Online Dating

Some of us are busy decking the halls with boughs of holly. Some of us are lighting the menorah. Some are getting trampled by sale-obsessed shoppers at Walmart and Best Buy. Some are still trying to recover from their Thanksgiving food comas. And many of us are wondering whether we'll have a midnight kiss on New Year's Eve.

Singles are always curious about whether there is an ideal time to try online dating. The best answer is "No, the perfect time for online dating is whenever you're ready for it." Online dating requires a significant investment of time, attention, and emotions, so don't dive into it before you're prepared. But if you are ready, why waste time looking for the "right" moment? The right moment is right now.

That being said, there is one time of year it might be just a little bit more right than any other: the week between Christmas and New Year's, all the way through to Valentine's Day.

In December 2011, Match.com's relationship expert Whitney Casey said that "From December 26 to February 14 is our busiest season. New Year's Eve is such a big deal because it's a new beginning." Match is far from the only site to notice a jump in usage during that time. PlentyOfFish also reported a 15% spike in sign-ups, as well as a 20% boost in activity from current users during the same period.

Rachel Seliger, Community Manager for JDate.com, attributes the holiday spike to a renewed excitement about meeting new people. "This is definitely one of our busiest times of the year," she says, "and that's simply because the festive fun of the holiday season often reminds singles there is nothing better than being around those we love - that romantic relationships! Plus, we often see a big bump in membership numbers with so many people adding 'find love' to their New Year's resolutions!"

This year, along with working out, reading more, volunteering, getting organized, and spending more time with friends and family, put 'Try online dating' on your New Year's resolutions list. Like any resolution, staying on track won't always be easy, but setting the goal is the first step. Take advantage of the improved odds and maybe that midnight kiss will turn from far-off fantasy into reality.

Just please don't put up a profile picture taken in that hideous holiday sweater knitted by your grandmother. There's not enough eggnog in the world to make that pic a good choice.

Two is hardly enough to call it a trend, but if online dating sites collaborating with relationship experts does become a thing, I am fully in support of it.

Earlier this fall, one of America's longest-serving advice columnists, E. Jean Carroll, began a new partnership between HowAboutWe and Elle magazine. The arrangement, called Elle dating, is part of HowAboutWe's media partners program. Joining forces with a fashion magazine may not seem like the natural course of action for a dating site, but HowAboutWe believes the alliance could go a long way towards helping people who might otherwise object to finding love on the Web warm up to the idea.

Carroll's Elle column has long been an important fixture for the magazine. A membership to HowAboutWe through Elle will cost $30 per month, and for $500 an Elle reader can get a one-on-one telephone consultation with Carroll and the services of Tawkify, the small matchmaking firm she founded two years ago. Carroll hopes that her influence will bring a sense of serendipity to HowAboutWe that can be lost in other online dating services.

Are You Interested is also jumping on the expert bandwagon. AYI.com recently announced that author and relationship expert Laurel House will join the site as its resident dating coach. Laurel has appeared on numerous television shows, including E! News, Weekend TODAY, and most recently MTV, where she was the ultimate "It Girl" dating and confidence-boosting coach for an episode of the channel's MADE show. She is also the author of QuickieChick's Cheat Sheet to Life, Love, Food, Fitness, Fashion and Finance on a Less than Fabulous Budget and the upcoming book No-Games Guide to Love.

For her collaboration with AYI, House will post written and video content to the site's blog to help guide singles through the online dating experience. She will be available via AYI.com's social platforms to offer personalized dating tips to members, and will act as a face of the AYI brand in media interviews.

SNAP's Chief Executive Officer Clifford Lerner commented, "We believe Laurel's depth of experience and professional expertise is unmatched and will greatly help singles looking to connect online. She is aware of what single men and women are looking for in the online dating experience and her ability to guide them in their search for love will only better the AYI.com experience."

My favorite collaboration between an expert and a dating site remains the inimitable Dr. Helen Fisher, who serves as leading expert on the biology of love and attraction for Chemistry.com, but I'm excited to see more professionals in various dating and relationships fields lend their support to the online dating movement.

Could you fall for someone if you never saw their face?

Yeah, me neither, but the creators of Twine, a new dating app available for iOS and Android, are hoping that daters are ready to move beyond those superficial impulses.

These days, apps like Tinder and Bang with Friends are exploding. Apparently what singles want more than anything is a reason to spend even more time staring at the screens of their smartphones, swiping through photo after photo of potential partners. As convenient as those apps are, you've got to admit they can also feel kind of shallow. And that's where Twine comes in.

In the words of its founder, 35-year-old Rohit Singal, Twine aims to pair users based on a "personality first and looks later" philosophy. Matches are made on the location-based app through interests listed on users' Facebook profiles and - here's the catch - once they connect and start chatting, users can only see blurred-out versions of each other's profile photos.

Think of Twine as Tinder's nicer sibling. Both are used on mobile phones, but Twine eschews the hot-or-not model encouraged by Tinder's rapid-fire photo scrolling. Twine prioritizes quality over quantity, just like a real-life matchmaker, and even limits the number of matches members can receive each day to 3 in an effort to discourage excessive window shopping.

"Every other dating app is trying to show you a photo and pick people who are good looking," Singal says, and that approach has worked because "it expedites behavior in real life-we want to connect with attractive people whether the connection's meaningful or not." Singal, however, is determined to blend the easy access of mobile dating with connections based on a deeper level of compatibility.

But don't freak out - you won't be going into a date completely blind. The app's motto is "Flirt first, reveal later," so rest assured that you will get to see your conversation partners before agreeing to meet in person. When you're matched with someone, based on your Facebook interests and age range, you begin the conversation with a blurred version of their Facebook profile photo. If all goes well, you can choose to reveal your names and photos to each other.

Twine also makes another interesting promise beyond more meaningful matches. The app claims to be the first gender balanced flirting network, to ensure an even ratio of men and women. If the ratio is off at any point, new users are put into a queue and aren't allowed to begin using the app until the ratio is in balance again. New sign-ups can bypass the queue simply by inviting a friend of the opposite gender to join with them.

Twine is certainly taking a risk by taking physical attraction out of the picture, but I, at least, am excited to see where it goes.

The holidays are upon us. It can be a stressful time, but with it comes a fair bit of revelry - holiday parties, New Year’s celebrations, vacation time. For many, it represents an end to a stressful season and a time to blow off steam.

It’s also a time of year in which many turn to online dating with renewed vigor. We’ve already discussed that one should carefully weigh whether the holidays are personally the right time to start dating; let’s assume that the holidays are not extra stressful and that one simply wants to take a bit of their extra free time to write a great profile and start lining up dates. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still aspects of holiday dating to watch out for.

First and foremost, there’s alcohol. Alcohol exists year-round, but holiday celebrations are particularly cheer-heavy, from spiked punch and eggnog to champagne. Add in the holiday revelry and you have a recipe for rash decisions. Many might focus on the “upsides” - lessened inhibitions leading to more immediate “connections” - but they don’t always think of the possible downsides, like embarrassing speeches you don’t intend to make or a miscalculation leading to a vomit-filled evening. For some adults, the holidays are their equivalent of a college Spring Break. Try not to make the same mistakes the kids do.

It’s also important to weigh your motivation for online dating. Are you actually looking for the potential of a long-term relationship, or are you looking for someone to be with on New Year’s Eve? If it’s the former, the holidays might make it harder to sort through the party noise and find someone who wants the same. Similarly, a date at a holiday party might not be the way to really get to know someone and determine whether you’re compatible. If you’re just looking for someone to party with, that’s fine too - just make sure your motivations are clear, so no feelings are hurt.

The holidays can be a time to unwind from the stress of the year, and maybe even reevaluate priorities and create new beginnings. While signing up for an online dating site can certainly be such a new beginning, there’s no rush or rule that says you have to find love immediately. While holiday fun can be a blast, just make sure you’re signing up for the type of fun you want - all the better to start the new year off on the right foot.

Every year, Julie Spira and the team behind Cyber-Dating Expert release a list of the best and newest mobile dating application available. This year's 4th annual list couldn't have come at a better time. A recent Pew report on online dating and relationships examined the impact of mobile dating to find that it is rapidly stealing the spotlight from web-based dating services.

Pew found that 7% of mobile phone owners report using a dating application on their smartphone. There's just something about the convenience of dating with a tiny handheld device that's impossible to resist. And not only does it result in meeting more people, Spira says, it also speeds up the process from first communication to meeting in person.

There’s no question that there’s something personal, even intimate, about the idea of the anonymity of the Internet. When no one knows who you really are, you’re free to be whomever you like - whether that’s someone completely out of character for you or your most genuine self. It can be easy to share truths and secrets.

For some, this is the sort of relationship they have in mind when they think of online dating - two people falling in love, perhaps via long distance, maybe even never seeing one another, but getting to know the “true self” of their true love. Perhaps there are success stories out there that have unfolded along these lines, especially in the earlier days of the internet.

However, that’s not really what one should expect from online dating today. In today’s world, the internet is hardly anonymous - and neither is love, for that matter.

The point of an online dating website is to find someone with whom you want to meet, not to fall in love with a faceless, nameless avatar. Once you meet in person, you determine whether there truly is compatibility, and you begin the time-tested process of getting to know one another. In general, you don’t spend months exchanging emails; indeed, you’re less vulnerable to scams and wasted energy (what if there’s no spark in person?) that way.

The problem is, many people still think of the “old,” anonymous internet when they write their profiles. No, you don’t need to give hard details about your address or place of work (that wouldn’t be safe, either), but you have to remember that your profile is not an online journal message magically sent to your future love; it’s a posting that will be read by anyone, including people you’ll potentially meet soon. It’s one thing to bare your soul and your insecurities to your diary; it’s another thing to unload this on someone you’ve just met.

As you construct your profile, imagine you’re chatting with someone you’ve just met. Is it the time to bring up past baggage? Maybe not yet. Is it appropriate to reveal intimate, romantic details or fantasies? Perhaps you’ll want to at least wait until your first in-person meeting. What about your most secret hopes and dreams?

Well, perhaps when you meet someone you truly spark with, you will want to share all those details and more immediately. However, your profile is not written for the eyes of only one person; it’s written for anyone who comes along. Nor is it entirely anonymous; it might be read by a friend of a friend who recognizes you, or a neighbor, or a co-worker. You might be writing for your future match, but you’re reaching a much wider audience.