General News

Watch out, world - there's a new eHarmony in town.

eHarmony has been an online dating staple since its launch in 2000, but it's hardly seen any changes over the last decade. Now eHarmony is finally ready to roll out some much-needed updates, catapulting the site squarely back into the middle of the modern online dating game. In fact, the new site is so up-to-date that it's even optimized for use on the iPad. Now that's hip.

The next generation of the site, code named "Malibu," has been redesigned to enhance the customer experience. The comprehensive remodeling will dramatically change the user dashboard and member profile pages, which will soon take on a magazine-like aesthetic for all members. Instead of displaying profile details in multiple box modules, the new and improved profiles aim to tell a story. Editing pages will also become a more intuitive experience.

Here's another change users are bound to be pleased about: no more third-party ads on the site. eHarmony's new commitment to engaging visuals and readability means that outside advertisements will no longer be seen on the site. The focus will be purely on creating relationships, with no distractions.

A new relationship questionnaire will also be making its debut on eHarmony. The stuffy and intimidating design of the old questionnaire will be replaced by a colorful and image-heavy design that looks more like a game and less like a daunting clinical form. Now that the sign-up process takes half the time to complete, the site has seen a 20% spike in the number of new users who fill out the questionnaire.

With the eHarmony redesign also comes this treat for members: a new, more visual personality profile called "The Book of You." "Our thought is that in order to be ready for that amazing relationship or that amazing person, you really should understand yourself and how people perceive you," Arvind Mishra, the company's VP of product management, told Mashable. The first few sections of "The Book of You" will be available to all users. The later sections will only be available to members with premium subscriptions.

If you ask me, it's about time eHarmony gave their service a makeover. "Our original site was incredibly scientific and incredibly sterile," said Mishra, but the new site will focus on empowering the user. The fresh focus on user experience will bring a human, emotional element to the site that its previous iteration was lacking. eHarmony's commitment to creating lasting relationships is still there, but now it comes with a much prettier face and more enjoyable user experience.

It's the age-old question: can men and women be friends without any sexual urges or entanglements? This has been a subject of contention over the years, depicted in many movies from When Harry Met Sally to Friends with Benefits.

A new study has shed some light on the subject, affirming that it is difficult for men and women to be friends without any romantic feelings. At least, it's more difficult for men.

Online social dating site Canoodle.com surveyed 1,500 singles to find out where they stood, and while only 27% of women admitted to harboring feelings for a male friend, a whopping 56% of men said they'd want to be more than friends with their female buds!

For those of you wondering whether or not you should make the move and confess your feelings, the odds are in your favor. Sixty percent of men surveyed said they'd successfully turned their friendships into romantic relationships, and women came in with a 44% success rate.

However, if you have sex and then regret it, you may have some problems. Only 38% of women said it's possible to have sex and then go back to being friends. Fortunately, men don't feel the same way. A majority 52% of men said they'd be totally cool with being friends again after sex.

While this study does shed some light on the subject, it is a difficult situation. Most people are afraid to jeopardize a friendship, especially if they have a long history together, or have seen each other through other relationships that didn't last. Would it be better to throw caution to the wind and confess your feelings to your friend? What if he didn't feel the same? Or if he did, what if your relationship didn't work out in the long run?

These are all risks that we take in life. If you have strong feelings for someone, you owe it to yourself (and to your friendship) to address them, because chances are the other person is already aware. It's hard to hide romantic attraction, no matter how discreet you think you're being. It's better to be honest and move forward from there.

If you confess and your friend isn't interested, don't despair. If she's a good, true friend, you will likely stay friends even if you take a little time apart to move past it.

And if you confess and your friend is totally into you too? Even better, don't you think?

The word on everybody's lips right now is: Tinder.

No, they're not trying to start campfires...they're talking about the new dating app that's been taking the world by storm.

Created by Hatch Labs - an LA-based startup backed by IAC, the same digital media giant that also owns Match and OKCupid - Tinder has exploded onto the scene since its launch in October. Here's why:

• It's free.
• It's casual.
• It's connected to Facebook.
• It doesn't focus on the traditional profile model.
• It's location-enabled.
• It's targeting the tech-savvy younger generations.

You may not have heard of it yet, but Tinder has already sparked 50 million matches and 4.5 billion user ratings. Not bad for an app that's barely more than six months old...

The Tinder team is determined to keep that momentum going. They're already hard at work to create tools to enhance the Tinder experience, like the brand new "Matchmaker" feature. The update allows users to make introductions between any of their Facebook friends, whether or not they're already on Tinder.

It's easy: Just select two friends, add a message, and press send. Once a user has matched two Facebook friends, they can chat within Tinder without sharing their contact information. If the friends aren't already using the app, Tinder sends them a message on Facebook and asks them to sign up for an account to see the post.

An additional feature of Matchmaker allows the person who made the introduction to see if the match is active. That way they can get a sense of their success rate, and gently encourage a match to communicate more if the conversation goes silent.

"Right now introductions are a very difficult process," says Sean Rad, Tinder's CEO. "They're slow, they're socially awkward. This is a socially acceptable environment for you to make introductions in an easy way."

Rad hopes that the introductions will go beyond dating. Need a connection for a new car, or the perfect employee for your startup? Rad's goal is to make Tinder's Matchmaker feature your go-to for relationships and networking of all kinds. So far, its success has been even more than he imagined.

Tinder launched a month-long test of Matchmaker with 100 users. Rad expected about 10% of the test population to make connections, while the other 90% benefited from the introductions made. Instead, nearly all of the beta users made multiple introductions.

Sounds like Tinder is about to have another success story on its hands.

Stereotypes aren't always true. While prevailing wisdom indicates that older men like to date younger women, it turns out they aren't the only ones interested in dating younger.

A recent study conducted by dating app Are You Interested, which connects members based on their Facebook profiles, found that women were five times more likely to show interest in a man five years younger than one who is five years older. And as it turns out, the men are a little more open to dating older women. While 42% wouldn't consider reaching out to a woman who was older, if these same men were contacted by an older woman, most would entertain the idea of dating. Only 22% of men said they were less likely to respond when an older woman contacted them first.

Are You Interested pulled data from its 68 million downloads and 20 million Facebook profiles of members to see which ones were making successful matches. From this user base, they focused on 35,942 users aged 30 to 49.

Age seems to be a key factor. Members in their twenties were not considered, and there might be more diversity among them.

According to Are You Interested, one of the reasons for the trend of women going for younger men is that they get inundated with messages from older men, so dating older doesn't hold much appeal. There is something else to consider too, which is the fact that young women in general are putting more time and energy into their careers and education, making more money than their young male counterparts. They have little desire to settle down or to date someone older for reasons of financial security.

So what does this mean if you are online dating? Should you make sure that you don't date anyone more than two or three years older? Should you start limiting your search to profiles of younger men?

Most people do have age preferences, but if you are strict about them when you're online dating, you're missing out on opportunities. If you set age limits, you're more likely to set other hard limits too, like only dating men who live within a ten-mile radius, or who are taller, or who have a certain type of career. The choosier we are, the more people we are not getting the privilege of meeting, which is counter-productive in dating. The more you date, and especially the more you date outside your "type," the more you can draw on a vast array of experiences. Then you can make a truly informed decision about what type of person you want, and what kind of relationship you desire.

eHarmony's free communication event is happening in the United States from June 28 to June 30 on eHarmony.com and in Canada from June 27 to July 1 on eHarmony.ca. This is a long weekend for Canada as July 1st is Canada Day. I am surprised that the US event is not happening next week when Independence Day is celebrated.

Update: 2013-07-03 - We just learned that eHarmony.com is also having a free communication weekend July 4 - 8 in celebration of Independence Day.

The main thing free communication weekends allow are for non-paying members to send and receive emails. So, all you need to do is visit eHarmony and create your account and fill out your profile (this can take about 30 minutes). Once completed you will then start to be sent matches based on the type of person you said you are looking for along with someone who has compatible personality traits with you. After reviewing their profiles and once you find one or more matches you like, you can then start the guided communication process. This process is 3 stages that allow you to better get to know each other. Once they are complete you can then move on to post guided communication which is eHarmony Mail (email). One thing to note is free communication does not include photos, secure call or skip straight to email.

There last free communication weekend happened in May on Memorial Day (see Story). To find out more about this service you can take a look at our in-depth review of the dating site eHarmony.

Let's face it: when you think of finding love online, you don't think of POF.com. Though the site started out with good intentions, it's now known as a seedy den of no-strings-attached hookups and dubiously real profiles.

But that's all about to change. Markus Frind, CEO and Founder of PlentyOfFish.com, is taking radical action to revamp the site and restore its reputation.

"When I created POF," he said in an email to users, "I wanted it to be all about finding relationships with the right person. For the first 7 years this worked really well, I got the site to 10 million users without any employees and POF was generating a ton of relationships." Then the smartphone became the most popular technological gadget in the world, and online dating changed.

"Today about 70% of POF use is via a mobile phone," Frind explained, "and unfortunately about 2% of men started to use POF as more of a hookup site mostly due the casual nature of cell phone use." Displeased with the turn his site has taken, Frind is determined to give POF a makeover.

To bring the site back to his original vision, Frind is making three major changes:

1. Any first contact between users that is sexual in nature will not be sent. Users who try to skirt the new rule will automatically be deleted from the site's database with no warning. Frind says that this rule has already been in effect, and has noticeably improved the site.
2. Contact can only happen between users with an age difference of 14 years or under. "There is no reason for a 50 year old man to contact an 18 year old women," said Frind. "The majority of messages sent outside those age ranges are all about hookups." The same automatic deletion policy also applies to this new rule.
3. The "Intimate Encounters and Married" users of the site will no longer exist. Of the 3.3 million people who use POF daily, Frind notes, only 6,041 are single women looking for intimate encounters - and of those 6,041 women, most are men pretending to be women.

Frind promises that the vast majority of POF users will not be affected by the changes taking place. Those who are using the site as he intended - to find real, lasting relationships - will barely be impacted, other than by a welcome decrease in spammy, sex-seeking messages.

The old POF was the most popular free dating site in the country. Can the new POF live up to the success of its predecessor? Post your own Plenty of Fish review and let us know.