Cougar dating has been a hot topic of conversation in the past few years, resulting in the emergence of cougar dating reality shows and tv series like Courtney Cox’s Cougar Town. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, it refers to an older woman (usually over 40) dating a younger man.  Think Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.  But is this really a trend?

According to a recent study by Michael Dunn, psychology researcher at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, the cougar craze is “a myth”.  He maintains that after studying singles ads from 22,400 singles across the globe, he found no sizable evidence of women preferring to date younger men.  In fact, the men also seemed to prefer to date younger women, not cougars. 

This has sparked some controversy among those who have studied and written about the emerging cougar trend. Valerie Gibson, a Toronto-based journalist who was one of the first to write about cougars, claims that studies like this promote an “anti-cougar bias”.  According to a recent article in Time Magazine she said, "Society has always told us that the older woman who is still sexual isn't supposed to exist.  We should be wrapped in a shawl baking cookies for our grandchildren and all that crap."

A similar study done in 2003 by AARP found that 34% of 40+ women were dating younger men, which seems to debunk Dunn’s findings.  It could be argued that because Dunn’s study was based on online surveys from dating websites, the preferences listed don’t necessarily reflect actual dating behavior.  That is, though the majority of women who online date claim they prefer to date men their same age or older, a significant portion do date younger men.

A more interesting question that seems to have emerged from this study is, if there is a significant cougar dating population, why are they afraid to admit it when online dating?  Perhaps this is something to investigate.

What do you do when you’re a Stanford Business School graduate in the early ‘90s and you’re searching for “the best woman in the world?” For Gary Kremen, the answer was simple: invent online dating. 

The quest for a wife (and the financial security it would require to marry her) led Kremen to create Match.com, an idea that came to him after he realized how much revenue personal ads generated for his local newspapers. In 1993, Kremen founded Electric Classifieds Inc., the first company to provide online classified advertising, and in April of 1995, after raising $200,000 from investors, Match.com was born. Though the site’s functionality was limited (it only allowed users to exchange messages and pictures via e-mail or fax),100,000 users registered with the site within its first 6 months. Now Match.com has over 1.7 million paid subscribers, and Web sites in 30 and 8 languages.

Kremen chalks up the wild success of Match.com to his “‘relentless’ work ethic.” He ran the business from “a cramped, one-bedroom apartment that he shared with two roommates,” often remaining in his pajamas while he “sat glued to his Sun workstation, designing Match’s Web site and developing marketing strategies.” Despite his hard work and the $1.5 million in venture capital he received, Match.com didn’t initially pay off either romantically or financially for Kremen.

In 1997, much to Kremen’s chagrin, Match.com’s investors sold the startup to Cendant, a consumer-services company, for $8 million, and in 1998 the company was sold again, this time to IAC/InterActiveCorp (then still known as Ticketmaster), for $50 million. All Kremen got out of the transaction was a lifetime account on the site and $50,000 from selling his stock in the company.

Kremen was not discouraged, and in 2001 his perseverance was rewarded: Match.com partnered with AOL and MSN, which “brought in a large influx of people at a rapid pace,” and in 2003 Match.com launched MatchMobile, its incredibly popular mobile phone service. 20,000 singles now register on Match.com every day, making it one of the largest and most influential online dating sites. It is consistently ranked among the top five online dating sites based on traffic.

Kremen finally found financial security after a judge awarded him $65 million in a dispute over the domain name sex.com in 2001, and after buying Electric Classifieds (then named Instant Objects) debt in 2004 so that he could retrieve its priceless patent. He held a foreclosure sale and sold the patent for $1.7 million.

Kremen’s romantic goals were also met. In an age in which 1 in 5 relationships, and 1 in 6 marriages, are between people who met using online dating sites, and in which “roughly 74 percent of the 10 million Web users who are single and looking for a partner have turned to the Internet to find someone,” Kremen met his match the old fashioned way – through a mutual friend.

Read the original article here. To find out more about this popular dating site, read our review of Match.com

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• By April of last year there had been over 400 million conversations on eHarmony since launch.

• By August of 2009 eHarmony had 30 million members register and had 30 million pictures uploaded.

• 43.99% of newlyweds who met through an online dating service were matched by eHarmony.

• 25.75% of newlyweds who met online (Social Network, Dating Site, etc...) where matched by eHarmony.

• It is estimated that currently there are 1,130,006 non-married, monogamous relationships started by eHarmony.

Free communication weekends (FCW) at eHarmony allow all free members to not only take the relationship questionnaire and receive matches for free, but they have the chance to communicate with their highly targeted matches as well. This is all at no cost to you and with no credit card required. I have already seen a number of TV commercials advertising this FCW so you can expect eHarmony to be extra busy this long holiday weekend. Viewing of members profile pictures and Fasttracking the guided communication process is not included in the FCW events.

By our count this will be eHarmony's 28th free event. The last eHarmony free communication weekend occurred in July (see Story).

Update #1: It looks like singles in Australia are not being left out. eHarmony Australia is having free communication this weekend as well.

Check out our review of eHarmony for more information on the popular online match making service.