General News

"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" is solid advice for most every situation, but it rings especially true online. Anyone who has ventured into the untamed Wild West of online dating knows that it comes with certain risks.

Chief among them is the possibility of being ripped off by an unscrupulous Internet scammer. Your rational side knows it's a possibility, but for the most part it's a fear that's relegated to the deeper, darker recesses of your mind. A far as you're concerned, getting scammed is something that happens to other people in the cautionary tales told on the local news. It's not going to happen to you, right?

Odds are in your favor, but it never hurts to be prepared. SeekingArrangement.com recently posted a report called The Face of Fraud to help online daters separate the catches from the catfish. The site reviewed the profiles of 60,000 banned accounts, and discovered that fake profiles tend to have a few things in common. Here are 7 signs you might be looking at the profile of a scam artist:

After Mother's Day celebrations are over, single Moms might be yearning for romantic love as well as affection from their children. It's easy to get caught up in the stress of taking care of a child, but single mothers need other relationships, too. After all, just because you have a child doesn't mean you no longer want to feel sexy or desired.

But many single mothers can be a little uncertain about dating. After all, how many men might shy away from being with a woman whose first priority is her children? And if a single mother is interested in dating someone more seriously, she might be concerned about whether or not he will get along with her kids.

While some women think that being a mother may put many single men off, a new survey by LoveAgain.com, found the opposite to be true. The company surveyed 2,000 men to find out what they really think about women with children, and 85% said they think single moms are sexy. And 77% of men say it wouldn't put them off if a woman they dated had children.

And for those single mothers who have a full house? There was more good news, too. About 77% of men say that they would be happy if the single mom they dated didn't want to have any more children. And for men over 50, 87% would be fine with no more children.

And for those single moms who are worried about a boyfriend not wanting to bond with her children, they can rest assured. Sixty-four percent of men surveyed said they would want to be close to their partner's children, and for men over 50, it rises to 74%. With age comes wisdom, right?

So now that we know the overwhelming majority of men find single mothers attractive and sexy, what is the common attribute these women have that the men find so appealing?

As it turns out, a woman's wisdom and maturity are her sexiest attributes. When asked, the men surveyed agreed that single mothers are wiser and more mature than women without children.

So all you single mothers out there, stop making excuses and start dating. Join online dating sites, get fixed up by your friends, and put yourself out there. You deserve romance in your life, and a chance to fall in love again. It seems there are plenty of men out there who want to meet you (as well as your children)!

Zoosk's dazzling rise to fame is the stuff of online dating legends. Over the last five years, Zoosk has evolved into a leader in the industry, and this year it celebrated a major milestone.

On May 22, 2013, Zoosk announced a company record: revenue exceeded $40 million in the first quarter of the year. That's not a bad way to celebrate the half-decade mark...

And that's not all Zoosk has achieved this year. The first quarter of 2013 also saw these breakthroughs for the popular dating site:

• Zoosk experienced a 116% increase in monthly total unique visitors compared to the same period last year.
• The number of monthly active users for Zoosk's mobile products increased more than 200% year-over-year.

Zoosk believes its success can be chalked up to its unique approach to matchmaking and a strong focus on the mobile market. The site set itself apart with its Behavioral Matchmaking engine, which learns users' preferences by observing their behavior on the site. It continuously improves subsequent matching suggestions as it more thoroughly profiles a user, resulting in increasingly better matches and higher levels of engagement with other singles.

The Behavioral Matchmaking engine is driven by three discovery tools:

• Zoosk's Scientific Matchmaking service, a daily introduction to a potential match
• Carousel, a rapid-fire round of profile pictures
• Search functionality that sorts through the millions of profiles on the site

On the mobile front, Zoosk created a variety of mobile applications to meet users' increasing demands for dating on-the-go. The applications are all optimized versions of the site's experience that are frequently updated to provide better and more sophisticated service. Applications are available for Apple devices on iTunes and for Android in the Google Play store.

Zoosk's commitment to mobile has paid off. It consistently ranks as the #1 dating app for the iPhone and iPad, and in Google Play the Zoosk app has been downloaded more than five million times.

"We wanted to bring a no-compromise approach to small screen dating for users on-the-go," said Shayan Zadeh, Zoosk CEO and co-founder. "So instead of designing our mobile product as an extension of our website, we built a brand new experience from the ground up. This mobile-centric design plus our Behavioral Matchmaking engine equals a powerful formula that is driving user adoption."

Congratulations to Zoosk on their stellar start to 2013. Can't wait to see what the rest of the year has in store...

For more on this dating site you can read our review about Zoosk.

I just got an "Upgrade your POF Account" email. After reading it I was only a little surprised to find even more free features of POF for paid members only.

These features includes reading date feedback, hottest girls that reply, and viewing extended profiles. Features that are new and for upgraded members only include standing out in all searches (highlighted) and seeing who viewed your profile after you voted yes or maybe on.

The last time we found Plenty of Fish removing free member features was in December of 2012 and this was for knowing when a user was last online (very important when using a dating site).

I wonder what is next on the chopping block? Does anyone have any guesses?

There's yet another dating app that's taking advantage of the power of Facebook. And why not? With all the connective power the social network has, why wouldn't companies capitalize on it to help people find love?

"You Should Totally Meet" is an app that helps you play cupid among your Facebook friends, introducing them to each other to see if they hit it off. (I guess you could say it's like setting two of your friends up on a blind date, but in a cool-because-it's-digital kind of way).

So, if you've been dying to set up your single friend Sally, you can be her wing-woman and set up a profile through the app. It allows you to list reasons why you think Sally would be so amazing to date. Then your other Facebook friends can agree or disagree with your assessment.

When the profile is complete, you can scroll through your list of friends and see if there's anyone you want to introduce Sally to, and then let them take it from there. As in real life, there's either a connection or there's not.

I met my husband through a mutual friend on Facebook, so I'm all about tapping into your network to see what can happen. But really, let's call this app for what it is - you're setting your friend Sally up, and you are playing cupid here, not some dating website. So you better be sure to run it by her before she starts getting emails and friend requests from people she doesn't know.

As cool as this app sounds, I wouldn't replace online dating with it. Although the company claims that it's a less awkward, more organic dating experience than meeting a stranger for coffee, it's also limited to your friend's circle of friends.

It's good to keep your options open when it comes to meeting people. Online dating, mobile dating, and plain old-fashioned ways like approaching the cute guy at your local bar are effective ways to meet more people, especially those outside of your network that you'd otherwise never come across.

Of course, online dating means meeting people without any mutual friends to help vouch for them. And sometimes in dating we like to know what we're getting. References are good, because they put us more at ease. We like to hear that Sally is a cool girl before we meet.

So, try it out. But don't drop your online dating membership.

When online dating site PlentyofFish.com first launched (now just pof.com), it quickly gained attention. Free dating sites were not as popular (or as common) as the standard ones like Match.com and eHarmony. Over the first seven years, the site grew to over ten million users.

Within the last few years however, the site has gained a reputation for being a hook-up site, with its "Intimate Encounters" option a prime example of how many male subscribers were using it. Unfortunately, as founder Markus Frind admitted, many of the female profiles were actually men posing as women. On top of that, the male users were harassing the female users. So Frind has decided to scrap Intimate Encounters option and refocus the brand back to its original intention - connecting people for relationships, not for hookups.

While this might seem like a daunting task, Frind has outlined some of the ways he's trying to prevent people from misusing the site. He claims that the rise in mobile dating has created a kind of urgency to meeting people that pushes hook-ups, but there is also the issue of the fake female profiles.

Some of his changes include:

"Any first contact between users that contains sexual references will not be sent. Anyone who tries to get around this rule will be deleted without warning.

You can only contact people +/- 14 years of your age. The majority of messages sent outside those age ranges are all about hookups. Anyone who tries to get around this rule will get deleted.

Intimate Encounters will go away in the next few months. There are 3.3 Million people who use the site every day, of those there are only 6,041 single women looking for Intimate Encounters. Of those 6,041 women, the ones with hot pictures are mostly men pretending to be women. Intimate Encounters on POF can be summed up as a bunch of horny men talking to a bunch of horny men pretending to be women."

I appreciate his honesty and his attempt to reign in the users of the site and gain more trust. But it's easy to see how this happened, since the members don't pay for their membership and there is no financial repercussion when they abuse their privileges. There is less at risk, which means that more people will join and use the site to their advantage.

While online dating sites have little control over which users join, how they represent themselves, and how they behave on the site, there are certain steps that sites can take to ensure greater safety. Plenty of Fish has started this process, and I'm curious to see its effect, and how other sites may follow.

To find out more about this service you can read our Plenty of Fish dating site review.