General News

If you're looking to join an online dating site, the first two weeks after Christmas are the best time to do it. At least according to Zoosk, the dating website which typically sees a 26% increase in sign-ups during that time. According to Match.com, the busiest time of year for dating is between Christmas and February 14th.

So once you sign up for an online dating site, how do you attract the attention of other members?

Because of the expected rush of new sign-ups, Zoosk also put together data combed from over 4,000 members of the site to see what kind of profiles and pictures get the most responses. Why not make the most of your online dating experience this New Year?

Here are a few facts Zoosk shared to help you get a little more attention and increase your response rate:

Use a full-body picture. While you might feel a little self-conscious, users who post full body photos (both for males and females) typically receive three times as many messages as the average dater, and 33% more responses to their messages. It's not about looking perfect - it's showing who you are and that you have nothing to hide.

It's not all about work. People who talk about their hobbies in their online dating profiles fare better than those who don't. Exercise is always a winner. If you mention jogging, running, lifting weights or yoga, you get 21% more messages. If you say book, read or write, you also get 21% more messages. And if you mention music, guitar, or singing? You'll notice a 15% increase in your messages.

Be positive. Using words like "alone" won't help you in your online dating quest - in fact, you'll see 24% fewer messages. However, if you use words like creative, ambitious, laugh or healthy, you'll see a definite boost of 33% more messages.

Don't include pets or friends in your photos. Online daters want to know who they are dating - and if you pose with others in the picture, it takes the focus off of you. Zoosk found that having more than one person in your photo resulted in 42% fewer messages. Not only that - including pets isn't such a great idea either, even if you are looking for a pet-friendly date. Zoosk found that those who posed with animals received a whopping 53% fewer messages.

Selfies are gender-biased. If you're a guy and you want to take a selfie in the bathroom mirror, think again. You'll receive 8% fewer messages with selfie photos than your female counterparts - who receive a 4% uptick in messages with their selfies.

Happy dating!

Online daters routinely choose matches based on criteria that are highly correlated with political preferences.

That sounds like a good thing, right? It seems only natural that we would gravitate to partners who share our political beliefs, and it stands to reason that relationships made up of partners with the same political leanings are more likely to last.

But social scientists fear that, where politics are concerned, our online dating habits are ultimately making us less tolerant citizens. A report in the journal Political Behavior suggests the increasing use of online dating and social media sites is preventing people from meeting potential partners who don't share their political preference, because it's easy to filter out potential partners with differing viewpoints. Once you move past the idea of improved compatibility, what you're left with is more couples that lean toward political extremism.

It doesn't stop there. Not only are such couples more likely to shift to the ideological extremes because they lack access to contradictory opinions, they are also more likely to have children who hold the same ideologically extreme positions. And what do you get when you put it all together? A more polarized America, where fewer and fewer people are able to understand how others could possibly think differently from themselves.

Now that's a scary thought. And possibly the plot to the next best-seller dystopian novel.

The importance of mixed political partnering cannot be understated. When political views in a relationship are mixed, the individuals involved tend to be moderated by their partners and less fixed in their ideas. One might even change their party identification in order to match the other's preferences, or because conversations with their partner have genuinely changed their beliefs. But even if no such change occurs, people tend to be far more tolerant of opposing views when they are exposed to divergent opinions from people they hold dear.

We all want to live in a world of more tolerance, don't we?

The report also notes that the demographic makeup of the people who are most likely to meet their partners online are upper income college graduates - a.k.a. the exact same people who are most likely to vote, contact their congressmen, and be members of the interest groups that influence Washington lawmaking.

What consequences will it mean for democracy, if online dating causes our political process to become even more divisive than it already is? And how can "opposites attract," if they're never given the chance to?

Last week TrueCar.com bought the True.com domain from the now bankrupt dating site True Beginnings. They paid $350,000 US in cash which was the asking price.

True has been heading down hill for years now and after some lawsuits in 2009 we stopped recommending the service.

For more on the story you can read Elliot's Blog.

Big changes are in store for Match in 2014, and by "big" I really mean big. IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet holding company controlled by billionaire Barry Diller, plans to turn its Match dating services into a separate business with its own chairman. The newly created group - which also includes Tutor.com, DailyBurn and IAC's investment in Skyllzone - could be setting the stage for a potential spinoff.

A whole lot of internal rearrangement will follow the creation of the new business, called Match Group. Greg Blatt, IAC's chief executive officer, will become chairman. Blatt will continue to report directly to Barry Diller, the Chairman and Senior Executive of the Company. Sam Yagan, the CEO of Match, will become CEO of the Group, where he will focus on growing the dating businesses, implementing best practices, and expanding the Match Group portfolio. Blatt will step down as CEO of IAC and will not be replaced. Instead, Joey Levin, CEO of Search & Applications, and Kerry Trainor, CEO of Vimeo, will report directly to Diller.

Diller explained the move in a statement released just before Christmas. "Over the last three years our areas of focus have crystallized, our management teams have developed, our reporting lines have consolidated, and Greg and I agree that a less centralized operating structure, pushing talent and decision-making closer to the businesses, is now the best way to achieve our growth objectives," he said.

"IAC has evolved into three principal areas of focus," he continued, "and we're now organizing that way. First the Match Group, with early and later stage businesses, collectively represents a significant portion of IAC's value. Our ambitions for growth here are great, and with Greg continuing to work alongside Sam Yagan and the talented management teams these businesses have in place, I have utterly no worry that our goals will be realized."

Investors seem to be equally confident. IAC stock vaulted to a six-year high of 70.44 in afternoon trading directly after the announcement, then closed the day up 14% at 68.49. Shares have rebounded 29% since October 30, when IAC's stock sank more than 8% following a disappointing third-quarter sales report and an analyst downgrade.

Things look bright for the spinoff. "They are effectively aligning the best management resources in the best way possible," John Blackledge, a New York-based analyst at Cowen Group Inc., told Bloomberg. "All those businesses that they have spun off before have been pretty significant," added San Francisco-based analyst Kerry Rice.

To find out more about this dating service you can read our review of Match.com.

I've seen a lot of unusual things in my years spent exploring the on- and offline dating industries, but this strikes me as one of the odder ones.

It's called the MY Single Band, and it's a bracelet that advertises your singlehood. Essentially, it's the single person's equivalent of a wedding ring - a piece of jewelry that identifies your relationship status and encourages or discourages approaches from others. Except the brightly colored MY Single Bands won't set you back nearly as much as a diamond.

"What if you could identify everyone who is single?" asks MY Single World. "The more we thought about the idea of identifying single people, the more we realized the extent to which we take a passive approach to meeting others." Online dating is helping singles take a more proactive approach to their love lives, but offline dating lacks tools that facilitate connection and discourage passivity. "Through increased connectivity, MY Single Band gives fate, future and destiny a helping hand," the site continues.

If that doesn't already sound like an over-the-top mission, just listen to what the site's creators, Rob Young and Rina Mardahl, have to say. The pair claim that the silicone wristbands are the "future of dating" and that, if they catch on, MY Single Bands are poised to put online dating out of business. Sounds like a tall order, if you ask me. One that isn't likely to come through any time soon.

In theory, by wearing the Livestrong-esque MY Single Band, you announce your status to the world in hopes that someone will spot the bracelet and start a conversation. It's a nice thought, but does it stand any chance of working in reality?

Plenty of engaged (or married, for that matter) women can attest that sporting a ring on their fingers doesn't do much to deter men from approaching them. What are the odds that a brightly colored bracelet will do the opposite?

Then there's the simple problem of recognition. Unless a whole bunch of singles suddenly become aware of MY Single Bands and their significance, they won't be useful for anything more than accessorizing. And with so many similar rubber wristbands on the market, MY Single Bands could easily be mistaken for a bucketload of other things.

There's also the stigma situation. Online dating lugged around a sense of shame for years, one that announcing your availability via a bracelet could easily adopt. The site's owners are convinced their bracelets would shed those concerns quickly, but I have my doubts. I'm all for adding a little color to my wardrobe, but I don't think I'll be using it to find dates any time soon.

This is a truly international take on online dating.

A Russian man, Andrey Andreev, who established the London-based online dating service Badoo, has found his site winning over users in France, Spain, and Italy. "The seven-year-old company says it has signed up some 200 million people worldwide, 25 million of them active users," reports Bloomberg, "making it the biggest dating service, according to ComScore."

Andreev's ambition is to make Badoo "a social network for meeting new people," rather than a service for connecting users with people they already know. So far, his ambition has paid off: Badoo has been profitable since 2009, with last year's sales expanding about a third to $200 million. The company now has its headquarters in a loft in London's trendy SoHo district, has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as an advisor, and may have an IPO in its future.

The challenge Andreev now faces is to keep US rivals like Tinder and OkCupid at bay, while expanding Badoo beyond its current strongholds in southern Europe and Latin America.

The key to doing so might be Badoo's business model. Unlike services like Match.com, Badoo doesn't charge a monthly fee. Instead, users are invited to pay 1 euro to highlight their profile on the site and increase their chances of being noticed. Because the advantage only lasts for a minute or two - until other people pay to raise their profiles as well - Badoo says that some dedicated users have paid for as many as 20 boosts per day.

Competitors' responses to Badoo's success have been mixed. Jessica Delpirou, director of Meetic France, told Bloomberg that Badoo is no threat to her service, saying that users prefer her more traditional dating site (a sister to Match.com in the US) despite its higher price, because it creates better matches. "People seeking serious relations need confidentiality and tend to pay for a subscription," Delpirou said.

OkCupid founder Sam Yagan told Bloomberg that he, too, believes his service is superior to Badoo and is rated higher by users. Officials from other competitors, like Tinder, did not return Bloomberg's requests for comment.

Right now, Badoo far outstrips Jiayuan, the largest dating service in China, which registered 19 million active users as of September 2013, according to ComScore. Badoo's userbase is also larger than Meetic's 16 million, Match.com's 8 million, and OkCupid's 2 million. And that's all before further expansion into Asia, Britain, and America, which Andreev is currently eyeing. If things continue on the same path, these other dating sites might soon be changing their tunes.