Online Dating

We’re in the swing of the holiday season, and that’s a time when many consider signing up to online dating websites for the first time. Maybe it’s the nostalgia, the emphasis on family, the holiday parties, or the increase in TV movies; regardless, many do consider being more proactive in their search for love around this time.

The problem is that the end of the year is not just a time for holidays. For a good portion of the globe, it’s also cold and flu season. Depending on your job, it might be the busiest, most stressful time of year. It can be a time in which familial obligations are increased - and for many, this also equals added stress. Maybe this is the time of year to squeeze in traveling and vacation.

Thus, it’s not unheard of to sign up to an online dating site, create a profile, start chatting with someone - and promptly get pneumonia, or have to leave for the next two weeks, or be swamped with work and plans with family members.

Granted, this sort of bad timing could happen at any point in the year - people get sick, have jobs that get busy at varying times, and so on. But the somewhat universal experience of holiday nostalgia, paired with the somewhat universal experience of holiday stress, seems to be a recipe for increased, widespread dating frustration.

Does this mean you should avoid online dating during the holidays? Not necessarily. After all, new people are signing up, so it’s a good opportunity to check out fresh faces and send some first-contact emails. But let’s say you know you get run-down every year at this time, or swamped. Instead of plunging into online dating headfirst for the first time, perhaps you could hold off for just a few more weeks; you might feel like time’s a-wasting, but perhaps you’re just giving your prospective matches time to recover from their own illnesses and obligations.

The same logic applies at any point in the year; if you know life is hectic, stressful and you’re physically worn out, now might not be the best time to attempt to meet new people. Instead, work on beefing up your immune system and your profile. Once you make that decision to sign up, it’s tempting to do so at that very moment, but consider: if you’re going to meet a potential match, won’t you want to be clearheaded enough to decide if you’re actually compatible?

Talk about a power couple. PlentyOfFish, the world's largest online dating site, has acquired FastLife, the world's largest speed dating and singles event company. The combination of POF's massive influence in the online dating sphere with FastLife's global influence (the company currently operates in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK) is a recipe that could have a major impact on the future of the online dating industry.

"The direction of online dating is undeniably headed towards a merging of the online and offline worlds, so this is a major move towards changing the way single people meet and interact," said Markus Frind, founder and CEO of PlentyOfFish. He's right. Match.com hosts Stir events. HowAboutWe is founded on the idea of taking online dating offline. And location-based mobile apps that hook singles up for insta-dates with people nearby are more popular than ever.

"PlentyOfFish has always understood the importance of live events," Frind continued. "Currently our users host over 300 events worldwide each month. Now more than ever, we understand the importance of offering singles innovative, new ways of connecting face to face."

FastLife is the perfect partner for the next evolution of POF. FastLife was created by a husband and wife team, Justin and Annabelle Parfitt, in 2002. The site offers two different dating experiences. Evolved Speed Dating events are designed for everyone. Participants just need to register in order to view and book upcoming events that match their preferences. Prestige Speed Dating events are premium events for high income graduates who want to meet other successful professionals. These events are invitation only, and all participants are screened for ID, age, background, and status.

Current FastLife events cater to a wide range of interests, including Fit & Trim, Food and Wine Lovers, University Educated, Tall Men, and Travel Lovers. FastLife holds more than 2,400 events each year that draw a crowd of more than 60,000 urban professional singles and generate annual revenue of more than $2.5 million. Now, as a united front, PlentyOfFish and FastLife plan to roll out singles events across hundreds of untapped US cities over the course of the next year.

This is the first major acquisition for PlentyOfFish, but Frind swears it's far from the last. "PlentyOfFish will continue to grow our reach within the online dating industry," he said. "We want to invest over $30 million in the next 12 months."

Since 2008, Cyber-Dating Expert has been a go-to source of online dating advice. With dating coach and two-time author Julie Spira at the helm, the team behind Cyber-Dating Experts helps singles improve their chances of finding love on the Internet and their mobile phones.

The 4th annual Cyber-Dating Expert "Top 10 Mobile Dating Apps" list compiles the best-of-the-best that mobile dating applications have to offer. In a world that's becoming increasingly smartphone-based, Spira and her team say these are the 5 best apps for tech-savvy singles:

It turns out Oscar Wilde was right when he wrote "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life." At least, he was right about eHarmony, a century before the dating service even existed. Believe it or not, eHarmony's newest matching service, eH+, was inspired by Hollywood.

In 2012, Grant Langston, eHarmony's Vice President of Content and Customer Experience, was given the script to a new film called The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He'd been given the script because 20th Century Fox had written eHarmony into the story, and wanted the company's cooperation in making its fictionalized service as accurate as possible.

Langston found that the eHarmony portrayed in the movie was nothing like the eHarmony he knew in real life. Once he discovered that Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig would take on the starring roles, he knew something had to be done. He couldn't let such major movie stars, who were bound to draw a large audience, promote an incorrect version of the website. Instead, he saw the film as an opportunity to launch a premium service within eHarmony and make the real-life dating service match up with the one that moviegoers would see on screen.

So eHarmony set out to build the service that was written in the script. In the film, Ben Stiller's Walter Mitty character speaks on the phone with his "eHarmony counselor," who guides him through the process by helping him to build a great profile and coaching him when he hits stumbling blocks. It didn't take long for Langston to see the value in offering a similar service on the real site.

"I began to understand Walter's attraction to this version of eHarmony," he wrote on the company blog. "You're talking to a human being who cares about your success. That's nice. This person is reaching out to you and listening to your feedback. Who wouldn't love that? Your counselor is helping you avoid the pitfalls that are common problems for many people. It's like having a guardian angel!"

The new service was christened eH+ and ideas quickly began flowing. "What if eH+ users were FREE from having to log onto the computer? FREE!" Langston continued. "What if eH+ users could avoid rejection? WHAT?! That's like fat-free bacon. What if eH+ users had a level of privacy virtually unknown in the online dating world?" They may not be things Walter Mitty needed in the film, but they were certainly things that real-life users would love.

And now, when moviegoers leave the theater after seeing The Secret Life of Walter Mitty this winter, they will be able to sign on to eHarmony and receive the same exclusive service as Ben Stiller himself.

Julie Spira has come a long way since she created her first online dating profile nearly 20 years ago. She is now a dating coach and leading online dating expert, as well as the best-selling author of two books: The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online and The Rules of Netiquette: How to Mind Your Digital Manners.

Each year, Spira and her team curate a list of the latest and greatest mobile dating apps on the market. With the current explosion of mobile dating, it couldn't come at a better time.

Who made it onto this year's Cyber-Dating Expert Top 10 Mobile Dating Apps list? Let's find out.

HowAboutWe is about to take over the world - literally.

The dating service has announced the launch of the first internationalized versions of its iOS application. Though the web-based version of HowAboutWe already had international users, the app was only available in English, significantly limiting its reach. Now it's available in 15 new languages that cover more than 30 countries, including France, Russia, and Japan.

And it gets even better. The company says it's also making all features in the mobile application available for free to international users. (Sorry, America, you still have to pay. Premium features for United States-based users, like unlimited membership, will continue to cost between $8 and $35 per month.) In addition to full access to all of the exclusive features offered to American HowAboutWe members, global users will also enjoy:

• Browsing date ideas suggested by local singles
• Finding people who want to meet in person
• Checking out profiles and full-screen photos
• Posting their favorite nearby places as date ideas - instantly
• Seeing who's online now, nearby

When asked why the company was choosing to offer services entirely for free, HowAboutWe's head of PR, Jade Clark, explained that their primary concern is to extend their reach as a brand and become an established figure in a new market before weighing monetization options.

HowAboutWe isn't just planning to bring its emphasis on real-world activities to the international stage. Half a million members are signed up for HowAboutWe for Couples. When asked about mobile and international plans for the couple's product, Clark adds that the company is working to expand their mobile offerings and plans to make some major announcements in the early parts of 2014.

To celebrate the launch of the app around the world, co-founder and co-CEO Aaron Schildkrout posted a guide to his blog called "10 Things You Need To Know Before Internationalizing Your App." I'll spare you the details, because many of them are quite technical, but Schildkrout did speak of the challenges that come from language barriers and different cultural expectations. His final piece of advice is something we can all understand, regardless of your location: "It will always take 3x longer than you think!"

I'm intrigued by this new development. Just think of all the opportunities for cross-cultural connections that might now be possible. Imagine being an American tourist in a foreign land, connecting with locals (and possible tour guides) using the same dating app you're already familiar with. It could add a whole new dimension to travel.

For more on this service you can read our HowAboutWe review