Sites like Ashley Madison that actively encourage people to cheat on their spouses are becoming increasingly popular. The Pittsburgh Channel recently ran an article asking whether cheating is now becoming the new norm and whether such sites are responsible for it. But has the state of play really changed so much? Or are we simply being hypocritical and naive?
CNN ran a weird article recently, about people who lie on online dating sites. The article details research done by a professor in the University of Kansas, looking into people’s lying habits on one “big long-term relationship dating site” (unnamed, but I have my suspicions).
The researcher spoke to over 5000 people and asked them whether they would lie on a dating site and why.
The results seem to imply that those people who said they would lie are the type of people who want to please people and tell them what they want to hear. They don’t lie out of malice, but because they want people to like them.
Both the article and the research seem to blatantly ignore things such as scammers, married people passing themselves off as single and players passing themselves off as serious.
All of these are, sadly, a big part of the online dating industry, which people should be told about and taught how to spot and avoid. Unfortunately, I doubt any of those types of online dating liars would take the time to answer the good professor’s survey and share with us the reasons why they choose to lie and cheat.
On the other hand, we’ve learned that people who are lonely, looking for a serious relationship and willing to take a (most likely lengthy) survey for no personal gain are apparently keen to please. Who’d have thought?
And… get this!
“Online daters shouldn’t be concerned that most people are presenting a false impression of themselves,” Hall said in a news release before Thursday’s phone interview. “What influences face-to-face dating influences the online world, too.”
The fact that the professors conducting this survey tell people that they don’t have to worry about people lying to them online just shows me how out of touch they are with what’s going on out there. The only worthwhile conclusion of this so called “research” is what everyone in the online dating industry knows already and has done for years:
the people who would lie to you online are the same people who’d lie to you in the real world, be they scammers, compulsive liars, cheats or just “self-monitors”, to use a term from the article itself.
Did someone actually pay for this research? If I were paying taxes in America I’d be well pissed off.
You can read the full text of this, frankly rather lame, article here.
The Australian consumer watchdog reports a rise of 30% in online dating related scams. Could it be because people in Australia are becoming more exposed to online dating and are throwing caution to the wind a little bit too much?
With online dating becoming more and more mainstream, there should be more information available about the potential dangers.
People often put their trust in their dating site, sometimes blindly, and no dating site likes to admit that some scammers may have gotten through.
Having worked as a moderator on a dating site I know how hard it is to catch everyone who’s up to no good. We were always aware of how important it is to catch these people before they fleece innocent daters and steal their money, but even with all the hard work we put in, sometimes these scammers managed to con people before we got to them.
Never assume the site you’re on is 100% safe. No site is. You need to arm yourself with information and learn how to spot a scammer, so you can avoid their nasty plots.
Now’s a good time as ever to brush up on your online dating safety knowledge. Here are some handy online dating safety tips from my book.
Comscore (an Internet monitoring and market research company) is reporting a 16% rise in use of online dating among Britons. This is particularly interesting considering the global dating market has seen a drop of 1%
Feeling the pinch in the American market, the big online dating companies are going to be putting more effort into their UK campaigns, so I’m guessing we’re going to see a lot more of their advertising in the near future.
Hopefully, this will mean tougher competitions and therefore better deals and more variety for British online daters.
Lovestruck.com have come up with a convenient little iPhone app (convenient if you have an iPhone, at least).
Subscribers to the site can use the app for free, which is handy, as the site is aimed at busy city professionals who want to meet like minded singles who live or work near them.
Being able to easily arrange such informal dates on your mobile sounds like a damn fine idea.
I know lots of people go to ballroom dance classes to meet single men and women, but the problem is, a lot of the people who go to dance classes don’t want to be chatted up by people. They want to dance.
So where do you go if you want to dance and also want to meet like-minded singles?
Well, I got news of a fun singles’ dance / speed dating event coming up in March. It’s organised by Yogo Dating in conjunction with the Children’s Trust and even has some people from Strictly Come Dancing in it.
I don’t know Yogo Dating, but I think this is a brilliant idea. I’ve been to my fair share of tango classes and I know for a fact that any type of couples’ dance gives a great insight into what someone is like as a partner in a relationship (and some might say in bed, but I’m saying nothing).
It makes for a good speed dating event and it’s for a good cause too.
Being single may suck on a day when everyone seems to want to ram romance down your throat, but the buzz this date creates around love, dating and online dating can only mean one thing - new blood on dating sites!
It’s like a gym in January full of fresh-faced hopefuls with brand new tracksuits and 10 Christmas pounds to shed.
With so many dating sites having special offers on, too, now’s your chance to take another look at the dating site you’re already on, the one you looked at and thought wasn’t for you or ones you never even tried before. You never know who might have joined in the meantime…
Well, it was bound to happen. Here’s the first of the Valentine’s day offers. Unsurprisingly, it’s from eHarmony.com. From the 11-15 February, you’ll be able to use the site for free, no credit card needed.
eHarmony Canada is also having the free communications Valentine’s weekend.
If you’re in the UK, eHarmony UK are running their Free comms weekend from Friday the 12th and it will run until the 15th.
It’s that happy time again. Forward thinking to Valentine’s day, Parship.co.uk are letting you use their site for free until Sunday. Hurry up and give it a go if you want to see what it’s all about.
On a site that won’t let you view pictures before you pay, being able to see who you’re talking to for free is a big big plus, I’m sure you’ll agree.
How do fate and luck factor into online dating? What can we do to improve our chances when dating online, to prevent ourselves from falling for the wrong people?
Here’s an interesting new site from Match.com. The new site is called MatchAffinity and is based on Match’s personality test. Once you complete the 10 minute test, you can get matches sent to you, as well as look them up yourself.
If you like the way the Match.com site works but want a bit more of a psychological assessment to help you think of people in terms of long term compatibility, then this is a good site to have a look at and see if you like their style.
If you like DatingDirectAffinity, you will find this site extremely familiar…
Well, that’s hardly surprising, is it? With the UK braced for even more snow madness, everyone’s apparently been staying at home and hitting the dating sites.
This is a brilliant opportunity to start your new year on the right foot. I know a lot of you will have made a new year’s resolution to find someone, because this is the perfect time to do it. Not only do you have the power of the new year behind you, you also have many thousands of people out there who have made exactly the same resolution. Maybe one of them is your person?
So use this time (when you’re not out making snowmen and stuff) to work on your profile, try out a few dating sites and teach yourself how to work these to get what you want.
From the 30th of December - January 3rd, eHarmony (the American one) is having a free communications weekend. The last of this year and first of the next, in fact.
eHarmony UK will have their free communications weekend from the 1st - 4th of January.
So if eHarmony sounds like your kind of site but you’re not quite yet sure, you may want to use this opportunity to try it out.
Parship.co.uk are having a huge winter “sale” with a 50% discount on their one month subscription. This offer is on from today (the 23rd of December) till the 8th of January. If you want to give Parship a go, now would be the perfect time to try.
Here’s a question that keeps coming up time and time again: even in these days of supposed sexual liberation and gender equality, is it OK for women to hit on men?
Speed Dater have a big NYE party in London, at the Abbey bar. They are currently offering a 2 for 1 deal on tickets. There will be a lock & key party, optional speed dating sessions and the usual things such as photo wall, food, music and dancing. The party’s open to singles of the 24-40 age range. The dress code is smart casual to smart.
This is a big party for up to 500 singles and the only NYE party SpeedDater are doing, so I expect there will be people there from outside of London too.
Had an email in my mailbox today saying Parship.co.uk are offering 50% off their 3 month subscription in December. I think this special discount offer is for members who have signed up and not yet paid, but it might be worth signing up this month as a free member to see if you get an offer too.
If you’re looking for a personal recommendation about a personal introductions agency, here’s some good news about a new concept in matchmaking headed by a dear friend and colleague of mine.
Matchmakers and introduction agencies used to be all the rage when it came to getting direct personal assistance with finding love, but the mental image they conjure is not always good - a chain-smoking little old lady parents would hire to get their spinster daughter a husband is the one that first came into my mind!
This image is, however, far from true, as exampified by Coffee and Company, a London based introduction agency for successful professional singles.
There’s a new dating event debuting this Saturday in London promising to be an interesting alternative to your usual speed dating and lock and key party type events.
Offering an alternative dating experience to fun creative people (23-35), Shoot Dating sounds like a cross between a treasure hunt and a photography class, where the goal is to take photos according to clues.
Participants work in teams (a different one for every clue, to introduce you to more singles) and can win cool prizes like cameras. There’s also free entry to a party afterwards at the Bathhouse so you can mingle. The party is a band / rock night, which is in itself somewhat alternative, considering the music played at most standard singles’ events.
I often get people asking me about good singles’ events designed particularly for intelligent, creative and funky people and it’s a toughy. This one seems like it fits the bill.
I like the teamwork aspect of it, which is a great way of learning a lot about a person. The concept is interesting and the location is cool, so should make for an interesting day (and night) out.
I just got an email saying Parship.co.uk are offering free full use of the site this weekend, until Sunday.
OK, so they are not calling it a free communications weekend, as that’s what eHarmony call theirs, but it’s basically the same thing. You can even exchange pictures with people for free, which is a novelty on Parship.
Online dating is all well and good, but limiting your social life to online interaction will do you no favours. For many people, it takes a while before all those profile searches, winks and messages turn into actual dates. So in the meantime you should be looking at additional ways of getting yourself out of the house and into social situations where you will meet new people.
A weekly roundup of some online dating stories and offers from around the Internet and the world, as well as my own commentary, of course. This week - an offer from eHarmony, a new iPhone app and some new online dating research.
A good profile in itself is not enough to make your online dating experience successful. The truth is, with the right advice and support it’s not very difficult at all to come up with a profile that portrays you as someone most men or women would want to date. But if all those things you take out of the profile were originally put there because of your state of mind, baggage, fears or bitterness, then the thin screen provided by the profile won’t be enough to carry you through the whole dating process.
I had an interesting discussion recently with someone who’d tried online dating and was disappointed. She said she’d been taken aback by people’s habit of continuing to search for more matches online even after they’d been on a seemingly good date.
To her, this implied that people did not take online dating seriously enough - as if relationships formed online were more “disposable”.
There’s already been much discussion about how online dating has changed relationships, but my take on it is different than the above. With the main attraction of online dating often being the sheer number of eligible singles you can meet, it’s not hard to understand why people may not want to settle on the first person they meet. Sure, there are players and casual daters who set out to find one person after another, but those searching for a husband or a wife have even more of a vested interest in being choosy.
Personally, I believe that relationships that follow a period of active dating can actually end up being stronger and more meaningful, as there wouldn’t be a question of whether one person settled for the other.
Of course, if someone is successful at dating online, the temptation can always be there to try for someone better, any time something seems to go wrong in the relationship they’re in - actually making relationships “disposable”.
Have you experienced this? If so, please leave a comment.
You’ve heard about the eHarmony free communications weekends before, but now it seems they have gone one further and turned this into a 5 day event. So now if you sign up for a free account at eHarmony USA you’ll be able to communicate with your matches for free from today (21/10) to the 25th.
UPDATE! eHarmony UK will have a free communications weekend this weekend (23-26 October).
Remember that it can take time for the system to come up with good matches for you, so if you want to give the site a proper go, sign up earier rather than later, or you may not have anyone you want to talk to on time!
If you want to get anywhere with online dating, there are a few things you will need to get over. Finding love online is a lot easier if you allow yourself to use all the resources at your disposal. Here are 5 common difficulties you will need to overcome in order to get the most out of your dating experience.
When you meet someone online, it’s tempting to try and find out more about them, to see if they are all they’re cracked up to be. But is this the best policy to ensure a happy ending for your love story? A recent article in the Washington post asks whether there can still be a true blind date in the days of the Internet.
The new eHarmony discount promo codes are here giving you up to 20% off their subscription prices. These are both valid till the end of the year.
If you’re looking for eHarmony offers and ways of saving money while still enjoying their unique system, then now’s your chance.
Online dating sites are certainly the most direct way of meeting other singles online, but as much as online dating professionals hate to admit it, they are not for everyone. If you’ve given online dating a good try and have decided it’s not for you after all, then it’s time for a bit of lateral thinking. You can still use the Net to meet new people, for both friendship and romance. It may not be as direct as going on a dating site, but for many people, that is actually somewhat of an advantage.
More about the OKcupid survey…
A recent article in the Telegraph reported the results of a statistical survey conducted by free dating site OKCupid. The survey aimed to discover the makings of the perfect first online dating message, on OKcupid at least.
If you hate being single during the holidays and are looking for romance, rather than just a casual fling, now’s the time to start thinking about preparing your lovelife for winter.
Online dating for soldiers has become increasingly popular in recent years, as it’s a convenient way for those in the armed forces to meet people while stationed away from home. Any dating site is fit for this purpose, of course, though a quick search reveals many sites dedicated to soldiers and those looking to date them.
New figures released by dating site OKCupid reveal some interesting things about online dating response rates and important information about sending your first message to someone online.
eHarmony UK are having another one of their popular free comms weekends this coming weekend. Register before/during to make use of the site’s features for free for a whole weekend and see what it’s all about.
Because of the slow and cautious nature of the site, I suggest you register before the weekend, to give the site a chance to match you up with people you might actually want to talk to using the free features!
If you are struggling to write your dating profile, here are five tips that will help get you started. Take your time, and remember everything is a work in progress.
Writing an online dating profile is not easy. Maybe that’s why many people end up relying on cliches in theirs. As an online dating consultant, I’ve seen my share of profiles (thousands) and there are definite trends when it comes to writing them. In fact, the majority of profiles I come across read more or less the same. When I provide dating profile writing services I try to get people out of the trap of stating the obvious in their profile, but if you’re looking for dating profile examples to help you write yours, here are five dating profile cliches you’ll want to avoid.
This ZombieHarmony dating site linkbait made me laugh rather a lot. I’m sure it’s gotten its fair share of links from bloggers all over the place.
Great idea, well made and bound to interest the type of people likely to have a blog and a nice social media presence.
It’s difficult to get a dating site to stand out nowadays but some sites do well at getting viral content to do the job for them. OKcupid did it well with their thousands of quizzes and mingle2 are obviously doing something right too. Anyone seen any other good ones lately?
If you’re looking for online dating content for your site, I am currently available for writing services.
I offer 100% original, quality content that’s guaranteed not to have been published elsewhere.
As you may know, unique content is king on the Internet, especially for competitive industries such as online dating. Quality content will help your site stand out so it can be noticed by the search engines and therefore seen by more people.
I can provide dating tips and advice, agony aunt services for your users, dating articles, etc. all written by me according to your specific requirements.
For more information and rates, please contact me via the contact form.
I recently read one of those annoying articles about online dating and what a great disappointment it is.
I often wonder what people expect from online dating to be so unpleasantly surprised by the reality of it.
In my experience, such disappointment is often a product of unreasonable expectations. Yes, some sites are better than others and some people are more easily suited to online dating than others, but ultimately, if you expect online dating to solve all your problems, you will most likely be disappointed.
Here are some things you shouldn’t expect online dating to do for you:
Match.com and DatingDirect.com are probably the biggest dating sites in the UK and definitely the most famous. Here is a quick run down of how the two dating sites compare.
Here are some dating sites that either cater specifically for or are friendly towards older daters.
Mature online dating (dating for the over 50s, pensioners or “silver surfers”) has become more popular in recent years, as people nowadays are living longer and refusing to give up on finding love, be it for the first or second time around.
New eHarmony coupons are here! If you are looking for a discount voucher code for the eHarmony USA or CA site, look no further as I have just been emailed them! eHarmony UK is also offering discounts - up to 40%!
For most people, the online dating profile is a work in progress. It changes as they use the site(s) they’re on and it adapts as they get responses and learn more about the type of people who contact them.
Sometimes this is a good thing, but all too often I see people, obviously fed up of getting the wrong type of responses (or being in the wrong type of relationships), who decide to address the issue in their profile… with terrible consequences.
If you’re here then you probably already know that uploading a picture to your online dating profile is a must. Most people won’t even bother looking at your profile without one and many will make snap judgements about you based on the photo you upload.
Unless you’re comfortable and natural in front of a camera and already know your best side, this will have undoubtedly caused you some concern by now. In general, women tend to overdo it, whereas men are notoriously bad at picking unflattering photos. There are, of course exceptions…
Here are some tips for helping you choose the right photo:
