Online Dating

The perks of online dating are many, but spend enough time clicking through profiles and you’ll probably find yourself at least a little bit nostalgic for the old days. You can't beat the convenience of an online dating website, but there was something nice about being set up by your friends. It added an extra level of security. You felt comfortable in the knowledge that whoever you were meeting had already been vetted by someone you trust, and therefore probably wasn't a total jerk.

For a long time, that's been one of the biggest barriers online dating has faced. No matter what dating sites do to screen users, it never compares to the recommendation of a close friend.

Until now, that is. Enter MyCuteFriend, a new dating app that asks women to nominate their single guy friends as potential dates for other women. “Where every guy comes recommended” reads the app’s slogan, and that’s precisely what it offers: every guy who appears on MyCuteFriend has been vouched for by an actual, IRL human being.

Created by John Furneaux and Steve Chen, the app was designed specifically to make the online dating experience more pleasant for women – so you will see women nominating men, but never the other way around. After hearing constant complaints about online dating from their female friends, Furneaux and Chen realized that women needed a way to keep the creepy out. They enlisted a mostly female design team to create the functionality and user interface, and MyCuteFriend was born.

To use the app, women select a number of hashtags (which cover everything from body to brain) to describe their eligible friends. Photos are then pulled from the men’s Facebook profiles. Once a guy has been nominated, he receives a notification and must accept it and download the app before his profile becomes active. Women can nominate any man they are friends with on Facebook.

On the other side of things, women can browse the hashtags and photos, responding with a simple “Yes” or “No, thanks.” There are no long, boring questionnaires and no anonymous creepy stalkers. Women can only receive messages from guys they have said “Yes” to.

For even more customization, short video clips can be recorded and included in the profiles. Basically it's like the love child between Tinder and Vine, with a little bit of Facebook thrown in. So far the app has only launched in San Francisco, but will no doubt expand to other cities if it proves to be successful.

From June 19th 12:01 am PST (Pacific Standard Time) to June 22nd 11:59 pm PST users of eHarmony can communicate with their matches for no cost. This is an ideal time to try out this dating site since this promotion is heavily advertised in the media which brings in a lot of new members who are looking for a relationship.

So how does it all work? If you don't have a membership with eHarmony already you first need to create one and then complete the personality questionnaire. This process will take you about 30 minutes and is a crucial part of the matchmaking process since you will be answering questions which will then be used to automatically match you together with compatible members. Once you have finished with the questions you will then receive your first batch of matches. From these matches you can then choose one or more to communicate with. You first start with the guided communication process which breaks the ice and allows you to ask and answer any questions your match may have. From there you can then continue and send out emails. Free Communication weekends do not include photos, skip to email, and secure call.

Almost 3 months ago on St. Patrick's Day was when the last eHarmony free communication weekend happened. If you would like to find a long-term relationship then eHarmony is the online dating service you will want to try out. It is free to create a membership and for the next 4 days free to communicate as well with no credit card required.

After years of off-again, on-again relationship, dates that didn’t go anywhere, and, yes, online dating, one of my best friends finally seems to be in a great relationship. They’re approaching a year together, with no end in sight.

They happened to meet at a series of company events, but they both have online dating profiles on the same sites. Naturally, one might wonder: why didn’t they meet sooner?

The answer is that they filtered one another out. For one thing, the guy - Steve - is a good twenty years older than his girlfriend, Lisa. Though Lisa was open to dating older men, twenty years was a bit out of her comfort zone. For another, Steve has children. Lisa wasn’t interested in having kids. However, dating an older man means that the children are grown and out of the house, and for Lisa, that’s a horse of a different color.

On Steve’s part, he too had filtered Lisa out due to her age, assuming he wouldn’t have anything in common with someone that much younger. He had also filtered out anyone with cats, as he’s allergic. In an odd twist of fate, Lisa’s pet cat had passed on earlier, and she had no plans to get another, but she hadn’t thought to update her profile.

Despite their “differences,” a quick perusal of their profiles would have revealed that they still had much in common - everything from their tastes in pop culture to their political opinions. And while there are differences, they aren’t on the opposite ends of the spectrum. If they’d seen one another’s profiles, they might well have messaged each other.

But they didn’t. They’d each filtered the other out, and met solely on chance.

There’s nothing wrong with using the filter tools of an online dating site; they can help cut through the white noise and help you make sense of the sheer number of options. But if you’ve become familiar with your site, and you feel like you’ve perused all your current options, it might be worth experimenting with peeling back your filters, one at a time. What if you didn’t place a restriction on body type? What if you didn’t worry about a height difference?

There are exceptions to every rule - but identifying those exceptions is still a task left up to the human heart, not an algorithm. Severe search options clean up your list of options, but occasionally it doesn’t hurt to allow a little mess.

Related Article: Stories in Success, Part II

More online daters are using their phones to connect with each other rather than their laptops. Considering how many of us have smartphones and how often we check them, it only makes sense that this would be the best way to reach busy singles. So online dating sites have had to strengthen their mobile offerings to compete with popular apps like Tinder. Some have fallen behind with clunky, outdated features, but some are taking big steps forward in optimizing their technology.

The importance of optimizing users’ mobile experience isn’t lost on JDate, one of the most popular online dating sites for Jewish singles. The company has just launched a new version of the site that takes its most popular features and makes them even easier to access and use on mobile devices.

The widely-used Secret Admirer feature, a staple on the main JDate website, is now available on mobile. It’s been a key component of JDate’s technology, and according to JDate, other online dating sites have licensed the model due to its popularity. The Secret Admirer's "Yes-No-Maybe" functionality connects mutually interested users anonymously. Users like this because it eliminates some anxiety-provoking guess-work that shy online daters want to avoid.

JDate's new, mobile-optimized design also places key activities, such as profile views and messages, front and center on the site. Users are able to access quick, on-the-go status checks along with their email messages, IMs, Favorites and Flirts. Additionally, JDate mobile's 2.0 experience allows members to easily make changes and improvements to their profiles from their mobile devices. They can update directly from the site if they want to change photos or make edits to their descriptions.

"The new JDate mobile site enables JDaters to connect with one another and the community like never before," said Greg Liberman, CEO of Spark Networks, the company that owns and operates JDate. "Our goal has always been to provide JDate members with the tools to meet others who share their culture, values and interests, and our new, easy-to-navigate mobile site puts best-in-class tools, quite literally, right at our members' fingertips."

The question is, for JDate users – is it too little too late? The answer is unclear, because for the many people who download mobile dating apps like Tinder, there are still more online dating. The majority of singles use a mix of both online dating sites and mobile dating apps, especially if they want to keep options open. This means constantly improving technology to stay competitive.

JDate currently hosts more than 750,000 users. To find out more about this dating site please read our review of JDate.

Online dating site Zoosk just announced the launch of its new limited release delivery service. The new service allows users to ship romantic (and real-life) gifts to other Zoosk members they want to pursue who live in most U.S. states.

So if your online love lives in New York and you’re in California? Zoosk has got you covered, at least in terms of sending gifts. The idea behind the delivery service is to provide members with an innovative, romantic, and creative way to interact with each other. Instead of going for winks and video chats to grab a potential love interest’s attention, the site opted for something a little more traditional – chocolates and flowers for instance.

If you’ve just met online, is sending someone a gift coming on a little bit strong? Not according to Zoosk. In fact, the company sees it as a strategic way of making a first impression in an online dating world filled with a lot of noise from all the digital outreach. Online dating gets overwhelming after a while, and you forget who is who unless someone really captures your attention. Sending a gift is definitely more memorable than an email. (Also, some people are better with witty online banter, and some would rather just buy a gift and hope that it piques some interest.)

To send a gift, Zoosk members visit an eligible member’s profile and select the “ship a gift” button. The gift recipient receives an email alert from Zoosk that a fellow Zoosk member would like to send him or her a gift, and can either accept the gift by providing a shipping address, or decline to provide an address.

“When we created Zoosk, we set out to provide a service that helps single adults make real-world connections and build lasting relationships,” said Shayan Zadeh, Co-Founder and CEO of Zoosk. “Testing new ideas is part of Zoosk’s DNA and this particular feature allows singles to catch the attention of someone they find special.”

The delivery service is limited to specific areas in the U.S. and is also limited in terms of what you can send. If you want to get really creative, you’ll have to wait until you’re familiar enough with your online date to meet in person. But in the meantime, you can send either chocolate, flowers or a teddy bear. (Personally, I’d go for the chocolate.)

With all of the latest mobile technology in regard to online dating, it’s refreshing to see something a little more “real world.” It’s also nice to see old-fashioned romance in the midst of last-minute drinks and mobile app hook-ups. For all its simplicity, maybe Zoosk is onto something clever.

For more information on this dating site your can read our Zoosk review.

Experts say that the vast majority of our interpersonal communication takes place via body language. When people claim that "It's not what you say, it's how you say it," they’re right. Words are important, but gestures, tone of voice, and facial expressions speak volumes more than audible language.

That means, when it comes to online dating and any other online interactions, we’re at a huge disadvantage. With so much room for ambiguity and misinterpretation, we often find ourselves wondering what is fact and what is fiction. And despite our suspicions, more often than not we choose to believe what we're told. Experts call this our "truth bias." When online dating, that means we want to believe messages from attractive potential suitors – even when we shouldn’t.

Tyler Cohen Wood, an intelligence officer and cyber branch chief at the Defense Intelligence Agency's Science and Technology Directorate, and author of the 2014 book Catching the Catfishers: Disarm the Online Pretenders, Predators and Perpetrators Who Are Out to Ruin Your Life says it’s possible to catch online liars in the act because they're often bad at it. Look for these signs:

• Emphatic Language: Emphatic language isn't always a sign of lying, but it is an indication that the person really wants you to believe what is being said. This is also the case when a person repeats something over and over in slightly different ways. They wouldn't use emphatic language unless it was really important to them.
• Unanswered Questions: You ask a question. The other person dodges it or changes the subject. There are other possible explanations (they may not want to hurt your feelings, or be afraid of how you will receive their answer, etc) but they could be keeping something from you.
• Distancing Language: In person, someone may unconsciously distance themselves from another person by crossing their arms in front of their body. In writing, the same effect can be achieved by omitting personal pronouns and personal references in stories.
• Noncommittal Statements: "Pretty sure." "Probably." "Maybe." "Must have." These noncommittal statements are all red flags that leave an escape route for the speaker.
• Qualifying Statements: These expressions come before the most important part of the sentiment. “To be honest.” “I hate to say this.” They indicate that the person is uncomfortable with what they're going to say next.
• Tense hopping. Someone describing an event that already happened naturally uses the past tense. But, if part of the way through the story they begin fabricating, it can often cause an unintentional switch to the present tense.

Note: Just one of these is likely a misunderstanding or an honest mistake. But if you notice multiple things on the list, then it’s time to be suspicious.