history” option will wipe away any evidence of a given phone call. No telltale suspicious numbers, no chance of getting caught out by the old “press redial” routine. (Comment on this story.)
While the implications for philanderers — and spies — are obvious, the app was not actually developed for them, says TigerText founder Jeffrey Evans, a former recruiter and headhunter, and not, at least on the basis of one interview, a particularly paranoid guy. The name was in place before the Tiger Woods texting scandal, he claims, and the company decided to stick with it. Evans’ real concern is about privacy. “People text like they talk,” he says. “And some of the things they say, taken out of context, can come back to haunt them.” (See the 18 best Android apps.)
He points out that the European Union ruled in 2006 that phone and Internet providers were required to keep all cell-phone and e-mail data for a certain period of time. “That just seems wrong and an invasion of privacy,” he says. “We have not caught on to the implications of all these conversations being kept for so long.” While he acknowledges that the app might also be a boon to teens who are in the habit of sexting, drunk texting or “running off at the thumb,” he thinks lawyers and their clients and business executives involved in complicated deals will be even more interested.
Obviously there are times when you just shouldn’t hit “send”; at its most basic level, TigerTexting is like paying $2.50 a month for stupidity insurance. But let’s face it: who among us has never needed a do-over?
Well. of course one should not dump their spouse or partner by texting. The ultimate brushoff, really. Email is slightly better, a handwritten note better still. But nothing conveys humanity in a very tough situation like delivering the news in person. See the article below for thoughts on how technology is effecting modern relationships, and the ending of them.
It’s the 21st century way: Wooed, romanced, betrayed and dumped by text
By Annie Brown
WHEN Cheryl Cole dumped Ashley she did it by text and then announced it on Twitter - a truly modern way to say “its ovr”.
No more throwing the wedding band in his face and storming out when a succinct text message will do the trick.
It was appropriate that Cheryl should dump Ashley by text. It was one of his preferred methods of playing away, using SMS to send saucy messages and pictures of him in his pants to potential bits on the side.
Texts, Facebook, cyber dating, sex sites, chat rooms and email are the way many of us are now wooed, romanced, betrayed and ultimately dumped.
The goodbye text or email is the Dear John letter of the 21st century. A recent survey found two-thirds of people would cast off their other half by text while more a third have been frozen out by email.
Cheryl reportedly texted the Chelsea footballer to end the three-and-a-half year marriage with the words: “You’ve lied and lied. You disgust me. I’ll see you around.”
Her statement, released on Twitter was unemotional. It simply said: “Cheryl Cole is separating from her husband Ashley Cole.”
No one would argue that Cheryl didn’t deserve to boot Ashley out of her life by the most ruthless means available.
But relationship expert Hillie Marshall believes it’s a harsh way to end a romance.
She said: “I think it is very cruel. It is very cold and unfeeling.
“People should have the courage to tell someone to their face that it is over, not that I think Cheryl just dumped Ashley by text.
“A lot went on behind the scenes before it got to that stage so he knew it was on the cards.”
It may be less emotional in some ways but it still hurts to be dumped by text or email.
Unlikely as it seems, the phenomenon was first made famous by 1980s singer Phil Collins, who finished his marriage to Jill Tavelman by fax - so last century.
It caused outrage in 1999 for its callousness. Now all the celebs are doing it.
Real Madrid footballer Cristiano Ronaldo told Spanish model Nereida Gallardo that their seven-month relationship was over with a text message.
She said: “I was upset by the way he finished the relationship, which to me seems 100 per cent cowardly.”
John Mayer sent Jennifer Aniston a text to call time on their romance, as did Britney Spears to hubby Kevin Federline.
Sam Ronson did the same to actress Lindsay Lohan, while American singer Kid Rock dumped model Jill Gulseth by text in 2006 after three months together.
Keeping it all virtual, the broken-hearted can even seek solace on the hundreds of websites for text dump victims.
Gone are the days of a good mate to share a bottle of wine and mop up the tears. Now there are chatrooms where strangers can offer up their tales of woe and consolation.
In one chatroom we looked at, a few dozen anonymous people were able to give instant consolation to a woman told her five-year engagement was off.
Text is all part of the same virtual world relationships are now conducted in.
We argue by text and email, we say I love you the same way and we end it all in abbreviations and cyber space.
However, Hillie said relationships are part of a virtual revolution that’s having a negative impact on human interaction.
And she fears the problem is only going to get worse.
By the time today’s youngsters reach puberty, they will have spent 10,000 hours online.
In South Korea, where the web is even more pervasive than here, the government have established computer addiction clinics for youngsters who spend up to 18 hours a day surfing the net.
Hillie said: “Younger people are becoming more and more insular, there is no social interaction, just sitting in front of a screen all day.
“People are getting to know each other by email or text but it isn’t very real. It is not the same as being face-to-face. There is time to think about what you are going to say, the real you isn’t really there.”
More than five million people in Britain are now searching for love online - and many are cheating exactly the same way.
The web, Twitter, chat and SMS are an easy way to strike up a secret relationship behind a partner’s back.
When Vernon Kay wanted to contact Page Three model Rhian Sugden, he asked to follow her on Twitter. Then came the filthy texts.
When he actually met her, he hardly had a word to say.
Online dating agencies for married men and women are now a multi-million pound business - and they are available in their thousands.
Internet sites like Illicit Encounters do exactly what they say on the tin.
The Western Isles and Dumfries and Galloway were two of the most active for love cheats on the web.
In some parts of Britain, one divorce in five is being triggered by people catching their partners cheating online through social networking sites.
Facebook has more than 350 million users worldwide and there are millions more on sites such as Bebo, Friends Reunited and MySpace. All are being cited in divorce cases.
Of course, the trendy way to start an affair is also risky.
Businesses have sprung up to catch cheaters having online affairs and geeks have produced lots of gadgets to spy on a philandering partner’s computer.
Putting everything in writing, as Ashley Cole discovered to his peril, makes infidelity impossible to deny.
One of the great things about Internet dating has been to connect singles to the whole world of potential mates. While in many ways this makes cross-cultural and cross-ethnic pairings more likely and easier to create, the access to so many singles has also contributed to an extreme amount of pickiness. One aspect of the pickiness is racial preferences. Understandably, many people prefer a mate from their own racial background. But we are increasingly seeing cross-racial preferences that seem clearly connected to racial stereotypes. See this article below (bold my addition) for a beginning discussion about the role of race and stereotyping in dating.
Can Online Dating Include Racial Profiling?
By Camille Mendez on Feb. 22, 2010
With the innovation of new technologies, there has been a great emergence of online dating sites. But a strange aspect of these widely accepted, used and advertised sites is the racial factor.
According to studies conducted from September 2004 to May 2005 by Cynthia Feliciano, Associate Professor of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies, and Belinda Robnett, Associate Professor of Sociology, white men preferred Asian or Latino women instead of African-American women while white women did not prefer Asian men.
Feliciano said, “Internet dating offers a unique lens through which to understand the process of selecting a partner and how race plays into the selection. Studies point to increasingly tolerant attitudes about interracial relationships, but intermarriage rates remain relatively low.”
Most preferences are apparent in certain races more than others. While all races claim that they wouldn’t mind dating outside their race, informal factors exist that influence a person’s decision when it comes to dating, marriage, or just hooking up. The common biases include that Asian women are hypersexual, Black women are bossy, Asian men are not masculine enough, Black men are lazy, and that white women are status-oriented. What all races did seem to agree on was their preference to date a white man, a race seen superior to the others, most likely due to social status in the economy.
Recent studies by researchers at UCI’s own Yahoo! Personals dating service further points out racial preference statistics on apimovement.com: “In the UCI study, of women who expressed a racial preference (73 percent) on Yahoo!, less than 10 percent would bother to respond to overtures from men of Asian descent, particularly East Indians, somewhat behind Black and Latino men. White women in particular were particularly exclusive in racial preference. 64 percent of those with a racial preference checked whites only (93 percent excluded Asian men). In other words, nearly one out of two white women wanted to date only whites. About three out of five men expressed a racial preference. Nearly half selected Asian women, compared with 7 percent selecting Black women. Men of all races will avoid black women, and all races had a degree of racial bias in terms of dating.”
Yahoo! Personals cites the UCI case study conducted by Feliciano and Robnett and, in response, discusses some obstacles of interracial dating as well as the methods to overcome them.
1. The Traditionalists: Races who exclusively date the same races for a common cultural foundation. Resolution: Surround yourself with a diverse group of people. This opens your point of view to additional outlooks on life as well as establishing a connection with other races.
2. Stereotypes from Mass Media: The public easily absorbs over-generalized images of different ethnicities and how they interact.
Resolution: Try not to let the media influence stereotypes portrayed and instead focus on your personal opinions.
3. Offensive Family Member: Racial “jokes” add tension that makes you think twice about dating outside your own race.
Resolution: Prepare for confrontations and think of persuasive ways to respond to demand respect in your dating decision.
4. The Gazers: People who blatantly stare at interracial couples.
Resolution: Instead of assuming the attention is a bad thing, bask in it. Their opinions shouldn’t matter to you or your date.
Feliciano and Robnett have released other studies on similar subjects including “Gendered Race Exclusion among White Internet Daters” in 2009 with graduate student Golnaz Komaie.
Oooh, now this is rather creepy. The anonymous feature that makes Chat Roulette so fascinating gets contaminated by Google Maps???
New Site Unmasks Chatroulette Players
By JENNA WORTHAM
I have a confession to make. I’m addicted to Chatroulette, the buzz-generating Web site created by a Russian teenager that pairs anonymous strangers with each other in a video chat room.
For me, Chatroulette offers a welcome break from the daily digital footprints I leave across the Web on sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz, where every comment, tweet and “like” is tied back to my real-world identity. Chatroulette is intended to be comfortably anonymous, and it also has the sheen of nostalgia. It’s reminiscent of my earliest encounters with the Internet – firing off messages about schoolwork and television shows in AOL chat rooms and chattering with my World of Warcraft guildmates about their families, jobs and weekend plans.
But now a service called Chatroulette Map, a mash-up of the site with Google Maps, is peeling back some of the anonymity of the users cruising through the site.
Chatroulette Map,which first bubbled up on blogs like Laughing Squid, grabs screenshots of people using the service and, using their IP address and geolocation tools, plots their location on a global map. (Note: Some images may not be work-safe.)
On one hand, Chatroulette Map offers a riveting snapshot of the people who are trying out the service. But on the other, it strips away some of the voyeuristic appeal of being able to peer into a random stranger’s home and life without revealing much information about yourself.
Of course, playing Chatroulette is not without some risk. My colleague Nick Bilton aptly described it as “speed-dating tens of thousands of perfect strangers — some clothed, some not.” The upside to Chatroulette Map is that some of those users might think twice about getting unclothed, making the service more family friendly and less jarring for its users.
On the other hand, the service raises privacy concerns for people using Chatroulette. A recent update on Chatroulette Map reads: ”We’ve decided, at least for the time being, to hide I.P. and host information as some user-identifiable information was found in some entries.”
I’ve reached out to the creators of Chatroulette Map for comment and will update if they respond.
When I heard about Chat Roulette, I was both intrigue and weirded out. I could see the attraction, but it felt very scary and possibly mesmerizing. I didn’t even dare to try it while I was home alone, and I am pretty brave. So one night when Drew and I had an old friend for dinner, I talked them into joining me for a brief spin of the wheel. We chatted briefly with a man in Turkey, then Germany, then a young dude gave us the finger—I typed in “Nice finger!” but I don’t know if he hung around long enough to see it. Then we got the perennial hazard of anything anonymous and visual: a guy masturbating, nude torso only. Ah well.
Both Drew and our guest wanted something more than serendipity. They want to be able to talk to someone about a specific topic, like science or opera. That could be quite interesting, like a huge Meetup group. I sort of like the chance meetings, though. Even the masturbator.
Serendipity or celebrity: luck of the draw in internet Chat Roulette
RACHEL OLDING
A new web phenomenon pairs videochat partners across the world, writes Rachel Olding.
IN the first 10 minutes on Chat Roulette, we spoke to two Japanese teenagers in Tokyo, a party of young lads asking to do unsavoury things, an elderly American gentleman and a man in a cat suit. Surprisingly, and contrary to some reports, there were only three naked men masturbating.
Such is the luck of the draw on Chat Roulette, a website (http://www.chatroulette.com) created by a 17-year-old Russian, Andrey Ternovskiy, who revealed his identity to the world only two weeks ago.
The latest internet phenomenon pairs the user with a random videochat partner anywhere in the world. Users either talk or click ‘‘next’’ to move on to another person.
The results are sometimes serendipitous, putting you face-to-face with an interesting person, but more often they’re sexual, bizarre, awkward or all of the above.
Just four months after its inception, the site has up to 30,000 users at a time and has titillated the ever-evolving world of social networking.
‘‘It’s not new for people to talk to random strangers but what is new is the technology and the increased capacity for these selective random introductions on a global basis to happen,’’ a communications expert at the University of South Australia, Collete Snowden, said.
Unrestrained by normal boundaries of social etiquette, protected by the computer screen and emboldened by the live and unrecorded format, Chat Roulette users range from curious peeping toms to exhibitionists.
‘‘There isn’t much chatting, it’s mostly just about the shock factor,’’ said Patrick Stevenson, who logged on in a Groucho Marx disguise. His younger brother chatted to a Canadian model for two hours. Others have hit upon famous identities.
‘‘It starts off small,’’ said one user, JJ. ‘‘You have a few minutes while dinner is cooking. You figure, ‘‘Let’s go see what wacky thing I can find on here.’’ An hour later your food is burnt and you’re talking to a group of people about beer … in Switzerland.’‘
In his only interview to date, Ternovskiy told The New York Times he created the project for his friends because they were sick of video-chatting to each other.
‘‘Everyone finds his own way of using the site,’’ he said. ‘‘Some think it’s a game, others think it is a whole unknown world, others think it is a dating service. Some people are using the site in not very nice ways - I am really against that. Others do unbelievable things I could never think of.’‘
Curiosity keeps users coming back, but while opening an unmarked door can be thrilling, it can also be dangerous.
One user, Rafael Vieira, saw a man with a noose around his neck and a message that read: ‘‘It’s too late to save me, I’m at Pennsylvania St. 34.’‘
Honorary associate in the digital culture program at University of Sydney, Mark Pesce, said the site was not yet appropriate for young people.
‘‘When people get a better handle of Chat Roulette, it will become very much like YouTube, which is completely sanitised. Whether Chat Roulette or not sticks around, the idea of it will and I think people will build systems around that to make it cleaner.’‘
There’s nothing like New Year’s for starting fresh, and if you have an old relationship that needs some housecleaning, here’s an article below that will tell you just how to do it.
The Post-Breakup Technology Cleanse
by Melissa Noble
If you’re one of the three people out there who endures a completely mutual, pain-free and friendly as a bouquet of roses break-up, then read no further. The below is not intended for you. Now, if you fall into the category of “everyone else” and your recent split caused a rush of heated double-clicks and jealous scrolls through a flurry of screens large and small, then you really ought to fumigate your technology like you would a roach-infested kitchen.
Here’s how:
1.) Delete every single e-mail ever given or received
As cathartic as it might sound to keep an archive of sweet messages, witty one-liners and even the cruel and brutal (as a remembrance as to why you should never reconcile) just don’t. Instead, search and delete every received and sent message. It might sound time-consuming and dramatic, but you’ll come to realize how much you’ll enjoy having an ex-free inbox.
2.) Cleanse your smart phone
Deleting someone’s number isn’t good enough. Nay. Go in and scrub away every trace like you would shower grime. In one broad stroke, eliminate every missed, outgoing and dialed call, plus every sent and received text and picture. You want no excuse to cave, crumble and call.
3.) Un-friend from Facebook and possibly block
Facebook is the Mecca of peeping Toms and an all-access pass to an ex’s status updates, wall posts from attractive members of the opposite sex, and pictures with said attractive members of the opposite sex. Unless you’re a masochist, it’s just bad, bad, bad news. Absolutely un-friend, and if you want to take it one step further (and why wouldn’t you?) use that nifty “block button.” Blocking eliminates you from coming up on a search and showing up on a mutual friend’s list of friends, so your ex likewise won’t be reminded of you and reach out in a fit of nostalgia.
4.) If you met on a dating site, remove from favorites and block
If you met on an online dating site, definitely remove your ex from your favorites and block him/her from contacting you. This one is a no-brainer.
5.) Un-follow and block on Twitter
The same rational for Facebook goes for Twitter. If you and significant other were tweeters and hung on each others posts, it’s time to unfollow and block. Life is just too short for 140 characters to unleash the millions of angry memories. Just trust us on this.
6.) Remove from IM
In Gmail, it’s possible to suppress a contact from appearing in your Gchat list. You can also remove or block a buddy in AIM, Skype and other such instant messaging systems. When you’re trying to write an e-mail to your mom or cruise a dating site for new love interests, what benefit is there in seeing your ex’s name in your chat list?
Yes, this technology cleanse is extreme. Think about it this way: seeing your ex online/in your phone will only make you think about what he/she is doing, realize you’re no longer privy to that info (at least not right now, maybe friendship lies ahead), and—as any human would—suffer as a result. Why not make technology work for you and remove the catalysts for this negative reminder?
If your ex wants to reconcile, he/she will find you. Or, given your freedom to exist without constant reminders, maybe you’ll see him/her in a new light and decide to reach out. Either way, keeping an ex’s fingerprints all over your technology will only help keep you jailed in breakup pain. We say, cleanse and be free. You’re too fabulous to wallow.
I love it when I see science catching up and studying what is actually going on in the dating world. Here’s proof of what I have been saying and seeing about the use of dating sites by older singles: Underlines are mine.
Online dating more popular
NEW YORK - ANY lingering stigma about finding true love online seems to be fading, particularly among older adults, researchers found.
In a study of 175 newlywed couples scientists at Iowa State University said those who met through online dating agencies, or social networking sites, tended to be older than other couples who met through traditional ways offline.
They were also less likely to be marrying for the first time and had shorter courtships before tying the knot - 18.5 months instead of 42 months.
‘In many cases, there are real structural forces that encourage the support and use of these technologies,’ said Alicia Cast, an associate professor of sociology at the university. ‘And one of them is just structural constraints on people’s time - such as people who have kids, or have full-time jobs, or work long or extensive hours,’ she added in a statement.
But the online spouses were as attractive, intelligent and had the same self-esteem levels of the offline couples.
Prof Cast and her graduate assistant Jamie McCartney studied data on the couples over a three-year period. Twenty five couples in the study had met online. ‘My understanding is that there are very few studies that have been able to simultaneously get access to a source of couples who met through more conventional means, along with those who choose to meet people online,’ said Prof Cast.—REUTERS
Here’s another resource for the time-challenged, thanks to iPhone. Do you have one yet? Can’t say that I am not tempted, but my Blackberry isn’t ever two years old yet. However, as we know, it was already an antique the day I started using it, right? Anyway, this iPhone app seems a little less eerie than outsourcing your love search that I wrote about in the last posting. I can actually see using it some myself, though not to look for love. Is there a stained glass craftsman nearby in this restaurant? How about other Romance Coaches? Wouldn’t that be fun, to know the interests of those around you?
Viewpoint: ‘Serendipity’ takes online dating to the next level
By Sarah Raghubir
Apple’s iPhone can play music, it can play videos and soon, it will be able to play matchmaker too.
“Serendipity,” Apple’s latest work in progress, could put a whole new spin on dating, giving Ottawa singles who have their hands full with a hectic schedule a chance to meet someone special.
The program will require its starry-eyed users to input a few personal details into their phone and be on their way with their regular routine: coffee and a newspaper at a local café, a bus ride down Elgin to work, or stopping in at the bank at the end of the day. “Serendipity,” using GPS technology, will vibrate to alert registered users that a possible love connection is in the area, making date-finding as simple as a thumbnail photo reading “Do you want to meet this person – yes or no?” This new technology makes speed dating and singles websites seem like a thing of the past.
Online dating services like Fastlife.ca suggest that though numbers change daily, they have over 10,000 registered users in the Ottawa-Gatineau area at any given time. So with Internet dating becoming a norm in today’s society, Apple seems to have spotted the market and jumped right into the deep end.
The iPhone’s target demographic has always been an entertainment-oriented crowd, especially compared to Blackberry or the new Nexus One’s business-minded users. If anyone has the potential to pull off an application like this, it’s certainly Apple.
But are Ottawa singles having so much trouble finding dates that they need a real-time software program playing cupid in their love lives? What happened to meeting people through friends, coworkers or family?
Just when we thought society couldn’t possibly be more dependent on their cell phones, it seems that even our relationships may be left up to technology.
Still, Apple might have its work cut out for it trying to get users to sign up for this program. Regardless of questions concerning privacy, costs and safety, dating in general is hard enough without a 24/7 fear that the love of your life, an avid iPhone user of course, could be around the corner at any moment. Dating is hard enough as it is without incorporating the constant mental stress and nerves of a first date (especially a blind one) into daily routine.
But maybe Apple could use this romantic gesture of a phenomenon to influence more than just the lives of hopeful singles.
Forget, for a second, the premise of the application as a dating tool. The idea of digitally connecting people with common interests could serve a useful purpose in a technology-based world of business. Perhaps on a personal level, “Serendipity” pushes the boundaries of unnecessary a little, but the concept of uniting partners, clients or companies with common goals and interests could be a more realistic use of this progressive new tool.
Nonetheless, if Apple is going to go forward with this application, they have some kinks to work out. “Serendipity” may take the work out of finding a date, but it certainly doesn’t ease the dating process itself.
So what’s next? A followup tool fully equipped with personalized date-night tips and pointers?
For all the romantics out there, let’s hope not.
Most of us are easily findable online now. Some of us are so much online that we need to keep track of what is being said about us or someone else who has the same name. If you are dating online, you need to be aware that your date likely is googling your name as soon as they know it. So Google your own regularly to find out what your date may be finding out about you. See this advice below for managing your online reputation.
Protecting Yourself.com
Here are some tips for defending your reputation online:
* Find out what people are saying about you. Search for yourself on search engines weekly and set up Google alerts and Twilert (for Twitter tweets) on your name.
* Sign up for free Web sites that allow you to create a brand for yourself, such as LinkedIn, Ziggs or Naymz.
* Buy the URL for your name from a site such as GoDaddy.com.
* Don’t respond online or in email to anyone who has said something bad about you on the Internet. This will only feed the fire.
* If someone has defamed you, check out the code of conduct regulations for the site where the comments were posted, and report the comments if they are a violation of the site’s abusive language policy. Copy the relevant regulation in your complaint.
* Create a blog and keep it updated. The goal is to make sure this new, accurate content rises to the top of a search of your name.
* If all else fails, hire an online-mangement service such as ReputationDefender to manage your reputation online.
New technology and ways of communicating seem to be cropping up daily. While I have not succumbed to texting, seems like a lot of folks love it. But texting and romance do not always mix well. Here are some guidelines to the whens and wheres of texting when it comes to love.
To Text Or Not To Text - Dating In A Web 2.0 World
Sending a text message can be a fun and flirty way to communicate with members of the opposite sex. However, depending on the nature of your relationship, more often than not, texting can damage your relationship, create hurt feelings, and send your status from “hot” to “permanently deleted” as quickly as it takes to press the send button.
Here are some of my online dating tips as it relates to text messaging someone you are involved with.
1. Running late? Send a text message to let your date know, if you are unable to call instead.
2. In a meeting? Of course you can’t call, so go ahead and quickly send an update of your status if your plans have changed.
3. Flirting by text. If you are in a relationship and have discussed the use of text messaging, let your honey know you are thinking about them and go ahead and send a cute text. “Thinking about U” will always make your partner feel good about your relationship, but only if you have continuity and a regular phone and dating schedule.
4. Reconnecting with an old flame? Forget about it. It screams booty call. If your intentions are sincere, please pick up the telephone.
5. I Love You! The first time you tell your sweetie that you love them should always be in person, without alcohol, and while you are fully clothed. The anticipation of those three special words should never be done initially in a text message.
6. Breaking Up. Please give someone the courtesy of ending a relationship in person, or at least via phone. Only a coward would break up with someone in a text message.
7. The Morning After. If your date ends up with a pile of clothing on the floor, please don’t text the them to say you had a good time. If you truly hope to see them again, pick up the phone and tell them how special the evening was. Better yet, if it’s in your budget, send flowers or a box of chocolate. If you are a woman, don’t text the man to say, “How are you?” It could send a message that you are needy and you may not hear from him again.
Keep in mind that text messaging can end up being a unilateral form of communication. You don’t know for sure if the other party has read your text, if it got lost in cyberspace, or if they deliberately chose to delete it.
Julie Spira is a dating coach and author of the bestselling online dating book, The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online. She helps single create Irresistible Online Dating Profiles. Visit her at CyberDatingExpert.com. Email Julie Spira.
I’m the grand champ of “tell the truth, never lie,” with anything that has to do with finding your true love online. Lying is just plain dumb and short-sighted. You’ll be found out, and then be branded a liar. It is not worth the risk, believe me. And it is becoming more risky all the time. Ways to find out whether your date is lying are becoming more and more available. Don’t let yourself be on the receiving end of some new lie detector service like the one described below.
The PeopleFinders Network Announces Lie Detector Applications for the iPhone
The PeopleFinders Network, the premier provider of online and mobile people search services, today announced the addition of Stud Or Dud and Are They Really Single iPhone applications and Websites to its portfolio of services. The applications arm singles with the only tool they need to find true love: their Apple iPhone.
Stud Or Dud and Are They Really Single provide today’s singles with quick, easy-to-view reports that can help them make important decisions about potential love interests. The reports are based on background information including age, marriage and divorce records, criminal history, business ownership, property ownership, evictions and more. With Stud Or Dud and Are They Really Single, people in the dating scene now have the tools they need to determine if Prince Charming is really Mr. Right.
“Stud Or Dud and Are They Really Single provide a new line of defense for people to protect themselves against those who misrepresent who they are, or who they aren’t,” said Bryce Lane, president and COO of PeopleFinders. “In the time it takes to order a beverage, people can easily run a comprehensive background check on their iPhone using our new apps. It’s a quick and easy way to weed out any white lies or half truths that sometimes pop up in conversation when you first meet someone.”
Stud Or Dud a.k.a. “Stud/Dud”
To conduct a Stud Or Dud search, users simply enter a name, age, date of birth, phone number, email address, city or state. The application quickly performs an extensive search through PeopleFinders’ proprietary database of public records and publicly available information, and formulates a comprehensive profile on the person of interest. Based on criteria such as stable address history, real estate ownership, business records, professional licenses, bankruptcies, criminal records and evictions, the application helps users determine whether the person might be a “stud” or “dud.”
Are They Really Single a.k.a. “Single?”
Are They Really Single, known as “Single?,” helps users confirm that a potential love interest is, in fact, single. To get started, users enter a name, age, date of birth, city or state. The service then searches through information pertaining to marriage, divorce, spousal and other domestic relationships, and creates a list of people who have or had long term relationships with the person. The service then compares the gender, age differences, last names (current and maiden) and other relevant data to find existing relatives or spouses, resulting in a relationship indicator report.
Pricing
Consumers can purchase each application for $0.99. This allows users to order an unlimited number of Stud Or Dud or Are They Really Single reports. Both services are also available online where users can purchase a single report for $9.95 or an annual membership with unlimited reports for $24.95.
Availability
Both Stud Or Dud and Are They Really Single are available online at http://www.studordud.com and http://www.aretheyreallysingle.com. Consumers can also download the applications to their iPhone by searching “Stud/Dud” and “Single?” in the iPhone App Store.
About The PeopleFinders Network
The PeopleFinders Network provides consumers and businesses with a collection of online and mobile people search services. Each service produces comprehensive reports based on the company’s propriety database of public records and publicly available information. The PeopleFinders Network is the only company that can search billions of records spanning the last 40 years, making search results more comprehensive and accurate than competitors. The PeopleFinders Network was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in Sacramento, California. For more information, visit http://www.peoplefinders.com.
Here’s a question I hear all the time: How long should we email before meeting? Internet dating has evolved to the point that many folks have little or no patience with emailing at all and want to move right to the phone or that first meeting at Starbuck’s. I do think that meeting too fast is a lost opportunity to get to know someone before having to deal with the physical reality, but it does seem that the physical reality is what many people want first and foremost. But as a general rule, it is not a good idea to let the email relationship continue on too long. First off, it is too easy to “fill in the blanks,” idealizing what you do not know, and then falling in love with what you have made up. And it is too easy for your email partner to hide behind the computer screen. Do not let an email relationship go on much more than two or three weeks before meeting and getting a grounding in reality.
GadgetMonkey’s Advice Column On Online Dating
DEAR GADGETMONKEY: At what point should I be meeting an Internet connection in person? I have been chatting with this guy online for three months and he still hasn’t committed to actually meeting me in the real world. Signed, Penelope Stuck Online.
DEAR PENELOPE STUCK ONLINE: At some point, you have to quit rooting for the Chicago Cubs to go to the World Series, for a French automobile that doesn’t suck, and yes, at some point, you have to ditch a loser online. If he’s not willing to meet you after three or four emails (much less three or four weeks), then it’s time to have them put up or shut up.
There’s probably a reason that they’re not willing to meet. Either they’re married, have a girlfriend, they’re quite ugly, or they’re working you remotely as part of a scam from Nigeria. I would say that it’s probably the last one, so hopefully they haven’t sent you any attachments that you opened or have asked you to wire them money by Western Union because they’re “stuck in Great Britain without their passport.” If you send me $200 and your social security number, I will be more than happy to send you more information on these types of scams on the Internet.
In the “What will they think of next?” category is avatar dating and RedLightCenter.com. Yeow. I just hopped over and the intro video about curled my hair (straight as a stick since I was born). This stuff is FFO. Literally. See the article below for one real life relationship that grew out of one that started with their avatars. I dunno. What do you think?
After they clicked, romance was for real
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
A recent study by four academics, including professors from Harvard Business School and Duke University, suggests that online dating sites regularly leave users disappointed because they present potential matches as a rundown of characteristics—age, race, religion, income—that in no way embody the full measure of a person.
Vitamins and laundry detergent, they assert, are quantifiable things that can be purchased with reliable satisfaction through the Internet. Romantic partners, however, must be experienced to be properly evaluated, like a restaurant or a perfume.
But the authors don’t predict the demise of online dating. They just think singles might be better served looking for love with a little help from their avatars.
That would put Jill Stewman and Algie Bhoomz ahead of the curve.
Stewman and Bhoomz first “met” late last fall on RedLightCenter.com, a virtual-reality site designed to mimic Amsterdam’s freewheeling red-light district.
Stewman, 36, was living in Portland, Ore., and, after hearing about the site from friends, logged on to just see what it was. Hours later, she’d built an avatar and begun to explore, nearly missing a flight to Baltimore.
“To me it was really amazing,” recalls the marketing professional. “Just being able to walk around—you’re this little person and everyone’s talking. Being able to walk into these rooms and clubs with music and people dancing.”
Soon she was visiting the site every day. So was Bhoomz, a 36-year-old customer service representative from Montclair, N.J. Both had virtual flings and flirtations with other avatars before beginning an online courtship of their own in January.
“We started talking and realized we had a lot in common,” Stewman says. They would meet in the online world every night to send their avatars out dancing, chatting, playing games and engaging in virtual intimacies.
The two also began talking on the phone and via webcam for long hours. Because profiles of the people behind the avatars exist on the site, they had seen photos of each other and knew the basics regarding age, occupation and location.
On March 16 their avatars were married in an online ceremony witnessed by 60 RedLightCenter.com friends. An additional 20 came to the reception, on a virtual yacht.
“We had the whole place sobbing,” Bhoomz says.
“Yeah, we wrote our own vows,” Stewman adds. “And they were pretty mushy.”
Two weeks later, when Stewman’s grandmother in Minnesota died, Bhoomz flew out to meet her there.
“It didn’t really give me a chance to get really nervous and freak out,” Stewman says. “I just went to the airport and got him.”
“It was just like it was on the phone or on the game,” he says. “We had spent so much time together between the game, Skype, the phone and all that, that we pretty much knew everything about each other.”
Stewman says the person she met in real life is “exactly the same person” she met online. On May 15 they finished a cross-country drive to move Stewman to New Jersey, where the two now live together.
Match.com and eHarmony aren’t likely to turn themselves into cyber singles-worlds anytime soon, but Stewman’s experience does support the academics’ claim.
“I think it was easier than going to a dating site and looking at someone’s profile and then you e-mail each other back and forth,” she says. “The interaction is more there.”
Bhoomz doesn’t visit RedLightCenter.com much anymore, but Stewman still logs on to talk to friends. These days her virtual life and her real one are both, she reports, “pretty wonderful.”
A bugaboo since the dawn of Internet dating has been how easy it is for people to stretch, fudge, or bend the truth—let’s be blunt: Lie. What folks have a hard time understanding is that whatever you put in your online dating profile will eventually be checked out in reality, on that first coffee date and beyond. Now, not only is it left to the wits of the individual to figure out if their date is lying or not. Resources are popping up all over the Net that allow you to check out the veracity of anybody. Google was the first biggie. Now it is routine to Google a date. Then background checks. And now, even your smartphone can do the job. See the article below for “The future is now.”
Is your date a ‘stud or dud?’ Ask your phone
By Doug Gross, CNN
If that dreamy blind date seems too good to be true, or the guy at the bar with a martini and a pencil-thin moustache looks a little sketchy, the truth about them—or at least some of it—could be found on your phone.
Designers at a pair of companies say their new applications for smartphones can tell you in real time whether someone is married or divorced, has a criminal record, has filed for bankruptcy or has any number of potential red flags in their past.
Using Google to search for information on a prospective romantic partner is standard practice for many single people in the digital age. But these new apps, combined with the growth of smartphones and wireless networks, now allow for quick background checks on the go, potentially before a date is even over.
The lighthearted iPhone apps Stud or Dud? and Are They Really Single?—from online information broker PeopleFinders—have far-reaching potential for convenient snooping, and not just on potential dates. Their makers say that in today’s society it’s increasingly important to check out people’s backstories.
“There are more and more strangers in people’s lives,” said Bryce Lane, president of the PeopleFinders Network. “There’s this digital awakening where people are in online communities—they’re meeting people they don’t have information on.
“We think that’s a problem. Yes, there are a lot of opportunities to meet great new people, but a lot of people are misrepresenting who they are.”
Meanwhile, another data company, Intelius, is offering a similar app called DateCheck for the Android and BlackBerry, with other platforms in the works.
Marketed with the slogan, “Look up before you hook up,” the application has such features as a Sleaze Detector, which checks for criminal offenses, and $$$, which uses property ownership records to gauge someone’s financial assets.
DateCheck offers some less-serious information, too. Its Interests feature trolls for information on educational background, social networking activities and professional history while Compatibility compares the subject’s horoscope and astrological sign with the user’s.
With Stud or Dud? the user punches in as much information as they have on their subject. Results can range from past addresses, real estate ownership and business and professional licenses to bankruptcies, evictions, criminal records and what the company calls “possible relationships.”
Are They Really Single? scans marriage and divorce records.
Accurate searches also require a date of birth, which may be tricky to extract tactfully from someone on a first or second date.
Lane said all information comes from public records that are available to anyone. But PeopleFinders, which has been collecting data for more than 20 years from sources all over the United States, pulls it all together into one database.
“We’re hoping they’re fun apps and they’re helping you learn about the people that you come into contact with,” Lane said. “They’re easy to use and we’re pretty hopeful that they’re going to be popular.”
Both PeopleFinders apps will only return results on people 18 or older.
Advocates of online privacy say they see some problems.
Paul Stephens, a director at consumer group Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, said the main danger lies in thinking you’ve dug up dirt on someone when you’ve actually found someone else.
“If you only have limited information about the individual, it’s going to be culling from various sources that may or may not [find] the person you’re trying to investigate,” said Stephens. “You need to take the information with a grain of salt.”
While the iPhone apps are aimed at dating, the information is bound to be used in other ways, he said.
“In the case of a person not dating somebody, it’s not that big a deal,” said Stephens. “But we’ve had cases where somebody might not get a job because of an inaccuracy [from online information brokers], so it does become a big deal.”
He said his group, based in San Diego, California, would like to see more organizations regulated by the same federal laws that monitor fair and accurate credit reporting.
Lane, whose PeopleFinders Web site offers detailed background checks on people for a fee, said he’s providing a public service by making legally available information more accessible.
“We feel very strongly that it’s educational, it’s informative, it’s actually helping the public,” he said. “It’s what you don’t know about people that could potentially hurt you.”
He said the applications clearly show when results include multiple people and tell users that the more detail they provide, the more likely they will get an exact match.
Lane said anyone who asks can be removed from the company’s database, but he suggested that most of those who do have something to hide.
“Criminals ... of course they don’t want this information out there,” he said.
In a column on technology Web site Gizmodo, editor Rosa Golijan described the PeopleFinders apps as fun and joked that it was depressing to find out how many of her ex-boyfriends were “duds.”
She also noted at least one apparent glitch, when Are They Really Single? told her that a former high school sweetheart might be married to his grandmother. (In fairness, the app did say it was unlikely.)
Golijan dismissed privacy concerns, saying most of the info on the apps could be found “from a few clever Google searches.”
“I don’t think there’s reason to panic about privacy due to this app,” she said. “The same information and searches have been available for a long time.”
Just as new technology is coming at us at lightening speed these days, so too are the changes that the new ways of communicating spawn. Seems impossible that I have been online and doing email for only a little over 15 years. What did we do without it? Frankly, I can’t be bothered by texting and can’t even figure out how to get it on my fancy (but probably already outdated) Blackberry. I think I may have disabled the function by mistake.
Here’s an article about the uses and misuses of texting, Facebook, Twitter and the like by folks trying to find love. Basically, it seems to boil down to moderation in everything, including moderation. What do you think? What has been your experience with technology aided communication in your searches for love?
Technology: The New Compatibility Test
by Julie D. Andrews
Compatibility was already complicated enough. She’s an only-child; he’s from a family of 12. He’s a meticulous planner; she’s fly-by-her-seat spontaneous. But technology is fast adding an entirely new layer of compatibility for would-be couples. And it can suss out the potential for a relationship in a matter of dates, reports Monica Hesse for The Washington Post.
Indeed, mismatched technology preferences can end a romance before it begins. The hardest hit generation? Thirtysomethings, Kelli Lawless, who helms Dating and Mating in America, told the Post.
Apparently, the forty-ish are most likely to be in sync technologically (with their preference for phone communication). Twentysomethings are most likely to experiment with tech gadgets until they figure out what love lines work best. But men and women in their thirties tend to take “independent, a-la-carte approaches to their technology,” according to Lawless.
A few of the most common tech mismatches:
1. To Text or To Call? After a first date, she’s waiting for that first follow-up call. Instead, she gets a text—the first techno letdown that can signify more to come. She wonders if this is the type of man who, instead of returning a call by dialing, texts back. Maybe he’s dumped a girl by e-mail before, she imagines. Two months of dating go by. A total of four phone conversations take place. Phone calls become a big, scary thing. Like that, it’s over.
2. What’s Your Frequency? In the first month of dating, his daily texting gradually increases until he’s sending five, six, up to seven short messages a day. “Hey, beautiful!”, “It’s raining out”, “What do you feel like eating tonight?” She’s feeling a bit smothered by the influx of sweet-nothing texts that have nada to do with specific plans. There’s no exchange of address, no time-to-be-there included. She eventually gets vexed by the frequent interruption and stops responding. He feels unwanted. Thus, game over.
3. Tech Savvy or Stalkeresque? She’s following him…on Twitter. He thought he wanted a partner who could be with him every step of the way, even as he navigates his moves for the day. But suddenly, he feels a whole lot less free. If I Tweet where I’m going, he wonders, is she going to show up there unannounced? Do I want this or not, he questions, adding in his mind that he is still technically not married and thus somewhat single. But how would she take it if he asked her not to show up at a Twitter-identified location unless explicitly invited? He mentions it. She gets the hint. Finito.
4. But I’m Not On Facebook. Suave, under-the-fray pick-up lines [4] these days sound as carefree as, “I’ll Facebook you,” or, “Are you on Twitter [8]?” But what happens when the party being hit on is not on these sites? The tech wires cross instantly. The only option remaining is to ask publicly for a number and plug it into a phone. This opens the door to a bigger possibility of rejection. Some will accept this risk; others will move right along to the next Facebook-friendly face.
Texting. I don’t get texting any more that I get emoticons. Except that you can do it from a phone and you don’t have to be in front of a computer. But whatever, here are some guidelines for dating and texting from Geek Sugar.
Tech Dating 101: Decoding Post-Date Texts and IMs
by GeekSugar
The men of Swingers championed a rule that fundamentally changed how fellas of the ‘90s plotted post-date communication. They said a man should wait three days after a date to call a woman so she would want them more. Preposterous, right? Today the possibilities for contact are so varied — email, work email, IM, gChat, Facebook, Twitter, text and so on — that it can be harder to gauge interest or commitment based on the time frame and way someone reaches out. In this installment of my Tech Dating 101 series I will address how technology and texting have changed the moments and days after a good first date. To see what I think (spoiler alert: it’s complicated), read more.
* The same day text: Most women I have talked to say they like it when a guy follows up a first date with a short text. It doesn’t have to be sexy, or even offer the promise of a second date, but texting is a simple, quick and sweet way to say thanks, without an immediate call. If you had a great time and want him to know, text him yourself. It is one of the most relaxed forms of communication (no login required!) and will keep both of you from getting too wordy.
* The three-day text: Consensus among friends is that the day three text could be a cop-out (as in, he isn’t ready to commit to a phone call and he’s using the antiquated Swingers mentality to make you want him more), but it does count as contact and an effort.
* The instant reach out: If a guy initiates communication via instant messaging in any form (iChat, Yahoo Messenger, gChat, Facebook chat etc.) less than two hours after a date he can come off as eager to get the party started. Do with that what you will. I do; however, think it is polite for him to acknowledge he sees you online if you pop online right after your date or in the days following. It’s ridiculous to pretend you don’t see one another online. That being said, instant messages are not a phone call. If he really wants to talk to you he should still call you up, or at the very least send an email to plan your next get-together.
One of the best things for me—an inveterate do-it-yourselfer—about Internet dating is just that: the ability to take charge of your romantic life and do it yourself. But a frequent complaint that I hear from singles is the lack of time that doing it yourself takes. Just as “if a need exists, someone will fill the gap,” here’s a way to outsource your dating. While this does make me somewhat uncomfortable to think of able bodied folks hiring out mate finding, this does seem to be a worthwhile service for people who are challenged in some way that would make Internet dating difficult if not impossible, like severe dyslexics who write and read poorly, but might otherwise be good catches. What do you think?
‘Done For You’ Dating Service Proves Romance Can Be Outsourced
A Canadian company has introduced a brazen service that lets singles delegate their online dating to a representative who exchanges messages under their name. Done For You Dating combines the extensive selection of singles on the Internet with the convenience of a personal matchmaker.
Toronto, Canada (PRWEB) July 1, 2009— A Canadian company has introduced a new service that lets singles delegate their online dating to a representative who manages their profile and exchanges messages under their name.
Done For You Dating combines the extensive selection of singles on the Internet with the convenience of a personal matchmaker. Unlike traditional matchmaking services, which match clients within an internal database, Done For You Dating scouts millions of single women and men on the Internet for their clients’ perfect partner.
“Online dating is like hunting for buried treasure,” says Luke Chao, founder of Done For You Dating. “The treasure is there, but it takes an incredible amount of digging through dirt before you find it. And most busy professionals don’t have that much time or emotional energy to spare.”
Dating representatives at the company are selected to be socially savvy, skilled writers who are knowledgeable about popular culture. They receive specific training in online dating and personal branding.
“We promote the client’s best qualities,” says Sue Bedford, a representative at Done For You Dating. “It’s already a borderline immoral service, so we go the extra mile to represent clients fairly, accurately and factually.”
Company founder Luke Chao is the managing director of The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis, where he first started helping men overcome problems interacting with women. He is the ghostwriter of several books, including Sydnee Steele’s Seducing Your Woman.
Online dating is definitely maturing from what it was when I was first on Match.com in 1998. Here’s some observations about where things are now from the tech world:
Dating 2.0: Looking for Love in All the Online Places
by Ashley Laurel Wilson
February 17, 2009, 02:01 PM — CIO.com —
Sometimes looking for love takes a back seat these days-especially with demanding schedules that include working long hours and furthering educational goals. While technology is a very large factor in causing people stay so busy, it’s also helping people connect more, even in the romantic sense.
Not every person who dates online is as horribly geeky as Napoleon Dynamite’s brother Kip—there are some cool geeks out there just waiting for you to meet them. In fact, more than forty million Americans have tried online dating at one time or another and some have walked away very happy.
“My wife refuses to let me try it. Go figure.” Bryan C Webb, technical marketing professional from Ontario Canada
Though different people swear by certain online dating websites, the number one free online dating website in the U.S., U.K. and Canada is Plentyoffish.com, run by CEO Markus Frind. Since its 2003 launch, the site has grown by word of mouth to more than 13 million page views each day.
According to Frind, there’s always a jump in site traffic between the day after Christmas through the Wednesday after Valentine’s Day, as well as just before Thanksgiving. Singles tend to join the site around family-related holidays-anytime they’re reminded of being single, Frind says.
The mastermind behind this website, Frind claims anyone in his position has to be a romantic after reading so many happy stories from users who’ve met someone great on his site. “It’s part of the reward of doing this site,” he says. (Frind, however, met his own girlfriend offline.)
Denver-based Jon Freeman, however, chose to use an online dating website to as a platform to increase his chances of finding a suitable person.
“I was a two time ‘loser’ having used less than intelligent methods to find the ‘right person’ and figured I needed a better process-the Web gave me just that ability (I know, so romantic),” Freeman says. “I’d tried other sites and even online personals, but in the end I went for the site with the most people on it to increase my odds on finding the perfect one.”
While using Matchmaker.com, Freeman realized that the “percent match function” wasn’t helping him so he made some minor changes-his favorite color turned from orange into blue and his pet lizard became a dog-which actually helped him meet his future wife. Within a year of their initial online connection, Freeman got married. “We finish each others sentences and rarely argue or fight. We are very much in love with each other,” Freeman says, still satisfied with his online dating experience.
Brad Thomas, from Kentucky, met his wife through instant messaging and agrees that there isn’t any special recipe for meeting people online. “I’ve never used a dating site or agency. So I think online “dating” encompasses a whole lot more than just eHarmony, virtual worlds etc. You don’t need a virtual meeting “place” as such, just a mode of communication.”
Thomas—who met his sweetheart in the U.S., invited her to the U.K. with him, proposed in Paris and now lives with her in the U.S.-isn’t afraid to go the extra mile for love.
But even for those that never meet their love interest in person, some, like Jared Ubriaco from Florida, find online relationships rewarding. In 2007, Ubriaco was an online gaming fanatic, and after regularly playing World of Warcraft (WOW) for a few months, he realized he didn’t know anything about the other online gamers, especially one female player in particular.
“Sometimes we had this mind connect,” Ubriaco says about his relationship with the female player. After the two players began talking during game play, they realized they hit it off and kept in touch for more than a year while Ubriaco worked in the States and she taught English overseas.
Normal people write letters and talk on the phone, but we kept in touch through voice chat rooms and e-mails, Ubriaco says, adding that they also sent small presents to each other for holidays and birthdays. The two were, in a sense, dating.
However, after she returned home to the States, they lost touch for a few months before he found her on World of Warcraft again. Though they’ve still never met in person, they keep in touch through e-mail and he’s been invited to visit her in Washington.
While technology is streamlining how we meet others, sustaining a long term relationship with someone only online is tough. At some point, signing offline and meeting up for a cup of coffee is a much needed next step.
Just remember, to get to the coffee phase, make sure your Internet connection is strong enough so you don’t accidentally sign off in the middle of a getting-to-know you conversation or your potential love muffin might get miffed.
If you have ever wondered what is behind the scenes technologically of online dating sites, here’s a lengthy article from Computer World that goes into the knitty gritty. I underline the parts I thought most interesting.
Online dating: The technology behind the attraction
Ever wonder what powers eHarmony, Plenty of Fish, True.com and PerfectMatch.com? We peek under the covers at online dating sites.
Robert L. Mitchell
February 13, 2009 (Computerworld) When Joe wanted to find love, he turned to science.
Rather than hang out in bars or hope that random dates worked out, the 34-year-old aerospace engineer signed up for eHarmony.com, an online dating service that uses detailed profiles, proprietary matching algorithms and a tightly controlled communications process to help people find their perfect soul mate.
Over a three-month period last fall, Joe found 500 people who appeared to fit his criteria. He initiated contact with 100 of them, corresponded with 50 and dated three before finding the right match. He’s now happily in a relationship, and although he was skeptical at first, he says high tech played a big role in his success.
Internet dating sites are the love machines of the Web, and they’re big business. eHarmony and similar sites drew 22.1 million unique visitors during just one month, December 2008, according to comScore Media Metrix.
And unlike many social networking sites, they actually make money—the top sites bring in hundreds of millions per year, mostly in subscription fees.
These online dating services run on a curious mix of technology, science (some say pseudoscience), alchemy and marketing. Under the covers, they combine large databases with business intelligence, psychological profiling, matching algorithms and a variety of communications technologies (is your online avatar ready for a little virtual dating?) to match up lonely singles—and to convert one-time visitors into paying monthly subscribers.
All is not chocolates and roses online, however. Security is one big challenge for e-dating services, which can attract pedophiles, sexual predators, scammers, spammers and plain old liars—most notably, people who say they’re single when in fact they’re married. And sticky questions have yet to be answered over what rights such sites have to your personal information—how they use it to market other services to you, if and how they share it with advertisers, and how long they store it after you’ve moved on.
Finally, there’s the biggest question of all—do these tech-driven, algorithm-heavy sites work any better to help people find true love than the local bar, church group or chance encounter in the street?
Armed with these questions, a passably decent head shot, and a very patient wife, I set out to discover what’s under the covers in the world of online dating.
The business model behind online dating
A well-oiled Internet dating machine can generate well in excess of $200 million a year in a market that’s expected to top $1.049 billion in 2009—only gaming and digital music sites generate higher revenues—and is expected to grow at a rate of 10% annually, according to Forrester Research.
Most popular online dating sites in 2008 Site Market share
1. Singlesnet 16.41%
2. Plentyoffish.com 13.76%
3. Yahoo Personals 5.21%
4. Match.com 4.79%
5. True.com 3.51%
6. Adam4Adam 3.00%
7. eHarmony 2.99%
8. Date Hookup 2.89%
9. ManHunt.net 2.33%
10. BlackPeopleMeet.com 2.06%
Source: Hitwise. Market share numbers are based on percentage of all visits to U.S. sites in the online dating category, averaged over a 12-month period.
Most online dating sites generate the bulk of that revenue from subscriptions, although free, advertising-supported sites are starting to gain some ground.
In fact, Plenty of Fish, a free service, was the second-most-visited online dating site last year, behind Singlesnet, according to Hitwise, a Web site traffic monitoring service.
Most dating sites allow users to sign up and create a profile for free.
Before communicating with matches, however, visitors must sign on as a paying member.
To succeed, a site needs to do the following:
* Offer excellent response times. People want instant gratification, so the sites try to give users at least some matches as soon as they’ve created an account and completed their profiles.
* Convert at least 10% of visitors who register into paying customers—preferably more.
* Deliver an acceptable range of probable matches and offer a variety of ways to pursue those prospects, including high-tech developments from video chat to photo-realistic avatars.
* Keep the quality of the prospect pool high by weeding out inactive and misbehaving users and by blocking the 10% or more of new accounts every day that are estimated to be scammers, con artists, criminals, sexual predators and other undesirables that can overwhelm a site and drive away paying customers.
The battle isn’t over once a service has its inventory in place and has paying customers. The business needs to keep priming the pump to bring on new subscribers because the typical customer—one of the 10% who actually pay—stays on less than three months.
But one man’s folly is another man’s fortune: A large percentage of customers fall off the love wagon after finding their “one true love.” They keep coming back over and over again, producing a revenue stream that has a very long tail, says Herb Vest, CEO and founder of the dating site True.com.
Step 1: A perfect match, served up fast
Online dating sites take two basic approaches to provide users with matches.
Online personals services such as Yahoo Personals (which costs $29.99 for one month, $59.97 for three months or $95.94 for six months), are glorified search engines—big, searchable databases. Users fill out a short profile with check-box items and short descriptions about themselves.
They then narrow down the search by filtering prospects using criteria such as gender, ZIP code, race, religion, marital status and whether or not a person is a smoker. Users filter through the results themselves, deciding on their own which prospects to pursue.
The “scientific” matching services, such as eHarmony (which costs $59.95 for one month, $119.85 for three or $179.70 for six), PerfectMatch and Chemistry.com, attempt to identify the most compatible matches for the user by asking anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred questions. The services then assemble a personality profile and use that against an algorithm that ranks users within a set of predefined categories; from there, the system produces a list of appropriate matches.
Some sites take a hybrid approach. PerfectMatch.com, for example, issues recommended picks but also lets customers browse the “inventory” for themselves.
The technology that powers these dating sites ranges from incredibly simple to incredibly complicated. Unsurprisingly, eHarmony has one of the most sophisticated data centers. Joseph Essas, vice president of technology, says the company stores 4 terabytes of data on some 20 million registered users, each of whom has filled out a 400-question psychological profile (eHarmony’s founder is a clinical psychologist).
The company uses proprietary algorithms to score that data against 29 “dimensions of compatibility”—such as values, personality styles, attitudes and interests—and match up customers with the best possible prospects for a long-term relationship.
A giant Oracle 10G database spits out a few preliminary candidates immediately after a user signs up, to prime the pump, but the real matching work happens later, after eHarmony’s system scores and matches up answers to hundreds of questions from thousands of users. The process requires just under 1 billion calculations that are processed in a giant batch operation each day. These MapReduce operations execute in parallel on hundreds of computers and are orchestrated using software written to the open-source Hadoop software platform.
Once matches are sent to users, the users’ actions and outcomes are fed back into the model for the next day’s calculations. For example, if a customer clicked on many matches that were at the outset of his or her geographical range—say, 25 miles away—the system would assume distance wasn’t a deal-breaker and next offer more matches that were just a bit farther away.
“Our biggest challenge is the amount of data that we have to constantly score, move, apply and serve to people, and that is fluid,” Essas says. To that end, the architecture is designed to scale quickly to meet growth and demand peaks around major holidays. The highest demand comes just before Valentine’s Day. “Our demand doubles, if not quadruples,” Essas says.
Online dating site visitors
Snapshot: November 2008
* Total number of visitors to online dating sites: 22,274,000
* Male users: 52.4%
* Female users: 47.6%
Source: comScore Media Metrix
PerfectMatch.com, which claims to have 5 million members, uses a matching algorithm, but its psychological test is shorter than that required by eHarmony. “We wanted to take the basic concept of the Myers-Briggs indicator and apply that to relationships,” says Founder and CEO Duane Dahl. The core architecture of the system consists of five front-end Web servers and a large, back-end SQL Server database, plus a variety of servers that handle messaging, marketing and other functions. The matching process is immediate.
True.com also offers “scientific compatibility” matching based on how users answer about 200 questions. The site uses about 200 servers, including a 64-bit, 32-processor Unisys server running Microsoft SQL Server. The matching algorithm’s calculations are performed on an array of 64-bit servers that hold a compressed version of the entire multi-terabyte database in memory to facilitate fast matching. “The system can shoot back [matches] with little or no delay,” says CEO Vest.
On the other end of the spectrum, Plentyoffish.com’s philosophy is to keep it simple. The service focuses on searching and filters: It uses a short questionnaire, and while it does offer some matching capabilities if users want them, CEO Markus Frind says he doesn’t promote them—and he is disdainful of the complex matching algorithms offered by some competitors.
The business operates on just three Web servers, five messaging servers and five database servers (the entire database is just 200GB in size), yet it serves up 200 billion pages a month to some 12 million users. “My entire cost is only a few hundred thousand dollars a year,” says Frind. The biggest piece isn’t the technology, he says, but the bandwidth required to keep traffic to the site flowing smoothly.
Step 2: From “just looking” to “paying customer”
When it comes to converting users to paid subscribers, the battle is all uphill in an industry in which more than 90% of users never pay a dime. That’s where having extensive demographic and psychological data on customers comes in handy.
In fact, online dating sites are so adept at using personal data, potential customers can be forgiven for wondering just who is being “matched up”—two strangers bent on true love, or lonely customers and the matchmaking site that needs them. (See Online dating: Your profile’s long, scary shelf life for details on the ways dating sites mine the data they collect.)
Yahoo Personals uses all of the information at its disposal to tailor its sales pitch to the user. “We try to take advantage of what we know about the user and where they are in their level of engagement with the product,” says Ellen Perelman, general manager.
Once users sign up for a free account and fill out a short questionnaire, Yahoo uses targeted messaging to push them through a “conversion tunnel.” The messages that users see to persuade them to sign on as paying customers vary depending on the user’s profile and his or her behavior on the site.
Similarly, PerfectMatch.com puts users on different “message tracks” based on their profile and what they’re doing on the site at any given time. “Everything you do or don’t do triggers a response,” says Dahl. “We take the information and do a comparative analysis on the fly to serve up the best possible offers to you based on your profile.”
Users who aren’t “taking full advantage of the site”—who haven’t posted a photo, for example, or have failed to review all their matches—are targeted by the system. “You will get an e-mail message custom to your situation, encouraging you to perform the action needed,” Dahl says.
eHarmony, which has the most comprehensive user profiles, may be the most sophisticated in the ways in which it leverages that information. It pulls information—more than a terabyte of data each day—from its Oracle database into high-performance Netezza data warehouse appliances that slice and dice users into behavioral and demographic “buckets.”
“We use [Netezza] to do a lot of offline calculations to try to understand patterns and business intelligence about user behavior,” explains Essas. Some of that feeds back into the matching process, but it also helps eHarmony persuade users to subscribe to its service. “Because we know more about them, we can target them much better,” says Essas. Messaging is tailored to each user’s behavior on the site—and their personality type.
Step 3: Make a high-quality connection
Once users have paid for a subscription, online dating sites offer different tech-driven options for contacting and getting to know prospective dates, everything from chat rooms to instant messaging, e-mail and even video chat.
eHarmony controls the process by moving users through a series of proscribed communication steps on its Web site. The idea is to make users of the site comfortable with each other, but sometimes the technology just gets in the way, or backfires, users say.
Mary, a 45-year-old executive for a large IT consultancy, says the process of moving from eHarmony’s prewritten questions and responses to online chat to e-mail to telephone can be tedious when what you really want is to meet someone. “You continuously go through this job interview.” Then, after all that, people will suddenly cut off communications. “What happened?” she asks.
Video chat is perhaps the most controversial communication method offered, if only because video sessions often take a “sexual tilt,” especially with men, and that drives away the women, says Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch, a newsletter that covers online dating and social networking sites. Mary explains the situation more plainly: “You go look at their webcam, and they’re naked.”
Some sites try to police that. True.com, which refers to video chat as “virtual dating,” has staffers who constantly watch banks of security monitors that alternate between the 300 to 700 video chat sessions occurring at any one time. Participants who are breaking the rules may be kicked offline for an hour—or permanently—or staff may “whisper” a message to them to knock off the deviant behavior. Flashing your breasts, showing a weapon or showing your kids will get you a whisper, while showing “below the belt” body parts or verbal abuse will get you kicked off for an hour. “Porn site girls,” underage users and scammers get the boot.
Perhaps the most innovative communication method is virtual dates in a 3-D world. One company, OmniDate, offers an avatar-based virtual dating system that acts as a kind of front end to existing online dating sites and is developing a new version for rollout later this spring that will use photo-realistic avatars. (See Online dating: Avatars tackle the first date for you for a glimpse of just how foxy one reporter can look online.)
So far, few sites have adopted the technology. Frind at Plenty of Fish decided to pass. “At the end of the day, it creates a false sense of reality for people. The point is to meet someone as quickly as possible,” he says.
Step 4: Weeding out cheats, scammers and married guys
Mary, who says she has used most of the major services out there, worries about stalkers and fraudsters when visiting online dating sites—and for good reason.
Stories of negative user experiences associated with online dating sites range from the woman duped into sending $4,500 in emergency funds to a man she thought was stranded in Nigeria, to pedophiles who scan the online dating sites looking for lonely women with kids to the New York woman who was the victim of a romance scam that cost her $100,000. The Internet Crime Complaint Center’s 2007 Internet Crime Report found Internet fraud had risen and that online dating fraud was one of the most commonly reported complaints.
The top 5 types of abuse on online dating sites
1. Identity mining/phishing and/or 1-1 credit card fraud - 61%
2. Spam - 14%
3. Profile misrepresentation - 7.6%
4. General misconduct - 5.9%
5. Solicitation - 2.9%
Source: Iovation compilation of incidents from online dating sites using its security services
Keeping out the riffraff is a big headache for Plenty of Fish. “Ten percent of sign-ups a day are people trying to scam someone—or rude, obnoxious people, or spammers,” Frind says, adding that he removes about 2,000 suspicious users from the system daily. The issue is such a large problem that Frind has spent more time writing programs to deal with undesirables than he did creating all of the other elements of the service.
Online dating sites use a variety of approaches to detect suspicious accounts. “These are not the sharpest guys out there. They use the same techniques over and over,” says PerfectMatch.com’s Dahl. He looks for scammers who set up an account and blast e-mail messages to thousands of people, as well as for certain keywords and phrases that might indicate trouble.
eHarmony has recruited outside help to combat the problem. In addition to in-house tools, Essas says, the company has contracted with Iovation Inc., which offers ReputationManager, a service that gathers information on individuals’ illicit activity from online dating and other sites and makes it available to subscribers. (See Blocking the bad guys for more on how Iovation’s service works.)
True.com takes a broad-brush approach to security by blocking users with IP addresses associated with specific countries, such as Nigeria. Such steps immediately filter out about 10% of applicants, says CEO and founder Vest. eHarmony flags certain IP addresses, but Essas says it doesn’t do wholesale blocking because many of its clients travel.
True.com is the only major online dating site to run criminal background checks on everyone who subscribes to its service—a fact that it trumpets in its marketing messages. Vest says True blocked 80,000 felons from subscribing last year—about 5% of total requests. “Our view is to do more than anyone else is doing and make it so hard on the scammers that it’s easier for them to go elsewhere,” he says.
Other sites have been hesitant to embrace background checks. “Scammers use stolen credit cards all the time, so what good is a background check [on a stolen identity]? It’s more of a [marketing] gimmick than anything,” says Plenty of Fish’s Frind.
Dahl doesn’t think background checks are reliable. “There are hundreds of law enforcement databases that aren’t communicating with each other,” he says, adding that PerfectMatch does offer its users the option to buy background checks using a third-party service.
Users like Mary and “Michelle,” a 45-year-old scientist who asked that her real name not be used, liked the idea of background checks. But a much bigger problem in their eyes was meeting “single” men on dating sites who turned out to be married. “There’s supposedly a screening process. That’s why you pay the extra money,” Michelle says.
Vest understands the problem but says technology can’t help. “We tried to screen for married people and it got to be almost impossible,” he says. True.com dropped the practice last June.
Do online dating sites work?
While they may be helpful as an introduction service, the jury is out on how effective they are at creating better long-term matches.
eHarmony and other online dating sites have their own studies and success stories about the services, but no independent research has been completed that demonstrates the effectiveness of online dating services.
Online dating site trends
* 10% - Increase in traffic to the top 10 online dating sites in 2008 over 2007
* 8% - Increase in time spent on the top 10 online dating sites in 2008 over 2007
* 22 minutes, 27 seconds - Average time spent per visit to the top 10 online dating sites in 2008
Source: Hitwise
Do the matching algorithms produce better matches that lead to long-term relationships? Dan Ariely doesn’t think so. “The sites are claiming a lot, but show no evidence of doing anything useful in terms of matches,” says Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at MIT who is researching ways in which online dating sites can do a better job.
Ariely hasn’t examined how well those proprietary matching algorithms work, since eHarmony and other sites won’t release the details. But he suspects that they’re not very effective. “My unsupported guess is that their algorithms are placebos,” he says.
His suggestions focus on providing more meaningful information—more along the lines of what people typically exchange when they meet, such as the books they like to read and who their friends are. He also advocates virtual games as a way for people to get to know one another better.
Joe, the aerospace engineer who’s now happily in a relationship, thinks people get out of online dating services what they put into them. While he was reluctant to consider online dating at first—he says he was “bullied into” using eHarmony by friends and family—he says the service worked well. “Most of the matches—maybe 80%—were pretty close to what I was interested in.”
The key, he says, is being honest when filing out the profiles. “Honesty really is what makes the filtering work,” he says. To that end, he not only tried to be honest with himself, but recruited two friends to review his answers. He says the service pushed him to consider people just outside the boundaries he had set for criteria such as age and distance. “I’m not sure we would be dating if I hadn’t been matched up with her,” he says of his new girlfriend, who was located outside of his initial distance limit.
Others have had less luck. Jake, a 56-year-old writer and editor, has used many of the free services online. He is still single, and his expectations aren’t high. “I don’t expect miracles from these sites, but they do increase the number of interactions I have, and that’s all I’m looking for.”
Michelle has all but given up. Online personals helped her meet people who were at least looking themselves for someone, but the quality of the matches—and the number of married men on the sites—left her turned off on the experience.
Ariely sees that situation as a tragedy. “This is a market that needs a lot of help—people are single and want to find a match—but the sites are not really helping solve this problem. They just provide a list of other people, somewhat like a catalog,” he says.
While Joe met a girlfriend on eHarmony who is “pretty much everything I could hope for in a woman,” he’s still hedging his bets. “It has only been a few months,” he says. “I’m interested to see if it will last.”
If it doesn’t, he’ll be back in the game—and the dating sites will be waiting for him. “The relationship doesn’t end once they cancel the subscription,” says Perelman at Yahoo Personals. “A high percentage of our users resubscribe.”
Hey Shana, why didn’t you call me? I’d love to talk to you about my very favorite topic!
Control alt meet
Dec. 29—Welcome to New Year’s Eve—the official No. 1 Date Night of the entire year. Let us hope that all you singles out there are happily matched up and ready to ring in a new year with that special someone ...
Or perhaps not.
Perhaps you are among the 10 million American Internet users who say you are currently single and looking for a romantic partner, as reported by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. And maybe, just maybe, you are among the 7.5 million who have actually gone to an online dating site, looking for a partner.
Come on, don’t be shy. There’s nothing wrong with this, says Shana Kopaczewski, an assistant professor of communications at Southern Connecticut State University, who has spent the last few years studying the online dating habits of single Americans.
The verdict: More people than ever are meeting dates this way, and yet the stigma still remains.
“Hardly anybody wants to admit that it’s something they’re doing—not until it works, at least,” says Kopaczewski, who first got interested in the topic of online dating the same way a lot of people did: She saw the commercials on television of all the happy couples, smiling adoringly into each other’s eyes, or dancing the jitterbug while a fatherly voice said that finding a partner this way is an OK thing to do. “When I saw all the ads, I thought, is this reality?” says Kopaczewski, whose specialty is studying the way people communicate. “Is everybody a happy couple? I had some friends at the time who were trying out online dating, and I was definitely hearing different stories from them. So I decided to research it and find out what the truth is, and then—well, it turned into my doctoral dissertation.”
Kopaczewski has studied three popular online dating sites: eHarmony, match.com, and Yahoo Personals, by reading comments that their users posted on a site called edatereview.com, which allows people to tell their stories of what happened to them.
There were many more negative comments than positive, she reports, but, she says, that is to be expected. “Many are from people who are ticked off at the process, not the happy and satisfied customers who are off having a good time,” she says. “I did see people who had met their soul mates and think it’s wonderful, but many more who are unhappy about their experience as a whole. It’s a place where people can go to vent.”
Yet, in analyzing the results, Kopaczewski found it interesting that people complain about the population who seek out dates online, and yet don’t seem to notice the irony that they are doing this, too.
“It’s almost like they want their cake and to eat it, too,” she says. “The thinking is they can go online and find someone, and if it works, then it’s awesome. But if it doesn’t, then they say to themselves, ‘I’m a great catch, but I was thrust into this world with crazy, abnormal people in this crazy, abnormal way of dating.’”
The trouble, she says, is that we’re a society in transition. “There’s still a stigma to being single, and everybody is expected to get married, have children and settle down—and yet the dating infrastructure has changed. There aren’t any more matchmakers, and if you don’t meet someone at school or at work or get fixed up by friends—then how are you supposed to meet people? People go online because that’s how we communicate with each other these days. And yet there’s still a shame about admitting that the ‘traditional’ way didn’t work for you and that you’re looking online.”
But Kopaczewski says this perception is changing over time, as more people know someone who’s met their life partner this way. “If you think about dating from a historical perspective, there have been a lot of changes. And every time there’s something new, it’s strange and takes time for the new to become the norm.
“When you tell your family you’re looking for dates online, believe me, they’re most likely going to be upset. They’re going to tell you that it’s not safe. The perception of online dating is not helped by stories about online predators. But all in all, the truth is you have to use caution just the same as you would in meeting someone face to face.”
And there are actual advantages to online dating, Kopaczewski found. “When you meet someone on one of the online dating sites, you know from the start that this is a person who is seeking a romantic relationship. That’s not necessarily true when you meet someone in a bar. And chances are a computer has found that the two of you have something in common. Some groundwork has been done.”
Online dating can also work because you have the chance of meeting so many more people, whereas if you only have the pool of people from school or work to count on, you may go a long time without meeting anyone new. And with the online dating sites, you have a chance to talk online and weed out any people you’re not interested in before actually meeting them. You can actually find out a lot about them before you ever get to the face-to-face part.
But of course, no questionnaire can predict the most important thing of all: Is there a chemistry between you?
“They haven’t found a computer program that can predict that certain intangible something,” Kopaczewski says. “And maybe that’s where the problem is. The sites are attempting to objectify something that is entirely subjective and can’t be explained.”
Some people complain that they feel that going online and paying a dating service is a blatant attempt to purchase love and companionship, and that it’s taking a consumerist approach to love.
Still, Kopaczewski, who recently presented a paper at a professional conference on communications, says that online dating is here to stay, and that it will grow in popularity as more and more people do it. “It just fits society’s needs so well that I can’t imagine it won’t be more widespread. Soon it will just be seen as one of the ways people use to meet their partners.”
Her conclusion is that online dating is just another way of meeting the need to meet people, with no more magical power than any of the traditional ways.
“It’s simply an opportunity to broaden your horizons, get in touch with more people than you might meet in your ordinary life,” she says. “It’s got its ups and downs, its bad and good experiences. Be careful and be safe. And ... well, you just never know.”
Hmmm. Now there might be real consequences to lying on your Internet dating profile. See this posting below by Chris Soghian about an interesting ruling that could effect Internet daters:
MySpace ruling could lead to jail for lying online daters
Posted by Chris Soghoian
The MySpace suicide case concluded last week, with the jury finding Lori Drew guilty of three misdemeanor counts of gaining unauthorized access to the popular social-networking site.
While most of the press attention has been focused on the specifics of the case, the more important issue is the potential impact this could have on the Internet in general.
Web site terms of service, which end users universally ignore, suddenly have teeth: violating them is a federal hacking offense, punishable with jail time. The days of being able to freely lie on the Web could be coming to an end. This could mean serious trouble for people who lie about their age, weight, or marital status in their online dating profiles.
Bad cases and bad laws
The specifics of the Lori Drew case are messy and emotional. The important fact is that there is no federal cyberbullying statute, so the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles turned to a novel interpretation of existing computer hacking laws to try to punish the woman. The general idea is that in creating terms of service, a Web site owner specifies the rules of admission to the site. If someone violates any of those contractual terms, the “access” to the Web site is done without authorization, and is thus hacking.
Unfortunately for Internet users everywhere, a jury bought the theory last week and found Lori Drew guilty of three misdemeanor violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, punishable with up to one year in a federal prison and a $100,000 fine for each of the three counts.
Horrible terms of service
Until the Drew case is overturned, terms of service would appear to have the power of federal hacking laws to back them up, at least in cases where an ambitious federal prosecutor is interested in making a name for himself.
Back in March, I wrote about Google’s insane terms of service—which forbid the use of the site’s search engine, free e-mail service, or any of its other offerings by people under the age of 18. The site’s terms state:
“You may not use…Google’s products, software, services and Web sites…and may not accept the Terms if…you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google.
Under the Department of Justice’s current interpretation of hacking laws, every high schooler who uses Google to do homework is in theory a criminal.
However, it gets even better than that. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted in its amicus brief to the court, the dating site Match.com prohibits married persons from using the Web site to cheat on their spouses:
“You must be at least eighteen (18) years of age and single or separated from your spouse to register as a member of Match.com or use the Website.”
Dating site eHarmony takes this even further, forbidding its users from lying in their online profiles:
“You will not provide inaccurate, misleading or false information to eHarmony or to any other user. If information provided to eHarmony or another user subsequently becomes inaccurate, misleading or false, you will promptly notify eHarmony of such change.
All those people who have lied about their age or weight in an eHarmony profile would now appear to be computer hackers. Oh, and if you gain 30 pounds after posting your profile and don’t promptly update your profile—yep, jail for you.
Here’s a rather long article from the British press about Internet dating taken to its illogical extreme—oh so casual sex, and the deadening of sex in general. Not to mention the encouragement to people in committed relationships to cheat. What do you think?
The web of desire or just deceit?
The internet has made it easier than ever to find a partner for casual sex, but having it all on a plate could mean that we end up losing our appetites. By David Smith
* David Smith
* The Observer,
* Sunday October 26 2008
Attractive college professor wants good student for fun hookup Fri.’ ‘Very Hot American in town looking for someone to show him the ropes.’ ‘Monday night - in Edinburgh on business.’ ‘Looking for some fun.’ ‘Inexperienced but curious?’. ‘Sophisticated pleasure for busty lady.’ ‘Ladylike Asian submissive wanted.’ ‘One night stand.’
Just another typical week in Edinburgh, as glimpsed in the ‘casual encounters’ section of the popular website Craigslist. Residents, tourists, businessmen and women passing through - anyone who fancies a bit of sex with ‘NSA’ (no-strings-attached) can announce it to the world and watch the offers roll in. On Craigslist, they don’t have to pay anything or even go through the motions of registering a username and password. This is internet sex: as free and easy as it comes.
The homepage of Craigslist, one of the world’s most popular listings sites, offers flats and houses, holiday rentals, bikes, boats, books for sale, and jobs in just about every sector imaginable. Alongside this classic classifieds fare are personals, some romantic, some for one night only. Just a few mouse clicks away, it seems, the logical conclusion of a consumer age where time is short and convenience expected. Or as the title of Mark Ravenhill’s play had it: Shopping and Fucking.
‘It’s like ordering a pizza,’ says Emily Dubberley, author of Brief Encounters: The Women’s Guide to Casual Sex, and founder of the charity campaign Burlesque Against Breast Cancer.
‘In the past if someone suddenly felt horny they probably wouldn’t bother going to a pub, or even joining a dating site to say, “Do you fancy it?” because that would be a bit weird, so they’d just sort themselves out. Now it’s very available and convenient. But there’s something a bit more sordid about it when you don’t even have to make the remotest connection such as, “Do you fancy a pint?” At least then there would be a flirtation and catching of the eye. Now you can just go online and order genitalia. It’s taken sex to its absolute base level.’
Entire histories have been written about how the growth of the internet had nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with pornography. But just as the net has transformed from a passive one-way street into an interactive ‘Web 2.0’ where users are creators, so the days of computers being little more than digital porn magazines are gone.
The web has become a place through which to contact, meet and have sex with real people, to fulfil the wildest fantasy in the flesh. Cybersex is no longer about merely looking; it is about doing. What no one can yet understand is how this will change the social etiquettes of the past, or how fundamentally it is shifting the dynamics of sex and relationships.
Some sites are quite explicit about their offerings. AdultFriendFinder claims to be the world’s biggest adult social network and sex personals site. Its homepage proclaims, ‘Meet real sex partners tonight!’ beside a picture of a young woman taking off her bra and pouting at the camera. Below there are a series of photos and videos of women with names like ‘sexygirl’, ‘freakychick’, ‘angelfirelady’ and ‘sugarbabe’. The site claims to have more than 2.5 million members registered in the UK, and that tens of thousands are logged in at this very moment. Just log in and you could meet your match.
Other sites quite evidently do as they promise, such as Hookuparea.com and BeNaughty.com. And when a marriage is under strain, spouses no longer have to go very far out of their way to cheat. Illicit Encounters asks on its homepage: ‘Married but Feeling neglected? In need of some excitement? A discreet and confidential extra-marital dating service for women and men… Whatever your reason, we can help. You may be locked in a loveless marriage, starved of attention and affection, partner away or too tired to pay you the attention you deserve, nonexistent love life? Or just looking for some excitement in your life? But you don’t want to end your marriage either. Here you can meet people just like you, in absolute confidence.’
Peter Lines, 43, from West Yorkshire, met his current partner through the site when he decided that his marriage was loveless and beyond salvation. He did not want to ruin his children’s lives so continues to live with his wife in an entirely platonic relationship. He says his current partner was in an identical predicament. ‘Morally, we haven’t got a leg to stand on, but what’s a person to do?’ he asks.
Lines has since become a co-owner of Illicit Encounters, which launched in October 2003 and now has 245,000 members, mostly in the UK. Sixty-five per cent of them are male, and 35 per cent female, a smaller disparity than most dating sites. Women are on average 36½ years old, men 38½. Applicants are required to answer up to 50 questions and fill in a profile. Of around 800 applications received every day, on average 550 are rejected for reasons such as age (people under 25 are discouraged) or personality (self-evident sex maniacs are not welcome).
Lines says that the site is made up of very ordinary people like you and me. ‘It’s the man and woman in the street, the person in the Sainsbury’s queue, the person in the office you would never expect. There are no raging tarts or slobbering lotharios. The membership are primarily people trapped in a marriage and they can’t get out for all sorts of reasons. We did a survey and 71 per cent of people said that if they weren’t having an affair they’d be getting a divorce.’
The internet has made it possible in ways that would have been unthinkable 15 years ago. Lines adds: ‘People in this situation are far more active online than they would be in real life. They wouldn’t go to a bar or another public place to chat to people for many reasons, some of them obvious.’
The site provides a guide on how to conduct an illicit affair, with advice tips including using a separate SIM card in their mobile phone, paying with cash instead of credit cards and never giving their surname, exact location or workplace. But he denies the site is providing an immoral cheats’ charter. ‘We say to everyone that we don’t encourage them to have an affair. We make it very clear on every page that you’ve got to think hard about this; it’s not a substitute for working on your marriage; only do it if your marriage cannot be saved and there’s no way back.’
Not for the first time, homosexuals have been at the cutting edge of sexual and social trends. Gaydar, the networking site for gay men - tagline ‘What you want, when you want it’ - has arguably done more than any other site to make casual sex an integral part of the web. Founded in 1999 by Gary Frisch and his partner Henry Badenhorst in a tiny office in south-west London, it soon became the online equivalent of the gay bar, a safe place to meet, talk and, of course, ‘get laid’. Gaydar is now one of the biggest dating sites on the web with millions of members around the world. The ‘A’ countries alone with registered users are Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Austria and Azerbaijan.
Gaydar is sex shopping writ large, with every specific taste catered for. A user’s profile has a basic checklist: height, body type, ethnic origins, out (of the closet, that is), dick size, body hair, orientation (gay or bisexual), role (active, passive or versatile), safer sex (yes or no), smoke and drink. Anyone who fails to
...#8592; post a photograph is less likely to be successful in finding an assignation. Those who do can turn up in a new city anywhere in the world, advertise their availability and be having sex an hour later.
This is perhaps the most spectacular illustration of how the internet has changed everyday behaviour. Gays bars and clubs are said to have suffered a downturn because men are sitting at computers instead; an article in the Economist magazine attributed a slump at Manchester’s Canal Street gay quarter directly to Gaydar. Cottaging in toilets or bushes, in places such as Hampstead Heath, has reportedly declined or even vanished because sex is so readily available via broadband. The author and Gaydar user Mark Simpson once observed: ‘If Joe Orton had his time again his diaries would have been just printouts of thousands of Gaydar profiles and alarming digicam photos.’
The process even formed the subject of a one-man show, Sex Addict, which caused controversy in 2004 when author Tim Fountain invited Edinburgh Festival audiences to watch him trawl Gaydar each night to arrange a sexual encounter, then report back the following day. Fountain has since admitted that the site can become addictive, a confusion of ends and means. ‘I know so many gay men who will literally have Gaydar ticking away all the time, wherever they are, in the corner of the room while they are watching TV,’ Fountain, the author of a new book about the sex lives of the British, Rude Britannia, told the Guardian last year.
‘That’s the worst thing, it’s a terrible time waster. You can very quickly think, “Oh, I’ll just log on and check my messages,” and four hours later you find yourself weeing on someone’s pillow in Willesden Green wondering, “What the hell am I doing here?” Sometimes you think, “Christ, am I still online? I was meant to being doing something else.” The whole web dating thing, gay or straight - on the one hand, it does link people up, but they are not socialising, they are not meeting in bars. They are just sitting talking down a line, ordering what they want, when they want it. That can be a very narrow thing.’
For all its popularity, Gaydar can be regarded as a niche. Not so Craigslist or its rival, Gumtree, which published research last year showing that one in 10 British adults between the ages of 25 and 40 had gone online for casual sex. Nor, indeed, the darlings of the web, social networking sites such as Facebook. This runs the gamut, bringing together business contacts, old school and university friends and former lovers. At one end of the spectrum, a site which invites members to ‘poke’ each other and features countless photos of drunken revelry inevitably features casual sex too.
Earlier this year it emerged that Laura Michaels, 23, had set up a group called ‘I Need Sex’ on the Facebook site and, she claimed, slept with 50 men. Within 10 minutes the group had 35 members and soon attracted 100 men, 50 of whom Michaels slept with after vetting their pictures. One of her Facebook conquests was called Simon from Swindon, whom she met for drinks in a bar in her hometown of Bristol before going back to his hotel room for sex. Facebook later removed the page.
Michaels told the Sun about her experiences: ‘We always met somewhere like a bar first and I would get dressed up and treat it like a date. I know that some people will really look down on me for it. They might even say that I may as well have been a prostitute because then I would at least have been paid for sleeping with so many different blokes, but I don’t see it like that at all. I was satisfying my own desires by setting up the group. I feel like a free, liberated woman and I think it’s fantastic that the internet gave me a chance to do this. I know that it was risky behaviour but that was part of the thrill. I always made sure to tell a friend I trusted where I was going.’
Facebook, MySpace and Bebo’s tens of millions of members can communicate with each other via Zoosk, which claims to be the biggest social dating network in the world. It offers the chance to ‘choose a network and start mingling with thousands of cute singles in your area’. It could well appeal to people who would never dream of visiting an all-out casual sex site but don’t see the harm of a simple mouse click which adds the Zoosk application to their profile page, the first step on a slippery slope. The web abounds with questions such as ‘What would you do if you found your husband added the “zoosk” application on Facebook?’ and ‘Does Zoosk randomly flirt with people’?
The online sex revolution is posing new questions for experts who have not seen anything quite like this before. Phillip Hodson, a psychotherapist and broadcaster, says: ‘I do believe the internet is the world’s largest sex aid, largely functioning to augment, magnify and super-speed the processes of dating. Therefore it does represent a “step difference”, a difference of kind and not just one of degree over traditional mating behaviour. You could never flirt with so many people in your entire life in, say, the Fifties as you can today in one un-enchanted evening. The web - soon to be the instantaneous grid - allows people of high libido (and flexible morals) to find each other as never before.’
But, according to Hodson, the web might be making sex too easy, so we end up having less rather than more. ‘All new media have pros and cons, pluses and minuses,’ she says. ‘Undoubtedly adultery is easier to organise by email but there is a new risk of detection given the electronic trail and the dangers of interception or misdirection - for example “Hello Lover!” ending up in your boss’s inbox.
‘I think that the internet, by providing pornography and promiscuity on a plate, does tend to lower the nation’s overall libido. In order to feel sexy, we need a few more challenges than unlimitedporninanyposition.org or Hookersin30minutestoyourdoor.co.uk. Men in particular seem to me to be in danger of becoming “sex lazy” as well as more fickle.’
Indeed the paradox of the throwaway, instant gratification subculture could be that, like a drug, gratification becomes less and less satisfying. No one can share the sentiment expressed in Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest: ‘This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last!’ It is not only romance that is dead but also the theatre of seduction, the hint of stocking replaced by a brazen sexuality that is about as erotic as a prostitute’s calling card in a phone box. Cinema and restaurant dates are replaced by profiles and pokes.
The era when you married the boy or girl next door, or your childhood sweetheart, in the same village church as your parents, has long been on the wane. But when love is cheap, the internet generation may be less inclined to get married at all.
Dr Aric Sigman, a psychologist and biologist, says: ‘I would be concerned that what we are seeing is unrealistic. Yes, you can have sex, but you are now having more people than ever living alone and never getting married. Even as the technology advances, men and women are less engaged than ever before. There is something about chemistry and nuance that is not conveyed by this IT.
‘This is doing something odd to the human condition that isn’t clear yet. In luring people away from strong personal relationships, it could be that people are having less sex, not more. I’m not convinced that it’s making us any happier.’
How to identify cheating spouses
1 They touch their nose often. Research suggests that internal nose tissues swell with blood when one lies. Beware of this when they communicate with you.
2 They avoid looking directly at you. Lying takes concentration and makes them suddenly divert their line of sight.
3 They stare at you too much. They do this to make sure you believe them.
4 They lean forward and get close. Closeness is usually a sign of trust. But sometimes it can be a sign of deceit. They try to exaggerate how close you are by leaning forward when they lie.
5 They pull their earlobe. Some police forces are trained to watch for this very mistake when interrogating criminals.
6 They give you too much information. Their stories are too complex, structured, polished or complete.
7 They tend to give you multiple ‘reasons’. If they were honest, they would have the confidence to give just one reason.
8 They stumble in speech, with mistakes in the story to try and cover it up.
9 They use ‘um’ and ‘ah’ more than usual, where they have to think of lies quickly.
10 They are hesitant at the start of a sentence. They have to come up with lies fast and they hesitate.
Mistakes many cheaters make
1 They forget about a ‘love note’ left in their pocket.
2 They come home smelling of a lover’s scent.
3 They are too protective of their handbag or wallet.
4 They come home wearing different clothes from when they left.
5 They choose too many different excuses too often.
6 They forget about itemised mobile phone bills.
7 They spend too much money on their affair and less on bills at home.
8 They come home smelling of smoke, but they don’t smoke.
9 They use a friend as an excuse but don’t tell the friend.
10 They forget about the caller ID and redial button.
This sounds SO ridiculous to me: Getting matched based on your DNA? Come on,now, folks. What does your DNA have to do with love and attraction and long-term relationships? Don’t get sucked into this one.
From the Washington Post:
Ok, We Have Our First DNA-Based Dating Service: GenePartner
Tuesday, July 22, 2008; 1:48 AM
It was only a matter of time before someone launched a dating site that looks for potential matches based on DNA compatibility. That time is apparently today with the launch of GenePartner (ok, it’s not the first, but it’s the cheapest).
The Switzerland-based company says they can use a $199 DNA test (compare to $1,000 for 23andMe) to help you find your perfect match, statistically speaking. They’ve analyzed “hundreds of couples” and have determined the genetic patterns found in successful relationships. Based on their algorithm and your DNA, they’ll determine the probability for a satisfying and long-lasting relationship between two people (color me skeptical).
What about romance? Chemistry? That certain je ne sais quoi when you meet someone and get a tingling sensation in your stomach? Forget it. The future of dating is DNA tests and buccal swabs, so get used to it:
A brush for collecting your DNA sample from your saliva ? called a buccal swab kit ? will be sent to your address. Following the simple instructions included with the kit you will gently collect the DNA from the inside of your cheek. Use the addressed envelope supplied for returning the brushes.
GenePartner is looking to partner with dating sites and have those services encourage users to see if they’re a DNA match.
Will they be able to avoid tough emerging U.S. laws around genetic testing? Well, they’re in Switzerland. My guess is they’re not going to be too worried about California and other state laws prohibiting their service.
From the Roanoke Times:
What your DNA can (and can’t) tell you about you
Mehmet and Mike are happily married. No, not to each other. To two wonderful ladies (one each, of course). But if they weren’t and they lived, say, near Boston, a peculiar dating service might arouse their curiosity.
For $1,995.95, a company called ScientificMatch.-com claims that if you crack open its special kit, rub a cotton swab on the insides of your cheeks and ship the swab to its lab, that the company will use the DNA it collects to find your soul mate.
The company examines the genes that relate to your immune system—technically, the genes in your major histocompatibility complex—to match you with another member of the dating service who has a very different MHC makeup.
Studies suggest that people are more likely to feel that romantic lightning-in-a-bottle called “chemistry” when they have genetically dissimilar immune systems. (One theory suggests that blending diverse genes gives children stronger immune systems, so it’s an evolutionary advantage.)
This matchmaking venture is just one of dozens of consumer-based genetic testing services that have popped up in recent years. Many others promise to look into your DNA and tell you whether you’re susceptible to certain medical disorders. For about $1,000 and up (not covered by health insurance), services such as 23andMe, Navigenics, Genelex, deCODE Genetics and others will scan your DNA for gene markers linked to heart disease, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, certain cancers and more. Other tests claim to identify nutritional deficiencies and then provide diet advice.
Beyond these pricey services, many over-the-counter DNA test kits are now sold in drugstores for as little as $30. Send in your swab and, for an additional $200 and up, they’ll test your DNA for markers of lupus, sickle cell anemia, depression, glaucoma, celiac disease, cystic fibrosis, high blood iron ... the list goes on.
Are they legitimate? In the case of romantic bliss, we have seen the studies linking diverse MHC with sexual attraction in animals and humans.
But we also know that these limited studies—like nearly all research involving genetic testing—probably reveal only a tiny part of a complex process that nobody truly understands yet. So we’d take any advice from ScientificMatch.com (or any other personal DNA-mapping or -matching service) with a grain of salt the size of a Volkswagen.
Gene testing is an amazing tool. Mapping the human genome has yielded powerful new weapons against cancers of the breast, ovaries, colon, prostate and others.
In fact, we have colleagues who refer people for testing for the BRCA 1 and 2 breast-cancer genes every week. For adopted children, gene testing may be the only way to acquire valuable medical information. These tests are conducted by certified laboratories and interpreted by physicians who can help patients decipher and use the findings.
Also, while research has identified genes that contribute to about 1,400 diseases or disorders, so far most of these provide only preliminary clues. And with certain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, genetic mutations don’t always mean you’ll get a disease. So you really need a counselor help you interpret the results.
The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate the quality of the counseling you get after using one of these consumer DNA tests. These kits could give you helpful information, or leave you feeling falsely safe or needlessly scared. Before trying one, start with these steps:
n Thoroughly discuss your family medical history with your doctor, going back to your grandparents. This can yield vital information. Counselors should ask for this history; if they don’t, you need a different laboratory and counselor.
n If you decide to go ahead, be sure that the company keeps your test results confidential. A recent federal law prohibits job or health insurance discrimination based on genetic tests, but we’re still in uncharted legal territory.
n Review the test results with your doctor or a certified genetic counselor (ask your doc for a referral), not just a rep from the testing company, especially before buying pricey supplements or additional services.
Comment on posting on OnlinePersonalsWatch:
When you take a healthy objective and critical look at these claims of “chemistry” related to DNA matching, one quickly realizes that there’s nothing substantive there to back them up. In fact, some companies have no grasp of the very research they tout to justify their methods.
However, my team has volunteered pro bono to conduct a real-world test of at least one company’s claims. The double-blind experiment would then be submitted for academic publication. It’s disappointing, but not that surprising, that this particular company desperately avoided this offer.
Interested reporters are encouraged to contact me for full details.
As an industry insider and respected compatibility researcher, my professional opinion is that consumers should stay away from DNA dating (and save money on these costly services) until real-world validation studies on their services prove they actually predict relationship quality.
Thanks,
James Houran, Ph.D.
OnlineDatingMagazine.com
Barry Schwartz in “the Paradox of Choice” wrote about the phenomenon the following article describes, the dilemma of having too many choices. Dating sites, the big ones particularly, can overwhelm you with numbers of possible mates. Developing good search techniques is key to keeping overwhelm at bay. What I think the researchers miss here is while getting the numbers of choices down to reasonable is important, having a large pool to draw from is preferable. Particularly when you are older and probably choosier. I’d go for Match or Yahoo! any day. The more to pick from, the more likely a good match.
Online Dating: Where Technology and Evolution Collide
When searching for a soul mate, you might think that the more options, the better. But the rise of technology – notably, the Internet – has thrown a wedge in that perception.
The Internet offers us an abundance of options when selecting everything from bicycles to mates that is unprecedented in human history. Although we may think that the extra options are good, new research has shown that we may be more satisfied when choosing from fewer options – and we may not even be cognitively equipped to correct this misconception.
Throughout most of human history, we’ve had significantly fewer options for choosing a mate, and so we would strongly welcome any additional options when they came along. For instance, when our neocortex was developing, in part to deal with social networks, the average human group consisted of roughly 150 individuals. Healthy group members of reproductive age of the opposite sex would total about 35 – slim pickings, by the Internet’s standards.
Because we developed in this kind of social environment, we have a tendency to desire ever more options. That’s why, for example, people are enticed by dating Web site Match.com’s offer of “millions of possibilities.” But, as a team of researchers has shown in a recent study, this abundance of options may not make the chooser feel or choose any better than a pool of just a half dozen or so options. Psychologist Alison Lenton from the University of Edinburgh, Barbara Fasolo from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and cognitive scientist Peter Todd from Indiana University have presented their findings on this subject in a recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.
As the researchers explain, people tend to anticipate that they’ll feel better about “shopping for a mate” when there is a large number of options. However, in actuality, people feel equally good when faced with few as opposed to many options. The scientists performed two experiments demonstrating this clash between anticipation and experience.
In their first experiment, the researchers asked 88 participants (with an average age of 22) what they thought was the ideal number of potential mates to choose from, with a range between 1 and 5,000 options. Participants judged each set (very small to very large) of potential mates on four criteria: expected difficulty of making a selection, anticipated satisfaction with their decision, anticipated regret after making their decision, and expected enjoyment of the selection process.
On average, participants predicted that they would be overall most satisfied when selecting from about 20-50 possible mates. So, in the second experiment, the researchers investigated how satisfied people were when choosing a mate from this range compared with the less favored fewer options. Interestingly, they found that participants who chose from 20 personal profiles had roughly similar experiences compared with participants who had to pick from just four profiles. Also, participants’ actual experiences when faced with four options were significantly better than anticipated.
As the researchers summarized, “the expected preference for the larger set-size in terms of more enjoyment and satisfaction and less regret did not materialize.” Instead, there is a significant mismatch between what people think they will feel and what they actually feel, the team concluded.
Misjudgment of an optimal number of options has been observed in several other situations besides choosing a mate. Generally, the greatest disadvantages when having more options include being more frustrated by the complexity of the selection process, sometimes not making a selection at all, and experiencing decreased satisfaction and increased regret after making a selection. (When you’re faced with a million possibilities, you have a much smaller chance of picking the “right” one than if you had to pick from just four.)
The study also offers suggestive evidence that people aren’t paying very close attention to all of the various information provided in the profiles when they have many profiles to sift through and, thus, they might be missing out on interesting/suitable potential mates in this choice context.
“The information overload result was well known to consumer researchers since the ‘70s,” Fasolo told PhysOrg.com. “But the context was always consumer – a bit artificial and more ‘novel’ in an evolutionary sense. It was not at all obvious that the same result would occur in the more naturalistic context of mate choice. True, we are examining a more modern mate choice world – not sequential encounters in the jungle, but simultaneous fast-paced encounters with men zooming from one café table to the next – to which humans are relatively less accustomed (though lekking animals are). So, all in all, I would say that the fact that greater variety backfired even in the context of mate choice was non-obvious.”
Researchers have previously tried to explain our misjudgment of option number in evolutionary terms. At the time our brains were evolving to deal with making decisions, humans rarely had too many options to deal with. Therefore, we’re not adapted to deal with the excessive numbers of choices available today. The Internet, which has no physical space limitations, presents us with a problem that never existed for our ancestors. (As the researchers note, about 1% of the 600,000,000 people who use the Internet visit online dating sites.)
After millions of years of seeking more variety under conditions where variety was relatively limited, it may be very difficult to persuade people that more isn’t always better. For one thing, people may not have a point of comparison where they can experience the benefits of fewer options. Also, recognition of the disadvantages may not come until much later on.
Further, even if we do learn from our experiences, it may not matter much. Research has shown that people’s expectations, rather than previous actual experiences, play a larger role in determining whether they will participate in the same event in the future.
In light of these findings, the researchers suggest that Web designers of online dating sites consider this contrast and try to appease people’s desire for more options while making it easier to narrow down large sets. Currently, some sites do the opposite: when a search results yields fewer than 50 (or more, in some cases) profiles, the site encourages users to broaden their search criteria. Instead, the researchers encourage developers to keep in mind that they must balance people’s desire for more choices with the knowledge that giving people such choices may lead them to evaluate potential mates in a more superficial way.
“I find it interesting (and a bit worrying) that the underestimation of the costs of too much choice which we (and other consumer researchers alike) find plagues not just the daters, but the designers of dating Web sites,” Fasolo said. “If we want people to make sensible choices, researchers need to ‘nudge’ (to say it with Thaler and Sunstein) dating Web site designers towards simpler and more manageable Web sites.”
More information: Lenton, Alison P.; Fasolo, Barbara; and Todd, Peter M. “’Shopping’ for a Mate: Expected versus Experienced Preferences in Online Mate Choice.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Vol. 51, No. 2, June 2008.
If you’ve ever thought of using a web cam (come on, now, who hasn’t?) but didn’t know how to start, here’s just the advice you need in the article below. Fess up now, who has used a web cam and kept it clean?
Microsoft and sex expert Tracey Cox’s top tips for hot webcamming action this V-day
By Katherine Hannaford Tech Digest
To support the launch of Microsoft’s new range of webcams - the VX-7000, VX-6000, NX-6000 and NX-3000 - Tracey and her heaving bosoms want you to know that you should always… Check whats in view People will make assumptions about you simply by looking at the things you own, so make sure everything in view sends the signals you want to send. If youre keen to promote a certain image - like be seen as intelligence, for instance, make sure a pile of books are in view. If you want to be seen as artistic, put a painting directly behind you.
Along with…
Be friendly It sounds obvious but there is a temptation to play it cool for fear of appearing too keen. This can (sometimes) work in the flesh but it doesnt translate well on a webcam. The more you smile, the more theyre going to like you. If you insist on using the treat em mean, keep em keen stuff, save it for when youre actually out on a date. We like people who like us. Simple as that.
Make them laugh The joy of being able to see each other as youre chatting means you can use humour, irony and innuendo without fear of it being misinterpreted - which often happens with text or email. Its impossible to take something the wrong way if you can see its delivered with a big, cheeky grin!
Use the camera to reveal the different sides of you Obviously, youll want to look your best the first time you chat via the webcam, but dont be afraid to let them see you looking less than perfect. Revealing different looks gives you dimension.
Look animated and expressive Give good face! Popular people tend to have animated faces and make a steady stream of expressions when theyre talking or listening. Not only do facial expressions liven up our own stories, they also let other people know the effect theirs are having on us. A lot of expressions are infectious - it really is a case of smile and the world smiles with you!
Watch your body language Dont slouch - youll look lazy and uninterested - and if youre nervous, watch what youre doing with your hands. Also be careful about camera angles. Try out your webcam with a trusted friend first, getting them to check its in a flattering position. Practise tilting your chin down and lifting it up, getting them to tell you which is most becoming.
Dont cross your arms Before you jump in with a (defensive) Its comfortable, thats all, let me agree with you. But while some people do in fact cross their arms for comfort, just about all of us adopt this position when we feel defensive, protective, angry, threatened or plain scared. It sends negative signals, so dont chance it. While were on the subject, if youre female and body conscious, resist the urge to hug a pillow. Itll make you look both childish and insecure.
Write down a few ideas of what to talk about before you chat Funny things which have happened that day, something interesting you heard on the newsIf you get suddenly tongue-tied, a quick glance at the list saves you from awkward silences. Keep conversations reasonably light-hearted at the start - its fine to go deeper later but ideally youd save serious topics for when you meet up.
Compliment but not too much When someone tells us were sexy, funny, bright - whatever - it has the optimum effect the first time its said. Keep harping on it and you not only dilute the compliment, you also get the opposite reaction to the one intended: instead of liking you, they find you annoying!
Does he fancy you? Watch to see if hes smoothing or messing up his hair. Guys do this involuntarily if theyre keen, trying to look their best. Also check out how hes sitting. If hes keen, hell tend to sit with his legs open, giving you a crotch display. Its a subliminal Me Tarzan, you Jane gesture, highlighting hes got something you dont Does she fancy you? Women also tend to play with their hair or smooth their clothes, in an effort to look their best. If she tilts her head to the side, its a sign shes interested in what youre saying. Its also good news if she massages her neck or her hands start to glide over her arms and neck. This is called autoerotic touching: shes touching herself where she thinks youd love to!
Use we as soon as you possibly can Were great at this arent we!, or Well have to get used to chatting this way. Linking the two of you conversationally subliminally plants the idea of linking up in other ways. Another great word to use often: you. Instead of Anyway, I was talking about, say Anyway, as I was telling you. Including you makes people feel youre talking to them specifically and it pushes the pride button. The word to use least of all is I. Youll sound selfish if every sentence starts with it.
I just don’t get it. People now complain that Internet dating takes too much time, the process is too slow and time-consuming, too much work, blah blah blah. Man, have we gotten spoiled or what? Internet dating is not even 15 years old yet (Match.com started in 1995), has evolved with breakneck speed, particularly since 9/11/2001, is the greatest thing that has ever happened to romance, EVER, and we bitch? Don’t you remember how hard meeting ANYONE was prior to online dating? People now go from no dates in years to six in a month or even a week! What’s to complain about?
Well, as will happen, when a need is identified, a solution will be invented. Who knew that we needed garbage bags?
Onto the stage comes CrazyBlindDate.com. Looks like it is a branch of OKCupid in beta, and it looks like it helps if you are in Austin, Boston, NYC, or San Francisco, but by going through a bit of a sign up process, you could be on a blind date in 15 minutes. You really should go to CrazyBlindDate.com and go through their sign-up process just to see what is possible. They even set you up with a place to meet! Ah, technology. See the article below for one woman’s experience:
Speeding up love at first site
By MEREDITH BLAKE
Thursday, February 7th 2008, 4:00 AM
Braganti for News
The rigors of Internet dating had always seemed daunting for author Meredith Blake, but here she’s got a ‘crazy blind date’ with destiny.
Twenty minutes was all I had to give.
Okay, technically 40 minutes, but for the sake of my own sanity, I was telling myself it was only 20 minutes. It was a Friday night in the dead of winter, and I had not one but two blind dates to look forward to. Oh, and a photographer would be there to capture my date in all of its awkward glory.
A mere 24 hours earlier, I had logged on to a new dating site, CrazyBlindDate.com. Launched this past November in New York, Austin, Boston and San Francisco, the site is completely free and lets users go on a blind date almost immediately - in as little as 15 minutes. All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire and be willing to commit to at least 20 minutes no matter who or what shows up (anything less would be rude, of course).
The brainchild of Sam Yagan, also the CEO and co-founder of OkCupid.com, CrazyBlindDate was designed to address the perceived shortcomings of many other sites.
“When I talk to my friends, they have two complaints about Internet dating,” explains Yagan. “They say it’s too much work - working on the profile, browsing, sending e-mails. And they say that it lacks spontaneity. You can’t go online and set up a profile and get a date that night.”
Unlike other services that offer hours of fruitless distraction, CrazyBlindDate is not a destination for anything other than getting a date as soon as possible. You can’t view profiles of other users, or communicate with them in any way before your date, and there aren’t even any ads.
“With CBD, we want you to spend as little time as possible on the site, all your time out on the dates,” says Yagan.
Once you’ve requested a date, the system tries to find a match for you based on the criteria you request. If a match is found, you get an e-mail with a very brief physical description of your date, and a suggested location chosen from a standing list of bars and coffee shops. Once you accept, there’s no going back.
I had never tried online dating, with the exception of a few quasi-dates way back in the age of Friendster.
On the other hand, I have been on plenty of blind dates before. To ease the pressure, I follow this advice: Treat your date like an interview for a job you don’t want. With that in mind I usually enjoy myself.
So in theory, CrazyBlindDate seemed perfect for me.
“It’s a forced adventure, so I knew there would be something to talk about” says CrazyBlindDate.com veteran, Brianna Klemm, 30, of Astoria, who rationalized her first date as fodder for her blog.
“It’s great because it reminds you that dating is not that big a deal, that really it’s just two people sitting in a bar.”
But while Klemm was dubious about finding a serious relationship on CBD, Richie, 27, of Brooklyn, was more optimistic about its prospects. He recently ended up dating a guy he met through the site. “I tried Match.com a few years back, but never actually went out with anyone because the process is really tedious, ” he says. “But [CrazyBlind Date] is good for anyone.”
So, with these encouraging thoughts in my mind, I headed out on my dating adventure. First up was Michael, “Asian, 31, highlights, carrying an iPhone,” according to his CBD description.
I was the first to arrive at our meeting spot - 71 Irving, a Manhattan bar and cafe. I sat down and immediately started drinking my glass of Cabernet, waiting for Michael to walk through the door.
A few minutes later, an Asian man walked in, with telltale white headphones in his ears. I deliberated for a second about whether the barely noticeable reddish streaks in his hair qualified as highlights, and decided it had to be him. Michael joined me at the little table in the corner, and we both tried to ignore the photographer taking our picture. Not that she wasn’t nice.
Michael was eccentric, funny and totally unfazed by the situation. Even though there wasn’t a romantic connection, he kept me entertained with stories of seducing older women as a teenager and his plans to buy a plasma television for each wall in his bedroom. The only lull in conversation was when he answered a business call on his beloved iPhone, which provided a welcome opportunity to dig into the chocolate macaroons he bought for me. After about an hour at 71 Irving, Michael upped the ante and suggested getting dinner in Chinatown, but I had to decline since I had another date scheduled.
Emboldened by two glasses of wine, I headed for my second date at Greenwich Treehouse, a laid-back bar in a corner of the West Village . I awkwardly made a lap around the crowded bar, not seeing anyone fitting Brian’s description: “27, white, dark hair, clean-shaven.” I got a beer, and took a very conspicuous seat by the door so as not to be missed.
I felt strangely liberated and not self-conscious about the fact that I was a woman in a bar by myself on a Friday. This turned out to be an especially good thing, since 20 minutes passed with no sign of Brian.
To be honest, I was relieved. I’d had a great night, despite being stood up by a total stranger.
LOVE ME, LOVE MY PET. Heavy petting prevents singles from finding love.
• Nearly half of Britain’s singles now own a pet – 6.1 million people
• Singles spend £5.6 billion each year pampering their pets
• Owning a pet can reduce your chances of finding love by as much as 40%
• One in four men wouldn’t date a woman with two or more cats
• A third of women won’t date a man who shares his pillow with a pet
• If push came to shove 25% of singles would choose their pet over a new partner
• Nearly two thirds of singles say they really love their pet and think of him/her as a member of the family
According to new research from PARSHIP, the UK’s largest serious online dating service, more singles than ever before are turning to pets for companionship. Nearly half (47%) of Britain’s 13 million singles now own a pet, spending an average of £928 and dedicating 21 days a year to their animal’s wellbeing and upkeep. However, PARSHIP advises that single pet-owners could be putting romance at serious risk: owning a pet could reduce your chances of finding love by as much as 40%.
Treating pets as children (12% of respondents), sharing your bed with your pet (33%), over-indulging your pooch with the latest designer accessories (40%), or simply owning two cats or more (23%) – these were just some of the factors that influenced other singles against dating a pet-owner. What’s more, if push came to shove 25% of singles would favour their pet over a new partner.
The implications of this could be serious, considering Britain’s singles own 1.24 million cats, 1.18 million dogs, 624,000 fish, 436,800 hamsters, rats and gerbils, 187,200 birds, 124,000 horses, donkeys and pigs, 64,000 snakes, and 120,000 exotic animals as pets – which includes spiders and insects. That’s a lot of two-, four-, six- and eight-legged creatures edging their way between Britain’s singles and their potential happiness with another human being.
• The puss on the pillow reduces your chances of finding love by a third
In conjunction with YouGov, and covering 2,000 singles, PARSHIP conducted a wide-ranging study exploring singles’ relationships with their pets. A third of singles say they wouldn’t date someone who shares their bed with their pet, (29% of men/36% of women), 23% are turned off by owners of two or more cats (26% of men/21% of women), and 22% are repelled by owners of snakes (18% of men/26% of women) and spiders 40% (33% of men/48% of women). 40% wouldn’t date people who overindulge their pets by spending £100 or more a week on animal upkeep (44% of men/37% of women), while going as far as treating a pet as a member of your family will alienate you from 13% of men or 11% of women; on the other hand, NOT doing so will alienate you from 11% of men or 12% of women
• The animal attraction
So what’s driving this animal love affair? Nearly two thirds (58%) say they love their pet and think of him/her as a member of the family, compared to just 27% who love their pet as an animal, but not as a surrogate human. In fact, singles love their pets so much that in some instances they would put their pet’s feelings above their own.
• Pets over partners
Sometimes they will even put their pet’s feelings above their lover’s. One quarter (25%) of men and women say that if their live-in partner developed an allergic reaction to their pet, under no circumstances would they put their boyfriend or girlfriend before the animal: Mr or Ms Right would just have to find somewhere else to live. More encouragingly, 15% of men and 22% of women said they’d visit a top Harley Street specialist – no matter what it cost – in the hope of finding an effective treatment for the allergy, while 32% of men and 19% of women said they’d find a loving new home for the problem-causing pet.
Dr Victoria Lukats, psychiatrist and PARSHIP’s dating and relationship expert commented:
“People invest a lot in their pets emotionally, but whilst some singles may see their pets as surrogate partners or children, this research shows that these people are in the small minority. Rather than the stereotype of a spinster with several cats, the reality is that many singles simply enjoy owning a pet but they would probably put their human relationships first.”
“Provided the balance is there and pet owners don’t avoid socialising or dating and that they maintain a healthy attitude to their pet then it shouldn’t interfere with their love life. But perhaps single pet owners would be wise to take note of this research: if there’s seems to be potential for a long-term relationship developing then it might be best not to boast about how much you indulge your pet and avoid making harsh statements about how your pet comes first, especially on the first few dates.”
• Is it time to put the cat out?
25% of singles wouldn’t date someone with two or more cats. In most cases this is attributable to an allergy, with 26% of adults suffering from sneezes and discomfort when close to a feline. There are very few treatments available to counter the allergic reaction. However, there’s good news for the 40% of singles who wouldn’t date someone who owned a pet spider: Even a single session of real-life exposure based therapy can be effective for up to 90% of phobic individuals. (Ost, Brandberg and Alm, 1997, Ost, Salkovskis and Helstrom, 1991)), so you really could learn to love your partner’s little (or not so little) eight-legged friend ….
PARSHIP is Europe’s largest and most successful serious online matchmaking service, with over 2.4 million members, PARSHIP draws its strength from its unique psychometric compatibility test and a methodology which ensures that its members are only matched with people who are genuinely right for them.
Dr Victoria Lukats, explains how the test works:
“The factors that make two people a good romantic match are highly complex. Common interests such as a love of animals can help but the importance of complimentary personality traits in determining the long-term success of a relationship cannot be underestimated.”
“PARSHIP uses a unique psychometric test to match members with similar and complimentary characteristics. Many people believe that opposites attract, whereas others believe that similar personalities are compatible with one another. In fact, both these points of view can be valid, as research conducted over many years by leading psychologists has demonstrated. “
“For example, if an individual highly values domesticity or has a high need for emotional intimacy, then he or she would be well matched with a partner with similar values.”
“For other characteristics, differing scores on the test can be acceptable, even desirable, although wildly opposing scores could spell disaster. A member who is extremely assertive in their communication style would not be well matched with someone who was similarly assertive as this could lead to a major clash of personalities. Likewise, an individual who is slightly shy might be drawn out of themselves by someone who is slightly more outgoing, whereas a complete introvert is less likely to be successfully matched with someone who is the complete opposite.”
In addition to matching members through their personality profiles, members can also choose to specify what they are looking in a potential partner including age, height, location, whether they prefer a non-smoker and whether a potential partner has a pet.
Overall the PARSHIP test has been shown to be an accurate reflection of an individual’s personality and furthermore it has proven to be a highly successful method to help people find the love of their life.
For Further information or case studies please contact Penny Conway on 020 7014 4046, 07775 992350 or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
The research was conducted by YouGov between 30th June and 4th July 2007 questioned 2,353 adults over the age of 18 and by PARSHIP questioning 200,000 singles from its UK database.
About Dr Victoria Lukats (http://www.drlukats.com)
Dr Victoria Lukats, MBBS MRCPsych MSc is a psychiatrist, agony aunt and dating and relationship expert. As well as working as a relationship and dating expert for PARSHIP Dr Lukats is a Specialist Registrar in Psychiatry at Sussex Partnership NHS Trust in Brighton
References:
Ost LG, Salkovskis P M and Hellstrom K (1991) One-session therapist directed exposure vs. self-exposure in the treatment of spider phobia. Behaviour Therapy. 22: 407-422
Ost L G, Brandberg M and Alm T (1997) One versus five sessions of exposure in the treatment of flying phobia. Behaviour research and Therapy. 35: 987-996
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