Online Dating

Japan has a well-deserved reputation for being a techno locally advanced nation, but there's one piece of the technological puzzle they haven't mastered: online dating.

Japan is a cultural and economic powerhouse faced with a serious population crisis. The country's overall population will reportedly contract by almost a third within the next 90 years. Its birthrate is one of the lowest on earth, and the marriage rate is also declining.

On top of that, a 2014 survey conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 49% of all respondents had not had sex in the past month, and 18% of men said they had no interest in sex at all.

Add it all together, and you have a country facing some very unique problems. What happens when people no longer want to procreate?

The answer to that remains to be seen. For now, many are asking how Japan got there in the first place and what can be done about it.

Comedian Aziz Ansari and sociologist Eric Klinenberg address the issue in their new book, Modern Romance. "The Japanese are legitimately worried about running out of Japanese people," they write.

One reason could be a cultural fear of being perceived as the sleazy, superficial player-type known as “charai.” Online dating carries a similar social stigma in many countries, but it could be amplified in Japan, causing Japanese singles to avoid it entirely.

Another issue could be online dating's reliance on profile photos. "In Japan, posting any pictures of yourself, especially selfie-style photos, comes off as really douchey,” reads Modern Romance. Instead of posting selfies, which are considered too narcissistic, Japanese singles post photos with multiple people – or even no people at all. It wouldn't be unusual to come across a profile with a picture of a pet or a posession, like a rice cooker.

And that's not all. According to a recent Fast Company article, many singles in Japan view online dating as a scam. Scams sites proliferated back in the 90s, and reports of scams aren't scarce today either. It's scared many singles away and done nothing to reduce the stigma.

Some are using social networking and meetup sites to meet new people, but out-in-the-open online dating is still a controversial subject in a country that prizes subtlety. Companies like Tinder, Match, and OkCupid can't flourish in Japan because the cultural differences are too great.

With young Japanese singles increasingly expressing frustration, the country's dating scene is ready for the “disruption” Silicon Valley startups are so fond of touting. The question is, which company will step up and be the first to blaze a trail into the brave new world?

A recent article in Vanity Fair made the argument that apps like Tinder have ruined dating. Reporter Nancy Jo Sales interviewed single twenty-somethings to get their impressions of online dating, and it wasn’t pretty. They admit that “Tinder sucks” and yet they still keep swiping for lack of a better way to date.

Part of the problem, she argues, is that people have a hook-up mentality with dating apps, and men especially. They meet girls to have sex under the guise of pretending to date them, and women have been burned more than once – making them skeptical that any guy wants a relationship.

This argument isn’t a new one. But the reporter feels that dating apps are the real problem – the technology, not the people using them. Let me be more precise: dating apps make it easier than ever to meet new people, providing a way for those who are averse to commitment to do a date-and-dump.

The problem I see with this argument is that it assumes technology is the problem. If we ditched dating apps and online dating in general and went back to an “easier time” – say 1995 – when dating was supposedly alive and well, and all single people were looking for long-term romance. But this just wasn’t the case. In fact, people would hook up and avoid commitment with relative ease – they just did it in person at bars and clubs, rather than through a dating app. Maybe their choices were limited, but the behavior wasn’t much better.

Remember The Rules – dating advice lexicon of that decade? It centered around dealing with men who had commitment issues, basically teaching women how to use their sexuality and femininity to get what they wanted – a relationship.

We’ve come a lot further in our relationship progress in my opinion, partly in thanks to online dating. Dating apps have helped make online dating mainstream. They have allowed shy types to interact more easily with new people. And yes – while some people do use them for hooking up, many others are looking for real love.

Dating takes time. It takes meeting a lot of people before a connection happens. That is the nature of dating – and with a dating app, the haystack is considerably bigger when you are just trying to find that one needle. So it will take you that much longer.

Instead of getting discouraged and giving up dating apps and online dating altogether, it’s time for a different approach. Let’s embrace online dating. Be truthful about what you want so you don’t waste someone else’s time. And most importantly, be respectful to your dates and you’ll find yourself meeting people who will respect you in return.

Don’t you wish you could tell if someone on an online dating site was lying, or if all the information provided was accurate and up-to-date? Well it seems there’s an app for that.

Been Verified is targeting users of online dating sites in its marketing campaign. The service provides online background checks to help people “discover, understand and use public data in their everyday lives.” Basically, Been Verified consolidates data from many sources of public records, providing a background check on potential dates, including police records, mortgage deeds, and social networking profiles.

If this is unsettling, remember – it is all information that you volunteered or that is automatically public record. So, everyone is searchable, but sometimes it’s difficult to gather all of the information that’s out there. Been Verified just makes it easy – one-stop shopping, if you will.

Been Verified has dealt with a lot of fake profiles and scammers, so they wanted to get the word out to online daters about how to protect yourself. Following are some tips they recommend:

• It’s a big red flag if your online interest asks you for money, especially if it is early on and if you’ve never met face-to-face. Scammers will often ask for money on behalf of a sick relative, a short-term loan to pay rent, or travel money to visit you if he lives out of state.
• Be careful if he avoids meeting you, especially if he states he will be out of the country. There is a reason that scammers don’t want to meet face-to-face.  If they are running a game, they will come up with all kinds of excuses to avoid meeting. Some may use work travel as an excuse, others may say they have shared custody of his kids and it’s his weekend to keep them, or that an ill mother needs to taken care of. Listen carefully to what they are saying.
• To avoid identity theft scams, try Google's reverse image search. Take a few minutes to search the profile's pictures, and if the reverse search shows up across hundreds of pages, it is highly likely that the person is being deceitful and is using someone else’s images as his own.
• When chatting online, make sure the flow of conversation makes sense to ascertain if you’re talking to a live person or a robot profile. Mix up the conversation; see if the person continues to track with you. If they are unable to switch gears, it could be a robot responder giving predetermined responses.
• If his profile is comprised of only one photo and the text is basically empty, they could be a scammer. People who don’t want to be held accountable to the content of their profile will simply leave it blank. If they are too lazy to take the time to self-disclose and post some self-descriptive text, then you should probably take a pass.

Been Verified was founded in 2007 by Josh Levy and Ross Cohen with a mission to help people discover, understand and use public data in their everyday lives. With millions of app downloads and millions of monthly visitors, BeenVerified allows individuals to find more information about people, phone numbers, email addresses and property records.

I read a lot of online dating profiles, and have found a certain commonality. Unfortunately, it’s something that many people don’t think is a deterrent for potential matches, so they don’t notice that they’re doing it. Or they think it will help weed out matches if they include it, but if you do this, it works against you.

What is this thing that we do that is hindering rather than helping our chances?

We state upfront, at the beginning of the profile exactly what we don't want.

In other words, phrases like “no drama, please” is like waving a red flag to your potential dates. As one dater said in her cheeky profile: “your baggage should fit in the glove compartment of your car.” Unfortunately, she is asking for trouble. These kinds of phrases should be tossed. So should descriptives like “no cheaters, crazies, players, gold-diggers, liars,” and those who post “fake profile pictures.”

Why is this such a bad thing? After all, most of us want to avoid these types, right?

The truth is, when you state what you don’t want, you are not only turning off the very people you want to attract (who will assume you are just as crazy, or a liar, etc.), you will attract the kind of dater you don’t want to meet. Are you ready for the drama? Didn't think so.

Your profile isn’t a sounding board for all of your past experiences. While others might identify with you, it won’t necessarily attract them to you. In fact, it works against you. They might be envisioning you stalking them (if you’ve dated cheaters), or that you have lied about your age or posted old photos (if you mentioned no liars), or that you are a drama queen if you are emphatic about not wanting drama in your profile.

Instead, your profile needs to focus on the life you want to create – your future. If you really want to attract someone to you, you have to paint an inviting picture. In other words, focus not only on the positive, but let them know who you are – funny, sensitive, intelligent, really into anime, a Dodgers fan, whatever you would like to include. Invite a conversation by talking about your interests, and asking if potential dates have any stories to share.

Inviting a conversation goes a long way. Describing your interests, your passions, your curiosity about life is sexy and attractive. It makes people want to find out more. They can better envision what dating you might be like.

Emphasizing what you don’t want in a relationship doesn’t communicate anything about you and what you do want, so it’s much harder for potential matches to visualize being in a relationship with you – except for its potential negative consequences. Avoid this, and you will improve your online dating experience significantly.

In Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg’s new book Modern Romance, they discuss the disconnect of online dating in Japanese culture. Despite Japan’s adoption of and love for technology, single people still stigmatize online dating.

The reasons are part cultural and part historical. Japanese singles haven’t had a good experience with online dating, historically speaking. In the 1990’s when online dating first hit the singles scene, online dating companies had male members pay per message and also used their female employees as bait, posting their profiles on the dating sites to attract more male users. More recently, fake dating sites have been exposed, with companies using male employees to pose as girls on the sites and charging their male members to talk to them – (obviously, those members never get to the date).

It’s easy to see why Japanese singles are skeptical. But now dating apps have made things a little easier to verify. First, like most dating apps all over the world, users are verified through their Facebook profile, so it’s not easy to create fake accounts. And Japan is really embracing social media, especially after both LinkedIn and Facebook helped families find each other after the 2011 earthquake.

But another interesting trend is happening with Japanese online daters. The culture is rather conservative when it comes to dating – and guys don’t want to be thought of as players. Since dating apps have become synonymous with hook-ups, Japanese - and men especially - are weary to sign up for fearing like they will come across as insincere. So people aren’t really embracing online dating.

In fact, they aren’t dating much at all. Most Japanese singles are much more focused on work, which means working long hours and delaying starting a family. This is also taking a toll on their social lives. A 2014 survey by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 49% of all respondents had not had sex in the past month, and 18% of men said they had no interest in sex at all. On top of this, they face a serious population decline.  According to Business Insider, a 2012 report by Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research shows the number of Japanese people will fall from 127 million to around 87 million by 2060.

Still not everyone is averse to online dating. The country has seen some interesting trends.

Selfies tend to be popular with online dating in most countries, but are looked upon as narcissistic in Japan. Even a photo showing an online dater by herself is frowned upon because Japanese tend to view this as self-centered. Most daters either post photos with a group of friends (so you can’t really identify the person you are meeting), or they post photos of their cats or random objects. One of the weirdest trends among online daters is posting photos of their rice cookers in their profiles, according to Modern Love.

There are definite cultural and practical barriers to get beyond when it comes to online dating in Japan. But as time goes on and it becomes more trust-worthy and mainstream, hopefully singles will embrace it.

MeetMe is a smaller player in the social networking space, but it has undertaken a number of initiatives to boost its customer base. Looking at the company's financial results for the second quarter of 2015, they appear to be paying off.

Highlights of Q2 include:

• Mobile revenue was $8.3 million, up 47% from the second quarter of 2014
• Mobile revenue represented 75% of total revenue, the highest in MeetMe's history
• Total revenue was $11.1 million, up 4% from the second quarter of 2014
• Cash and Cash Equivalents totaled $16.2 million at June 30, 2015
• Net income was $1.2 million compared to a net loss of $1.4 million for the second quarter of 2014