General News

Disrupt is an annual technology conference held by TechCrunch to give the spotlight to influential speakers and promising new startups. This year the event was held in San Francisco, beginning with the Hackathon and then continuing to the Startup Battlefield and Startup Alley.

Klint Finley, a writer for TechCrunch.com, shared his picks in September for the best new businesses that promise to bring online dating out of the 90s and into the modern world. The key to making the leap, he says, is integrating three things:

1. New developments in video
2. Social networking capabilities
3. Mobile functionality

The first new site he profiles is VideoDate. VideoDate was started by Michael Cafferata, a firefighter who followed his passion for improving the online dating experience in his free time. His take on online dating is an entirely mobile video chat app. Instead of static profiles, VideoDate encourages real interaction with face-to-face video chats and instant messaging. It's all done from your phone, so you can date anytime, anywhere.

For Facebook fans, there's now Frimper. Like traditional dating sites Frimper has a matching algorithm element, but it also includes an online speed-dating component. Frimper's matching strategy goes beyond what you say about yourself to include the impressions from other Frimper users who interact with you. You may not think of yourself as outgoing, for example, but if other users tag you as outgoing after chatting with you, that important piece of info will be added to Frimper's matching system.

Dateini was designed to solve a very different problem: What do you do once you've already got a date? Dateini's "virtual concierge service" choses a date itinerary for you based on the info you give it about location, your budget, the desired theme, etc. The theme categories currently available are Romantic, Music, and Entertainment. 10 major U.S. cities have Dateini so far, and hopefully it will be expanding soon.

The last new biz covered by Finley is emotion.me, the final stop in your online dating life. Emotion.me is a wedding planning app that consolidates everything wedding into one place. Create your own wedding website in 5 minutes, then use it to plan, organize, and budget your special day. You can also use it to register for gifts, connect with your guests, and keep track of your calendar.

New developments in video? Check. Social networking capabilities? Check. Mobile functionality? Check. Online dating is getting more interesting by the minute.

Those who are down on online dating are quick to cite fake profiles, scam artists, and confidence schemes as the number one reason they would never consider joining a dating site.

A special report in the October issue of Glamour delves into the issue, warning of a fraud epidemic sweeping online dating sites. Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch, even warns that, on some dating sites, as many as one in ten profiles is a scammer.

A typical online dating scam works like this:

• A con artist - often located in an Internet café overseas - will take a photo from Facebook or another social networking site.
• Using the photo, they will create a fake profile and start targeting love-seeking victims.
• After initiating contact with a target, they move the conversation to a private instant messaging service.
• As the courtship continues, the scammer will deepen the "connection" by sending letters and love poems.
• Arrangements to meet are eventually made but, within hours of the planned arrival time, disaster will strike in the form of an expired visa, a sick relative, or another emergency.
• The scammer will explain that, in light of the emergency, they need a few thousand dollars wired over so that they can finally meet their sweetheart.

Many scammers use photos of military personnel in order to boost their credibility. Recently, after discovering that his picture was used in multiple fake dating profiles, Army Master Sgt. C.J. Grisham created a blog for soldiers to report the fraudulent use of their photos. Major sites like Match and OkCupid have some security measures in place, but smaller sites lack a security system, leaving individuals to defend themselves.

Defend yourself against online dating scams - don't wait for your dating site to do it for you. How's here:

1. Watch out for military photos. Of course some will be real, but proceed with caution since they are so commonly used by scammers.
2. Keep the conversation on the site. It's safer than chatting on Skype or an external instant messaging system until you feel completely comfortable with the person.
3. Use conversational tests. If the person is a local, engage them in a local-knowledge conversation to be sure they're actually who they say they are. If they're not local, ask why they're interested in a long-distance relationship. Make sure they have a reasonable answer.
4. Beware of poor grammar and spelling, badly written sentences, and old-fashioned romantic language.
5. Steer clear of get-rich-quick schemes - anything that sounds too good to be true probably is.

And never, ever send money to anyone on a dating site.

eHarmony is going through a breakup.

No, it's not the kind of breakup that happens after you had one too many cocktails, saw your honey chatting up someone else, and ended up in a messy public argument. This is a breakup of the business variety.

Neil Clark Warren, the 78-year-old man who founded eHarmony 12 years ago (yep, the guy from the commercials), is taking back control of the company after becoming CEO in July. Here's a peek at what's on the menu:

• Firing 100 employees
• Cutting the board back from 9 members to 2
• Bringing back stock from Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures, which invested $110 million in 2004
• Eliminating the initial public offering which had originally been expected in 2010

Instead, Warren plans to spend the next year expanding eHarmony's portfolio to include services to help people find work, understand themselves, and build relationships to reduce loneliness. eHarmony's future is all about psychology and social science.

Warren's multi-faceted plan for the site begins with re-establishing stability. eHarmony has had a constant stream of CEOs following the resignation of Greg Waldorf, one of the company's founding investors, in January 2011 after 5 years in the role. He was replaced by Greg Steiner, chief operating officer at the time, then Jeremy Verba, who formerly worked with Zynga Inc.

Now that Warren is in the top spot, and he's wasted no time revamping the company. "Building a relationship business is so different from trying to build something with machines or widgets," he said. "To put it in the hands of people that only want to look at it as a source of business success, revenue success doesn't make sense anymore."

He now has seven full-time psychologists on staff and has replaced many of the more business-focused executives with social scientists. eHarmony has also bought back the 30% of the company that was sold to Sequoia and TCV. As he has no plans to sell the company or make it public, Warren says repurchasing the shares was the best way for investors to make money.

Up next, Warren plans to expand the site's reach by targeting more than love-seeking singles. He hopes to draw in new users who are just looking to find friends and intends to launch a job searching site in the first half of 2013. His goal for the new site is to help people understand their strengths, passions, and ideal work environment early on so that they can enjoy a fulfilling profession as soon as possible.

It's early days yet, but Warren is confident he'll succeed. "I think I am more productive and wiser today than I've ever been," he says.

To figure out if this dating site is the right service for you, please read our review of eHarmony.

POF launched eVow back in September of 2010. Within a few months the dating site went paid. Members needed to buy a subscription to correspond with their matches and to use the advanced search features. eVow did well for a while especially when a link to the service was displayed on the Plenty of Fish website. Since then the site has seen traffic drop by about half according to Alexa. To counteract this it looks like eVow has developed a strategy which is their new dating app.

The eVow online dating app was released in October of 2012 on both Google Android and Apple iOS. The app currently has a 3.9 rating on Google Play with most of the reviews being positive and only a few minor tweaks/annoyances being mentioned. What is interesting is that the eVow app is completely free to use. You do not need a paid subscription. The eVow app doesn’t have all of the features of the website but it does have most of them. This includes sending and receiving messages, viewing your matches, and searching.

So those of you interested in using eVow I would recommend creating a membership on the dating site and then downloaded the app to message your matches. This way you can use the site for free and not pay the regular subscription fee that runs from $19.99 to $39.99 per month depending on the length of the subscription term. I am not sure how long they plan to keep the communication part of the app free so I would try it out as soon as possible.

The holidays: that time of year when couples look cuter than ever and everyone else suddenly starts whining about how miserable it is to be single.

Yawn. Can we move on to a new holiday narrative, please? I'm getting bored of the old one, and so is Match.com by the looks of it.

"Tis the season to be single!" proclaims the Match blog. And to celebrate that take on this time of year, Match has posted some new "holidating" data. Here's what 1,000 Match singles had to say about dating during the holidays:

• Some Christmases are blue. 76% of singles say they've ended a relationship during the holiday season.
• Sometimes, the family is at fault. 30% of singles say that family was the cause of a holiday breakup, because they were turned off by spending time with their partner's family during the season.
• The new year is the perfect time to start fresh. Finding love is a popular new year's resolution. 64% of singles say their resolution will be related to their love lives.
• Most singles think they won't be getting coal in their stockings this year. 82% say they belong on the nice list, while 17% say they'll definitely be listed on the naughty one.
• Holiday loneliness gets the better of some. Some singles report dating someone during the holidays just to avoid spending the season alone. Of those, more are men: 14% of men vs. 10% of women.
• On the other hand, it's fun to spend holiday parties solo. 80% of singles say they've been their own dates at holiday parties and had a great time flying solo.
• It's not just the thought that counts after all. Nearly 75% of women admit they've been disappointed with a present from a significant other at least once. On the other hand, just 47% of men say the same thing.
• There's one gift men and women want more than any other. Ambition is the top quality singles look for in a partner. Career-oriented dates are the most popular, topping hipsters, foodies, and party people.
• Gift giving is the best part of the holiday season. Gift giving is the holiday activity that singles look forward to most (45%), followed by attending holiday parties (31%).
• Love is all around. 82% of singles say they feel more romantic during the holiday season than any other time of the year.

Check back with the Match.com blog for more upcoming holidating info from relationship experts or you can read our review of Match.com for more information on the dating site.

Couple profiles have been getting a lot of play lately in the media. Facebook has added couple pages and the dating sites How About We along with Zoosk has introduced couple profiles.

Well, since April Zoosk has seen signups for their Couple Profiles explode. In the 6 months since launch 3.3 million couple profiles have been created. This works out to 15 percent of all new Zoosk signups. From these 2 statistics we can then figure out have many signups Zoosk receives on average in a month (international). Since they receive 550,000 couple profiles a month (3.3 million divided by 6) this would mean the total number of new users every month on Zoosk is around 3.7 million.

Zoosk couple profiles are made up of 3 different groups. 50% are married, 40% are in a committed relationship and 10% are engaged. These couple profiles have posted 1.5 million romantic moments with 2 thirds of them including pictures.

To find out more on this story you can read the press release here. To see why this dating site is so popular with singles and couples you can check out our Zoosk review.