Types (Niche)

You might have missed a recent article in The New York Times about how group dating is becoming a new way to date.

Instead of meeting a match one-on-one like you would with most online dating sites, some are now offering to set you up on a group date with five to eleven matches - 3 to 6 men and 3 to 6 women total, to offer you more choices and a more relaxed and engaging first date.

The reason? Group dates tend to take the pressure off of individuals. You don't have to make a list of interesting things to say or questions to ask, or try to keep conversation going whenever there's an awkward pause. Plus, it's like having three to six dates in one night!

Best of all, you increase your chances of clicking with someone. It maximizes the chance you'll hit it off with someone in a way that speed dating doesn't. For one, you get to spend more time with your potential dates and really get to know them, instead of being rushed through a five-minute meeting and going on a first impression.

Group dating is an interesting proposition, and has been met with a lot of interest. Online dating and now even speed dating sites are opening up to this concept. So what are the drawbacks?

Some people tend to be more shy and reserved, especially around new people. If there is a gregarious, fun person in the group, he might steal the attention away from other great dates by leading the conversation or suggesting what to do next. It's hard to compete for attention. The beauty of a one-on-one date is that there aren't really any distractions and you can focus on each other.

But there is something to be said for a relaxed, no-pressured group date. There isn't an expectation of sex or romance by the end of the evening, at least not with one particular person. You don't have to plan the date in terms of picking the place and paying for both you and your date - the dating site offering the group date experience plans a location to meet and each person is responsible for her own tab.

If you're new to dating or if you've been through a recent break-up, this might be the best way to dip your toe in the dating pool. Instead of working up the nerve to go on a date, a group date is like dining with new friends, which may or may not lead to romance.

We all love reconnecting with old friends on Facebook - including checking status updates just to see what everyone else is up to. But when you're unhappy with your own life, this could be the worst thing you could do.

Have you ever been frustrated by a string of bad dates, checked Facebook, and suddenly noticed all of your friends are posting pictures with their new boyfriends or changing their status updates to "in a relationship?" While it might seem like everyone is coupled up except for you, it's not reality. But Facebook can make us think so.

How often do you post pictures of yourself when you're feeling down - sitting alone on your couch watching TV? Probably not many.

Well, your friends aren't going to share their lonely nights on Facebook either. They won't share the fact that they weren't invited to that awesome party, or the fights they have with their boyfriends, or the issues that come up soon after they get married. These are the parts of a relationship that people don't want to share. Which is why Facebook isn't an accurate depiction of reality. If you feel depressed after logging on to Facebook, you might want to take some time off.

Social media is a great tool, but it can also be harmful if we take it too seriously. You don't want to sabotage your own love life, yet that's exactly what we do when we obsess over everyone else's Facebook status.

Following are some tips to help you focus on you, instead of everyone else on Facebook:

Don't look at Facebook before a date. It can put you in a bad mood, make you more judgmental of your date, cause you to obsess about your successful Facebook friend, and generally change the whole vibe of what the date could be. If you approach your date with a relaxed and confident attitude, trying to have a good time, you likely will have a good time. If Facebook is getting you down, leave it out. With every new person you meet, you have a new opportunity to connect. So let it happen, without Facebook clouding your view.

Don't share your date stories over Facebook. Your friends might love your crazy dating life and offer their opinions, or maybe their own bad date stories, but do you really need them? There's no need to have a public forum on how your dating life is going. Just focus on yourself, who you're meeting, and having a good time. This isn't a contest.

Don't friend your dates too soon. There's too much temptation to see who he's friended and who he's dated. If you're just getting to know him, keep it limited. You might get the wrong idea from his Facebook page, like he would of yours!

Facebook is a great tool, but it's good to know when to disconnect.

The power of the Internet has certainly changed how we date, especially with the popularity of online dating. Social media has made it really easy to access information about your dates, too. A lot of your dates will be checking out Facebook and Google to learn more about you before you actually meet in person. And chances are, you'll know more about them too.

I encourage people to do some research before the date. A few of my friends were horrified to discover their matches had engagement websites for their upcoming marriage to someone else, yet they were still online dating! Another saw that one of her matches had a police record. You don't want to be caught off guard or misled, so research is important.

Police records aside, how many of you research dates a little more than necessary? Do you really want to know what junior high school he attended, or what he ate for breakfast yesterday morning?

A quick look at Facebook or Twitter can tell you a lot about a person, but dating should be more mysterious. Don't you want the excitement of getting to know your date over time, discovering little quirks and habits for yourself? Or would you rather everything be out in the open, like her background in conservative politics or his experience growing up in a commune?

There's another argument to be made that sometimes we know too much, too soon. When you spend so much time researching someone you haven't met in person, building this idea of who he is in your head, you'll likely be let down in real life when you meet and there's no spark. You might even feel cheated. After all, you thought you really knew him.

But seeing someone's online persona - who he is through social media - can be a bit misleading. A person's social media presence isn't typically who he is in real life. People are much more complex. It's better to think of someone's blog or Twitter page as just a snapshot compared to who they really are as a whole.

It can also be misleading if you're emailing a potential date back and forth several times, becoming more emotionally attached to a virtual relationship. Maybe neither one of you feels compelled to meet in real life, at least anytime soon. But when you do this, you're not getting a complete picture of who your match is. You're falling for an image that you've built up, and one that might not even be real (catfishing).

Instead of getting hung up on your virtual interactions with dates, it's better to meet them in person sooner rather than later, and it's also good to learn about him in real life as you date, not just over Facebook.

Two is hardly enough to call it a trend, but if online dating sites collaborating with relationship experts does become a thing, I am fully in support of it.

Earlier this fall, one of America's longest-serving advice columnists, E. Jean Carroll, began a new partnership between HowAboutWe and Elle magazine. The arrangement, called Elle dating, is part of HowAboutWe's media partners program. Joining forces with a fashion magazine may not seem like the natural course of action for a dating site, but HowAboutWe believes the alliance could go a long way towards helping people who might otherwise object to finding love on the Web warm up to the idea.

Carroll's Elle column has long been an important fixture for the magazine. A membership to HowAboutWe through Elle will cost $30 per month, and for $500 an Elle reader can get a one-on-one telephone consultation with Carroll and the services of Tawkify, the small matchmaking firm she founded two years ago. Carroll hopes that her influence will bring a sense of serendipity to HowAboutWe that can be lost in other online dating services.

Are You Interested is also jumping on the expert bandwagon. AYI.com recently announced that author and relationship expert Laurel House will join the site as its resident dating coach. Laurel has appeared on numerous television shows, including E! News, Weekend TODAY, and most recently MTV, where she was the ultimate "It Girl" dating and confidence-boosting coach for an episode of the channel's MADE show. She is also the author of QuickieChick's Cheat Sheet to Life, Love, Food, Fitness, Fashion and Finance on a Less than Fabulous Budget and the upcoming book No-Games Guide to Love.

For her collaboration with AYI, House will post written and video content to the site's blog to help guide singles through the online dating experience. She will be available via AYI.com's social platforms to offer personalized dating tips to members, and will act as a face of the AYI brand in media interviews.

SNAP's Chief Executive Officer Clifford Lerner commented, "We believe Laurel's depth of experience and professional expertise is unmatched and will greatly help singles looking to connect online. She is aware of what single men and women are looking for in the online dating experience and her ability to guide them in their search for love will only better the AYI.com experience."

My favorite collaboration between an expert and a dating site remains the inimitable Dr. Helen Fisher, who serves as leading expert on the biology of love and attraction for Chemistry.com, but I'm excited to see more professionals in various dating and relationships fields lend their support to the online dating movement.

Could you fall for someone if you never saw their face?

Yeah, me neither, but the creators of Twine, a new dating app available for iOS and Android, are hoping that daters are ready to move beyond those superficial impulses.

These days, apps like Tinder and Bang with Friends are exploding. Apparently what singles want more than anything is a reason to spend even more time staring at the screens of their smartphones, swiping through photo after photo of potential partners. As convenient as those apps are, you've got to admit they can also feel kind of shallow. And that's where Twine comes in.

In the words of its founder, 35-year-old Rohit Singal, Twine aims to pair users based on a "personality first and looks later" philosophy. Matches are made on the location-based app through interests listed on users' Facebook profiles and - here's the catch - once they connect and start chatting, users can only see blurred-out versions of each other's profile photos.

Think of Twine as Tinder's nicer sibling. Both are used on mobile phones, but Twine eschews the hot-or-not model encouraged by Tinder's rapid-fire photo scrolling. Twine prioritizes quality over quantity, just like a real-life matchmaker, and even limits the number of matches members can receive each day to 3 in an effort to discourage excessive window shopping.

"Every other dating app is trying to show you a photo and pick people who are good looking," Singal says, and that approach has worked because "it expedites behavior in real life-we want to connect with attractive people whether the connection's meaningful or not." Singal, however, is determined to blend the easy access of mobile dating with connections based on a deeper level of compatibility.

But don't freak out - you won't be going into a date completely blind. The app's motto is "Flirt first, reveal later," so rest assured that you will get to see your conversation partners before agreeing to meet in person. When you're matched with someone, based on your Facebook interests and age range, you begin the conversation with a blurred version of their Facebook profile photo. If all goes well, you can choose to reveal your names and photos to each other.

Twine also makes another interesting promise beyond more meaningful matches. The app claims to be the first gender balanced flirting network, to ensure an even ratio of men and women. If the ratio is off at any point, new users are put into a queue and aren't allowed to begin using the app until the ratio is in balance again. New sign-ups can bypass the queue simply by inviting a friend of the opposite gender to join with them.

Twine is certainly taking a risk by taking physical attraction out of the picture, but I, at least, am excited to see where it goes.

Every year, Julie Spira and the team behind Cyber-Dating Expert release a list of the best and newest mobile dating application available. This year's 4th annual list couldn't have come at a better time. A recent Pew report on online dating and relationships examined the impact of mobile dating to find that it is rapidly stealing the spotlight from web-based dating services.

Pew found that 7% of mobile phone owners report using a dating application on their smartphone. There's just something about the convenience of dating with a tiny handheld device that's impossible to resist. And not only does it result in meeting more people, Spira says, it also speeds up the process from first communication to meeting in person.