Types (Niche)

Are you looking for something a little different when it comes to meeting new people? In New York, there's a new twist on the coffee date that you might want to try.

Instead of asking one of your online matches to meet over a cup of coffee, what if you just cut to the chase and met potential dates directly through your local barista? Nancy Slotnik believes a more personal touch is needed when it comes to meeting potential romantic partners, and so she founded Matchmaker Café in New York.

Single customers are invited to drop by her pop-up café in the Financial District and check in with the barista, who also acts as the matchmaker. If you're interested in meeting people, the barista takes your picture and adds it to her database.

It's not exactly hand-picked matchmaking though. The matches are made with the help of technology, not a yenta. Matchmaker Café provides a database and an app to help you sift through your choices, which isn't such a personal touch. But what else would you do as you drink your coffee before your 9am meeting?

Customers have a number of ways of browsing the database of potential coffee date matches. You can subscribe to Matchmaker Café's online app, which launched last November and offers in-person introductions by a matchmaker. (Information for your dating profile is pulled from your Facebook account.) There are currently about 3,000 members. If you're feeling really motivated, you can also pay $5 for three phone introductions or $10 for ten, until the pop-up café closes on Labour Day.

According to Slotnick, the idea is to connect locals with each other and get them offline and meeting face to face, even if it's just for a brief coffee.

Considering all of the mobile dating apps available to meet people nearby, this is another interesting concept to get singles in the same area, who stop by the same neighborhood cafes and pubs, to meet each other face to face. Not many people know their neighbors as well as they know the people in their Twitter feeds. Maybe pop-up concepts like Matchmaker Café can help to change that.

This isn't Slotnick's first attempt at matchmaking via coffee. In 1996, she founded Drip Café, which let customers sift through binders of dating profiles. If a guest found someone he or she wanted to meet, then for a small fee, the café would help arrange a meeting.

People have mixed reactions to the café, but it is getting a lot of buzz and already has gained a following. Would you visit a pop-up café like this one?

New surveys from married dating site (what a nice way to put it) AshleyMadison.com have revealed what cheaters really want.

In a surprise twist, the answer is not just "some extra-marital action." Nope, it turns out that Ashley Madison's unfaithful clientele is actually looking for a very specific kind of extracurricular experience.

When it comes to infidelity, it's all about class.

• 83.1% of middle-class male Ashley Madison members want to cheat with a working-class woman.
• 51.8% of upper-class men are looking for a middle-class woman.
• 42.4% of upper-class men are seeking a working class-woman for an affair.

"Despite the changing socio-economic landscape, men across the board still want to be the Alpha partner in a relationship," says Noel Biderman, Ashley Madison founder and CEO. "Men want someone to admire and look up to them, someone they can impress because fundamentally most men lack confidence."

For women, it's a different story.

• 7% of female Ashley Madison members who describe themselves as 'working class' say they are looking for an upper class affair partner.

"This is a reflection of economic hard times as much as confirmation of traditional class stereotypes," Biderman offers by way of explanation. "For women who are struggling financially...a fling with an upper-class man represents glamour and escape, a holiday from daily life, perhaps an element of security."

Middle class women are in a class of their own.

• Only 40.7% of middle-class women on the site say they would prefer an affair with an upper-class man.
• 53.6% specified that they would prefer to philander within the middle class.

Biderman has the following words of wisdom to offer on women of the middle class: "Middle-class women are more likely to be financially independent and better educated, their needs are different. They want intimacy and shared experience with an equal rather than to be swept off their feet, Jane Austen style."

There's no word on what upper class women want because...I guess they don't exist? Is that what Noel Biderman is trying to tell me? Is this the "Women earn 70 cents for every dollar a man earns" thing at play? None of us make enough money to be considered upper class cheaters?

The wage gap at work, folks. Someone had better sort out the equal pay for women issue stat, so we can get in on the upper crust infidelity action too!

Nowadays, some online dating sites and apps are trying something new: instead of creating a brand-new profile, they just take information from your preexisting social media sites. For those who don’t like writing about themselves, this is something of a relief; they’ve already suffered through once, and that’s enough for them. However, before you sign up for one of these services, you might want to check what your social media actually says about you.

First of all, there’s the privacy issue. What, exactly, will this dating service pull from your social networks? Let’s say you had all your information set to friends-only - will you need to make certain information public for the app to work? Furthermore, if you didn’t want it public before, how comfortable are you with the same info being used on a dating site? For those who are vigilant about protecting their privacy, getting the answers to these questions is vital before signing up to a specific site, lest you reveal something you didn’t intend.

Next up is the content itself. If you have profiles on long-established social networking sites, there’s a large chance that your information is outdated and potentially cringe-inducing. Maybe your favorite quotes are no longer from that movie everyone loved to drunk-quote in college. Maybe your goals are no longer the same. Maybe you’re now embarrassed that you included your childhood paper route in your work history.

Yet another aspect to consider is social network sites that include pictures. These pictures might include some that are also old and outdated, or worse yet, have been uploaded by friends and don’t necessarily feature your finest moments. Perhaps they even feature past relationships. Granted, whenever you ‘friend’ someone on the social networking site, you’re giving them permission to see all this and more; however, you’ve probably at least met them in person by then and are prepared for that level of vulnerability. If you don’t normally make such pictures public, make sure you know what will be seen by potential dates.

On typical online dating sites, you’re encouraged to do ‘maintenance’ on your profile, to keep it fresh and interesting and ensure that it still creates the first impression you want. Before you sign up with a site that incorporates your social networking profiles, make sure you fully understand what you’re signing up for - and then make sure it sends an accurate, positive and up-to-date message.

Dating apps are fast becoming the rage among young singles, especially location-based apps like Tinder, typically used for the purpose of hooking up. But a new service called Twine aims to do things a little differently.

Instead of scrolling through photos to see who's "hot or not", like Tinder, Twine pulls information from your Facebook profiles and matches you with other members nearby based on mutual interests. Oh, and they also blur out photos so that you can start chatting and flirting first, and then decide if you want to reveal your pics to each other later.

While this might sound like a waste of time to daters looking to meet someone quickly, many women tend to shy away from location-based dating apps, which doesn't help the odds if you're a man. Females (more than males) get barraged with invitations from potential dates, and because of the overload of guys virtually approaching them, they are less likely to engage. However, with Twine, everyone has to work a little harder, which makes it that much more engaging, and potentially that much more appealing to female users.

Another great aspect of Twine's strategy is that it aims to cut down on spam and fake profiles. One way it does this is through gender restrictions. Men and women using the service must be represented in equal numbers, so if there are currently more men signed up than women, new members will be put on a waiting list until more women join. Also, users aren't allowed to upload their own photos, they are instead pulled directly from your Facebook profile, so you can't post a picture of someone else.

Other dating apps have launched recently that are also focused on delivering more quality matches. One such app is At First Sight, which provides short video profiles of members to scroll through. With this app, you're getting a feel for what the person is like, how he sounds, what gestures he uses - rather than just a static photo - which helps when making a decision about whether or not you want to meet someone. (It also helps filter those fake profiles.) When I downloaded it however, it was a little clumsy to use. The videos are presented in a chain, and you can keep scrolling down until you find someone who interests you, which means you might stop and start several different video profiles. I do like that each person chooses a question to answer, rather than just a free-flowing format.

Regardless of your preferences, dating apps are here to stay, and might well be the most popular way to meet singles in the future. Even traditional online dating sites are developing their own apps. Either way, isn't it good to have more opportunities to meet people, no matter how you do it?

Once upon a time, in a galaxy that now seems far, far away, online dating was considered the last refuge of the hopeless. It was something to be ashamed of, a final resort for people who had exhausted all other opportunities for finding love. (And secretly, we didn't think they'd be able to find it online either.)

Oh, how the tables have turned. Online dating is now the second most popular way for couples to meet, surpassed only by meeting through mutual friends. It's part of a daily routine for millions of people - wake up, read your email, check Facebook, answer messages on your online dating site. It's even starting to feel like the people who haven't tried online dating are in the minority.

According to Harry Reis, a professor of psychology who coauthored a 2012 study on online dating called Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science, the switch likely happened because the Western world experienced a transition in the way it approaches romance. Prior to the rise of online dating, it was difficult for adults to meet each other once they'd moved on from high school and college. Online dating offered a fresh take on connection.

"Online dating is definitely a new and much needed twist on relationships," says Reis. "The Internet holds great promise for helping adults form healthy and supportive romantic partnerships, and those relationships are one of the best predictors of emotional and physical health."

Online dating was a natural progression. In this hyper-connected era in which we spend a good portion of our lives on the Web, it's no surprise that we find ourselves drawn to online dating. Dating sites provide a sense of security, and unprecedented access and information.

When you log on to a dating site, you feel confident that that (most) everyone you see is looking for a date, and you're able to extract large amounts of information about potential partners immediately, before you've ever even spoken. On top of that, most dating sites help you narrow the field further using detailed search metrics and complex matching systems.

That sounds pretty futuristic and space age-y as-is, but online dating is already beginning to evolve into something else. With more people using the Internet on mobile devices than desktops or laptops, the world of online dating is starting to blend into traditional dating to form the latest craze: mobile dating.

Apps like Tinder and Swoon streamline the dating experience by eschewing long profiles in favor of simple processes to browse and select dates. And unlike standard dating websites, these mobile apps connect you with dates in your immediate area, making dating's newest direction easier and more relaxed than it has ever been before.

Mobile technology may be changing how we date, according to a recent study by popular dating websites ChristianMingle.com and JDate.com. Texting is fast becoming the preferred method of communication in relationships, including asking someone out for the first time or even for breaking up.

The study found that approximately one third of men (31%) and slightly more women (33%) find it easier to ask someone out on a date via text rather than making a phone call. Also, 55% of singles feel their mobile devices make it easier to meet and get to know people they may be interested in dating. And 64% of singles feel the quality of relationships with those they are dating or interested in dating has improved due to their mobile devices.

The study notes that mobile devices make it easier to break up, too. More than 50 percent of singles said they would consider breaking up with someone they were casually dating via text and an incredible 24% would consider ending an exclusive relationship that way.

Technology has been a part of dating for a while. Online dating started as a novel idea that gained popularity over time. Mobile technology has provided us with even more access to meeting people and dating, since our phones travel with us. We can meet a friend at the bar, open a mobile app and see if there are any other singles at the same bar that we might be interested in dating. You have so much information at your fingertips, and you can communicate via your phone. So it makes sense that daters are gravitating to their phones to connect with more people.

The study found some other interesting results:

• Seventy-eight percent of singles expect to communicate within 24 hours after a good first date. And after a good date, a majority of the men and women surveyed agree it doesn't matter who initiates the next communication.

• Don't be coy. Forty-six percent of singles have become upset with someone they are dating over their text response time, with more women (52%) getting upset than men (40%).

• Texting is the most frequent form of communication, particularly for those ages 21 to 26, who report texting several times a day before going on a date (50%), during a casual relationship (43%) and during an exclusive relationship (62%).

• 96 percent of singles keep phones out of sight during a date. But, somehow, 67% still find a way to check their phones during a date.

The study surveyed 1,500 U.S. singles between the ages of 21 and 50.