Types (Niche)

The 50 plus singles crowd is not necessarily looking for casual dates. They are looking for a long term relationships that offer companionship. This group of online daters still is being reported as the fastest growing group of singles on dating sites. In the last U.S. Census, seniors are also a growing demographic. It was reported that there are 95.9 million single people in America. 15.8 million (16.5 %) of these people are 65 years or older (see Story). Let's see how some of the more popular dating sites are performing in this demographic.

Match.com is reporting 16 percent of men and 17 percent of women members are 50 or older. Match.com also reported 1,403 million paying subscribers in quarter 3 of this year so this means there are about 236,000 members on Match who are at least 50.

eHarmony's first quarter of 2009 saw a 20 percent growth in users 60 and over when compared to 2008. While we don't have any actual subscriber numbers, we do know that the average age on eHarmony is 35 and that they have been getting about 3.6 million unique visitors per month on their dating sites (US, UK, and Canada).

In the last 5 years Lavalife.com more than doubled its members who are 45 or older. In response to this surge in members, LavalifePRIME was launched in 2007 and now has more than 70,000 members.

To find out more about the dating sites listed here please read our eHarmony review, Match.com review, and our LavalifePRIME review. For more dating site specifically for seniors, check out our Dating Over 50 category.

What services are included in the mobile dating market? Basically anything designed to be accessed by a cell phone for the purposes of finding and communicating with a date. This includes mobile phone applications (think iPhone Apps), mobile internet services (accessible via the phones web browser) and text based services (Twitter like).

The global mobile dating market appears to have a bright future indeed. In 2007 the industry was worth $330 million already (Juniper Research). By 2008 it had jumped over 60% to $550 million and by 2013 it is expected to double to $1.3 billion.

In part what is driving this industry are the capabilities of the phones themselves. As more people get GPS enabled smart phones and as the dating software become more sophisticated, yet easier to use for the user, more people are willing to try out these services. Still, mobile phone dating is more about instant gratification. It is considered a tech-savvy young adults tool, who is not looking for so much a long term relationship, but a casual fling or hook-up. This is why most dating profiles on a mobile dating service contains only a few questions since it is designed primarily to get the user to be able to search for matches as soon as possible.

Here is a list of a few dating applications usable on your phone:

• DateCheck - For background checks. You can search criminal records and if they own property, etc...
• Skout - An iPhone app that uses the iPhones GPS to offer a real-time location based service for online daters.
• Radaroo - A Twitter app for meeting singles.
• Zoosk - A dating site which integrates with social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

The free dating site OkCupid is also planning to launch a free iPhone dating app in the near future which will offer a location based service. Sam Yagan, CEO of OkCupid.com says that the main challenges is to create a big enough user base in which to work from and to try to get people to the same place and at the same time.

For more on this story, read Chicago Now. For dating sites which offer services for your phone (web based and applications), check out our Mobile Phone Dating category. Our Zoosk review can be found here.

247 iPhone owners nationwide were surveyed (I know not a very big sample pool) by Retervo to produce a snapshot profile of a typical user. Here are the highlights of what they found out:

Question: What makes a person more attractive, a college degree or cool gadgets?

• According to the survey 75 percent of iPhone owners prefer to date someone with cool gadgets.

Question: Have you texted or emailed someone to break up with them?

Self Magazine did an informal survey of its female readers about internet dating, casual sex and porn. It doesn't say how many people took the survey but let's take a look at some of the results anyways.

Question: Who is using an online dating site?

• Age 18 to 25 - 29%
• Age 26 to 35 - 52%
• Age 36 to 50 - 51%
• Age 51 and older - 68%

I'm blessed with a wide variety of friends. Straight friends, gay friends, bi friends, transgendered friends, transsexual friends. Not only are they great people, but they give me a glimpse into their worlds, especially when it comes to online dating. In this article, I want to specifically address the concerns of bisexual men in the online dating world.

Some people will argue that there's "no such thing" as bisexual men - that as soon as a man is with another man, he becomes gay and that is that. (Funny how women can be bi and that's perfectly acceptable, if not lauded!) It's a pretty narrow-minded view, but if it's yours, go ahead and click through to another article. There's nothing to see here for you.

As a bisexual man, you're dealing with narrow-minded people, both male and female. There are women who are just as weirded out by the idea of a bisexual man as men are. In fact, I have a friend who hides his bisexuality from his wife. He doesn't act on it, but he dated men before they met and continues to fantasize about men to this day. But he loves his wife and is very much attracted to her too. He keeps his bi tendencies under wraps because he'd rather not risk losing her.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from bisexual men who list their sexuality honestly on their dating profile is that they get plenty of attention from men (both gay and bi) but hardly any emails from women. This may not be a huge problem if you don't mind dating men, but if you're feeling the pull toward the fairer sex, the pickings are slim.

Oftentimes, what works to overcome this issue is posting two dating profiles - one as a gay man and one as a straight man. This works very well on free sites, but obviously will cost you double if you are on a paid site. (I've never tried it before, but I'm thinking you may even need a different credit card to register two paid profiles.)

Since gay men aren't going to be searching for straight men (usually!), your alter ego won't show up in their searches. Since straight women aren't going to be searching for gay men, they won't find your gay side. You're still bisexual, but a little more separated than usual. Is it deceptive? A little. But you are straight AND gay, so it's not entirely a lie.

Any bisexual men have additional tips on how they manage their online dating presence?

The American Association of Retired Persons or AARP, is the largest organization for people 50 years and older in the United States. AARP recently announced that they have a new love and relationships expert, Dr. Pepper Schwartz, who is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington and has more than 35 years of experience in researching love and relationships. Dr Schwartz is also Perfectmatch.com's relationship expert and helped oversee the design of their automated matching system.

As part of her new duties at AARP, Dr. Schwartz will be writing a weekly online column called "The Naked Truth" at the AARP website which will cover a number of topics related to relationships, love and sexuality. She will also contribute to other online resources with videos, online chatting and blogs. This content will be both for educational and instructional purposes.

To find out about the dating site Dr. Pepper Schwartz is associated with, read our review of Perfectmatch.com.