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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