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Welcome to my blog!
My name is Shimrit Elisar and I am the author of Everyone's Guide to Online Dating , the UK's first online dating book. This is where I write about the online dating industry, rant about relationships and also offer tips and advice to the general Internet dating population. If you're new to online dating, feel free to check out my introductory online dating advice. |
Since I started this blog, I’ve had a few people email me with some online dating problems/questions, so I thought it may be a good idea to invite more people to do the same. I’ll post them on here with the answers but obviously won’t include any personal information. So if anyone out there has any burning online dating questions, don’t be afraid to ask!
1 comment March 27th, 2007
Dr David Voas from The University of Manchester said that zodiac ‘love signs’ have no impact on our chances of marrying – and staying married.
The Senior Research Fellow at the University’s Centre for Census and Survey Research analysed the birthdays of all 20 million husbands and wives in England and Wales.
The investigation – using 2001 census data – failed to reveal any evidence of attraction between star signs.
The research takes into account the fact that professional astrologers view the complete birth charts, rather than rely solely on sun sign, but assumes that sun signs would account for a level of measurable influence, if it existed.
There is no shortage of dating sites out there that offer astrological matching but somehow I doubt any of them will suffer too greatly from the publication of this report. Astrology is still a highly popular way for people to measure their supposed “compatibility”.
Astrology has different trends in it, much like psychology. Astrological compatibility tests are used to measure particular compatibility factors and ignore others (much like trends in psychology 
).
The important thing people should keep in mind following this survey is not to take astrological compatibility too seriously and, in particular, not to write off any supposedly “incompatible” matches.
Anything that pigeon-holes people based on factors they cannot control is limited at best.
Add comment March 27th, 2007
Is this thing for real?!
Researchers at Arizona State University released a survey on Monday showing that writing love letters lowers cholesterol levels.
Apparently writing love letters for 20 minutes, 3 times a week lowered cholesterol more than writing about “insignificant topics”
So by this token, heavy users of dating sites should be fitter than Madonna!!
Unless, of course, they use txtspeak, or talk about football…
Add comment March 27th, 2007
I’ve often said that online dating is not a million miles away from job hunting. Now someone has gone that extra mile.
A woman looking for Mr Right decided not to use a dating site (because some of her friends have had bad experiences) and has posted a “job advert” for a husband on a UK job site instead. So you thought online dating was pragmatic and business-like? It’s got nothing on this. It did get her far more exposure (and press) than an ad on a dating site ever would though, so good on her. Dunno what else to say, really.
Not a good advert for online dating in the UK, but it made me laugh.
Full article on the BBC site and here’s a link to her ad
Add comment March 26th, 2007
I came across an interesting article today about the way mobile text conversations and online interaction supposedly affect teenagers’ views on relationships. By “interesting” I don’t actually mean intelligent and well thought-out, unfortunately.
Here’s an example:
Professor Doreen Rosenthal said mobiles and the internet had created an accelerating intimacy between adolescents, with many making relationship decisions more swiftly than previous generations. Electronic communication tended to shrink the time span in which friendships developed, leaving teenagers more exposed to risky decision-making.
The article seems to suggest that, as a result, teenagers get a “false sense of intimacy” and tend to sleep with each other faster than they otherwise would:
“For many teenagers, this acceleration of intimacy is occurring without the usual checks and balances of face-to-face contact. It’s a pseudo-intimacy. You don’t create genuine intimacy through these mediums.
Continue Reading Add comment March 26th, 2007
A new survey conducted in the UK by an organisation called Get Safe Online has found that only 48% of UK net users feel that it is their responsiblity to ensure their own safety online. Here’s a link to the BBC article and a pretty chart representation of most findings. Scarily enough, about 18% of the people questioned admitted to having replied to spam. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 12% said they had been victims of Internet fraud.
In a bit of good news, the UK government is actually fostering education, rather than empty measures like those being passed in the US. The people surveyed themselves seemed to be interested in being taught how to fend for themselves online, rather than rely on external measures. 78% even went as far as suggesting Internet safety lessons should be given to kids in schools.
The Get Safe Online site has a new online dating safety section meant to teach users how to use dating sites safely. It’s pretty short, but covers all the basics generally discussed in the safety sections of any decent site.
Add comment March 26th, 2007
Here’s an interesting article about love, marriage and sex.
Quoting Californian Couple’s therapist Marty Klein:
Klein says his boomer generation is the first to marry for love, expect hot sex with the same partner, and live for an extremely long time.
Is this want-it-all concept working for today’s marriages? Not particularly well, according to Klein, citing statistics that suggest about 50 per cent of marriages end in some form of separation, and more than 50 per cent of boomer adults are not monogamous.
What most experts forget to mention when discussing our generation’s high divorce record is that divorce was practically socially unacceptable up until the latter half of the 20th century. People weren’t happier then, they were just less likely to be able to do anything about it, unless one of them died. In a country like America (and, by the way, Israel) where people are socially pushed into marriage and see it as an integral part of any relationship, you’re bound to end up with a higher divorce rate, as people discover they’ve made a mistake (or simply grown apart) and break up. Alternatively, they choose to keep the security of married/attached life, while getting their excitement by having illicit affairs.
Continue Reading Add comment March 24th, 2007
I was browsing the Sky news site today and came across an article discussing the difference between the way men and women communicate online. the article itself specifically deals with the way men within a business environment often take women less seriously because of their overly personalised, often embellished emails.
Women commonly use flowery speech and create personal e-mails; men tend to be precise and to the point,” says Marilyn Davidson, professor of work psychology at Manchester Business School, who co-wrote Gender and Communication at Work.
Continue Reading Add comment March 24th, 2007
I’m surprised hotenough.org is the first site in the US to vet people based on looks. The UK’s Gorgeous Dating has been doing it for years and attracting some pretty well-off members who often say they’d never dream of dating on a “normal” site.
With online dating having now become so big, there’s gotta be a way for people to weed out those potentials they’re not likely to ever want to date. Regardless of what qualities you choose to vet people by, the mere act of making a site exclusive only to some daters is always going to be somewhat controversial. By the same token, there will always be a demand for it. The more people discover the fact that online dating usually involves a lengthy process of browsing, searching and physically dating a multitude of unsuitables, the more they will require market niching to make their lives easier. Clubs and bars reserve the right of admission to ensure the right atmosphere, so it was only a matter of time till dating sites started doing it too.
1 comment March 22nd, 2007
In my quest for discovering new and exciting dating industry-related blogs, I recently came across Netchoice, who may be very US-centric, but seem to have a lot of good thing to say. This piece about True.com has gotten me thinking about the ethics of marketing a dating service. After all, people may be buying a subscription, but what we’re actually promising them are answers to their most intimate hopes and dreams. Sure, we all use phrases such as “get a date” and “find your soulmate” when we can’t actually guarantee all our customers will, but surely there’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed when it comes to actually lying to your customers?
Continue Reading Add comment March 22nd, 2007
In a recent article in Wired Magazine, Regina Lynn talked about her experience of dating in 3D virtual worlds like Second life and why she found the experience preferable to standard online dating.
She said:
If I’m going to get involved online, I’d rather meet people in a 3-D virtual environment. The avatars they wear and the environments they build tell me more about them than their online dating profiles.
While I agree that standard online dating has a lot of issues, the thought of dating in Second Life as it is now, fills me with actual dread. Back when I was a teenager using text-only chat in the early days of the Internet, I met quite a few people online and the thing that most hit me was how easy it is to build up a completely false mental view of someone from the way they conduct themselves online. More often than not, the people were completely different in real life. I’ve met many people whose majestic online presence painted a picture of confident, funny and creative individuals, who in real life were socially inept, hygenically questionable deadbeats far from the well-adjusted image they presented on the Internet. Sure, the sides of their personality represented online were definitely them as well, but unless I was going to limit my interaction with these people to the virtual world, I wanted to make damn sure the people I associated with were real-life compatible too. I went through a phase of trying to bring out the best in such people but ultimately decided it wasn’t my job to be a social interaction advisor for people I was considering dating.
Maybe I am a bit result-oriented, but the wonderful things someone does virtually don’t really count for much in my eyes if the person is a couch potato who spends most of his life online programming virtual world monuments to visit from the comfort of his own bedroom. I’d be much more impressed by someone who actually got off his ass and went to the great wall of China than by someone who knew how to script one in Second Life.
Fantasies are just that, fantasies. You can make them real in a virtual world but that still doesn’t make them real enough for me.
Saying that, an integration of 3D worlds into dating sites might not be a bad idea. Most sites nowadays offer some sort of chat, so why not make it more exciting?
Add comment March 21st, 2007
Nothing like waking up in the morning and finding out some asshole has gone and spammed the hell out of my blog with all kinds of dodgy drugs and sex sites. As flattered as I am about my blog being chosen to promote East European criminals, I’ve now removed the lot and stopped all trackbacks. If anyone knows how to stop this from happening with WordPress, please let me know.
Add comment March 19th, 2007
I am introducing a news section so I can advertise things to do with the book.
Today’s exciting news is that I’ve added Amazon sales links to the site. The book is available for pre-order from Amazon (and a few other places) already.
I get more money per sale if people click on to Amazon through my site rather than going direct, so if you’re going to buy a copy, please do it via this site.
Thanks
1 comment March 18th, 2007
I recently started reading The Paradigm Shift and came across the whole discussion about social networking sites.
I remember reading sometime last year (I think) about some research conducted across Europe that found that most people who used social networking sites, used them for social networking, rather than outright dating. I would add that even the dating done on social networking sites is usually (in my experience at least) very different to the type of dating done on dating sites. Standard dating sites are very focused. They’re very pragmatic, to the point of taking all the romance out of the process and turning dating into a business transaction. It’s basically a glorified meat market, whether you like it or not.
A lot of people have a problem with that approach. It takes a very particular state of mind to decide that you’re going to go online and basically “shop” for either a serious relationship or a shag. Obviously, this sort of online dating is popular for a reason and it helps millions of people find love everyday who probably wouldn’t have otherwise, but we as an industry have to admit that this form of dating is not right for everyone, just like “traditional” club/pub/work dating is not right for everyone.
Continue Reading Add comment March 17th, 2007
* That’s the London Underground, for you non-Brits
Just saw this ad today for Indian website, Shaadi.com:
Crappy pic, I know, but I didn’t have a proper camera on me. Click on the image for the bigger version.
It’s a bit unclear in the pic, but the woman is said to be a model into “modern art and boxing” and the guy is a “businessman” who likes Stallone and wildlife. The man is 5’11″ and 29, the woman is 5’4″ and 25. Seems like some very traditional, stereotypical assumptions are being made about the preferences of the target audience. Then again, The Asian community is often quite traditional so maybe they’ll all be flocking to Shaadi.com to find their own businessmen and models.
I noted there aren’t any calls to action, nor are there any promotional codes, mobile shortcodes or any other method of tracking conversions from this campaign. Pure branding? I hope they have money to burn. I know how much these campaigns cost…
Add comment March 15th, 2007
Writing a book is like fighting the Terminator: just when you think it’s done and dusted, the thing rises up again for another round.
Editing, proofing, indexing, it just never ends. Whoever said writing for a living was easy? Oh yeah, no one.
I am pretty sure I am done working on it now. I went over and corrected the final proofs, I did the index (in MS Word and it wasn’t at all as difficult as I thought it would be) and sent everything off to the production company. My handwriting is pretty awful and I’d never done any proper proofing in my life, so I’m sure my scribbled notes in the wrong places are going to raise a few eyebrows. Hopefully I won’t be getting too many emails and phone calls about it, though, because as far as I’m concerned it’s done now and is ready to be released into the wild.
Obviously, this is just the beginning, because my PR person has told me there’s already a lot of interest in the book, but at least the actual production stage of it is over. It is over, right?
Add comment March 14th, 2007
The NY times just published an article about online dating coaching. It totally summed up the main difference between the American and the British online dating scene for me.
This particular quote drew my eye:
Jim Safka, chief executive of Match.com, based in Dallas, says online dating is like being on stage and being viewed by thousands of people. “Wouldn’t you spend some time backstage getting ready?” he asked.
To me, comparing online dating to standing on a stage makes it sound like you are expecting people to put on a show, rather than just be themselves. Who wants to be in a relationship where they have to put on a show all the time?
Over here, people think about online dating more in terms of going down the pub (or bar, if they are a bit trendier) and meeting people. Sure, you want to make a good impression, but you’re not going to get a makeover for the occasion. In the UK, makeover photos are pretty much frowned upon. This is really the land of understatement.
Continue Reading Add comment March 13th, 2007
Following on from my earlier post, I just came across an interesting discussion on reddit talking about personality testing, horoscopes, etc.. I think it illustrates my points quite well. Here is what someone got as his profile, without actually answering any questions:
You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them.
You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.
At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.
Is there anyone out there who could not see themselves in that?
This is obviously quite an extreme example of a bad personality test, but it does show how easy it is to fool people into believing you actually know something about them.
Add comment March 12th, 2007
So the market is levelling out in the US, what are you gonna do about it? Apparently, you go back to the very roots of marketing and talk about sex sex and more sex. So first we had the whole female orgasm brainscan email thing from chemistry.com, then lavalife decided to go even further and talk about male orgasms in a poll that just reeks of PR stuntness (Not that I’m saying they faked the results or anything. I mean, that’s as unlikely as men faking orgasms, right? Oh wait…). Today, my Google news alert delivered me this. What next??? Dare I even ask?
Luckily, the UK market is still going strong, but I do have an idea for a new spokesperson in case business goes slow and we need to uhh… pump it up a bit…
Add comment March 12th, 2007
There’s been a lot of talk on the industry sites recently about personality testing and matching on various dating sites and whether or not they work. For people who run dating sites, personality tests provide that little bit extra they can offer their customers to get them to choose you over others. In the US, where the online dating market is now leveling out, there is obviously a need to provide extra services and to create the impression that there is a real need and a real demand for such services. America is a country where marriage is now seen almost as a business transaction. There’s even books out there that tell women to leave a man unless he’s proposed within a set duration of time. It’s all about “sealing the deal”. It’s also a society in which people are taught to expect a lot more for their money and, as a result, take a lot less responsibility for their own welfare. The proliferation of fast, processed food is one example of this, as well as the fact that people have actually won lawsuits for having their coffee served too hot. It doesn’t take marketing rocket science to see how simple it would be in an environment like that to create a market for a service that offers to do some of the “hard work” for you and save you time, so you can get back to your “busy life” (cause none of us want to admit our “busy lives” are so empty, we spend most of our free time trying to pick up people online).
Continue Reading 3 comments March 10th, 2007
