General News

Zoosk announce a new feature earlier this week called Couple Profiles. Now users can create an individual profile when they are single or a couples profile if they are currently in a relationship. Zoosk sees themselves as a romantic social network which not only includes the time when members are single but also in a relationship.

A couples profile is described by Zoosk as a scrapbook of a relationship. Members can upload photos to their scrapbook of special events and occasions in their relationships. This could include a anniversary, honeymoon or a romantic trip. A couples profile creates a timeline of these events which allows the couple to revisit these special moments and see how their relationship has grown. Privacy controls are also setup that allow you to share your couples profile with other specific members if you choose too.

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

I love any new take on online dating, and I can't help but be intrigued by something that TechCrunch has called "equally creepy and creative."

Did that get your attention?

Yeah, I thought so.

The site is called Cheek'd, and TechCrunch calls it "a place where business cards meets picking up prospective boyfriends/girlfriends/one-night stands." Sounds like fun, right? It's business and pleasure you can mix without getting into trouble! Well, maybe some trouble...but the good kind of trouble.

Cheek'd works by, of course, signing up for the service online and filling out a profile. It's just like your average dating site, but with questions that are little more unique. Singles are queried about their favorite board games and the most played songs on their iPods, then they upload pictures and are ready to get to the good stuff.

This is where the fun of Cheek'd really begins. Members receive a deck of cards - yes, a deck of cards - with short icebreakers printed on them. There are hundreds of different sayings that run the gamut from "Emotionally available" to "Act natural, we can get awkward later." There's even a Wall Street-specific deck with lines like "Add me to your portfolio" and "All my bank accounts are Swiss."

Every card has an ID code associated with it, and a URL for the Cheek'd website. When you've given the card to an intriguing stranger, said stranger - filled with curiosity about the attractive prospect who just gave them a mysterious calling card - enters the code on the card into the Cheek'd website and is directed to your profile page. Cheek'd calls the process "online dating in reverse."

My thoughts? Points for creativity are definitely deserved. I like the idea, and I love the sleek, minimal aesthetic of the cards themselves. For those who are shy, Cheek'd could provide an easy way to get the ball rolling without risking too much rejection or awkwardness. And yes, I do think that the sayings on the cards would pique my curiosity if I received one.

But on the other hand, handing me a card doesn't tell me anything about a person. Why would I be interested in pursuing contact with someone I knew literally nothing about? If they were really interested in me, wouldn't they want to do more than hand me a business card?

Verdict: it sounds cool on the surface, but I'm not convinced that it would actually work in the real world. Try it out and let me know!

Women can be very fickle in their choices of men. While wanting to date "nice guys" seems to be the request frustrated women often make, many also find themselves in dead-end relationships with selfish and often arrogant men. So what do women really want - the nice guy or the alpha man?

A surprising study came out recently from Southampton Solent University in England, claiming that women's choices in men change during recession, but not in the way you'd think. It seems that women prefer dating men who describe themselves as "followers" rather than "leaders." The reasoning behind this? According to researchers, "a man who is a follower might offer stability: He may have fewer resources, but he may be less likely to abandon [her] for another woman or need to share his resources with lots of other women."

The researchers at Southampton showed more than 150 women a series of fictitious online dating profiles before asking them which men they'd like to date and which were marriage material. The descriptions contained information about the men's earning potential and hints of how dominant they appeared to be. Before viewing the profiles, however, the women took a language test that included words related to financial hardship such as "bankruptcy," to link dating back to a recession mindset to see if anything changed.

It seems the women would have chosen the confident bread-winners to date, but they preferred the men who were more shy and generally happy to be told what to do. (Although earning potential did factor heavily into who they considered to be marriage material.)

So in times of economic recession, women may see things differently. They look for stability, but not necessarily financial stability or career success with a man who has a take-charge personality. Instead, they prefer the easy-going and soft-spoken types. But when it comes to marriage, women are still concerned with financial stability and support more than anything else.

Are women's preferences starting to change? We are in a better place economically than we have been at any other time in history, so we aren't reliant on a man's ability to wine and dine us to impress. And while confidence in men still seems to be an agent for attraction, perhaps dating alpha dogs isn't the answer. Maybe now, there's even more reason to date those nice guys. And it seems that more and more women agree on this.

The online dating site Millionaire Match has released an eBook on Amazon called "Finding and Keeping Your Millionaire Match: The Ultimate Guide to Long Term Love for High Income Earners". The book is 265 pages and is written by Christine Cantera. The book was written to help guide wealthy singles on finding love among other wealthy singles. The book claims to take an honest approach to dating and calls for readers who are only serious about finding a relationship, to take the commitment. The author says you will not only need to be brutally honest with yourself, but you will need to make financial, emotional, physical and intellectual investments to succeed in finding a relationship.

The eBook is available for the Kindle online at Amazon. For more information on the dating site which published this book you can check out our Millionaire Match review.

The Illinois Internet Dating Safety Act (Bill SB2545) passed in the Senate yesterday and now heads to the Governor's office. The bill requires online dating sites to either conduct criminal background checks on all members or post warnings on their websites that they do not.

Similar legislation has been in the works in the past and all has failed. Recently states have made it easier to search sex-offender registries online there by making it more accessible for dating sites to retrieve this information and conduct checks. The problem opponents have with the bill is that users do not know how extensive the background check is which could create a false sense of security. Illinois will also probably have a problem policing services that are not located in Illinois.

The problem I have with background checks is most dating sites do not collect enough information about the person to do an effect check. Most just require your name, the city you live in and your personal interests. if someone doesn't want to use his real information, it is pretty easy for them to find this information and just pretend they are someone else.

For more on this story you can read STL Today. If you are looking for a background check service that allows you to find information on people, please read our PeopleFinders review.

Dating shows have been popular for television audiences, even before reality TV. Remember The Dating Game? Later came The Bachelor and its spin-off The Bachelorette, which draw in substantial audiences even after many years on the air.

The latest dating show to hit the airwaves is The Choice, Fox's sarcastic nod to its rival singing show The Voice, which has overtaken American Idol in popularity among young viewers.

The Choice follows the format of the hit singing show by casting celebrity judges to decide who's hot and who's not. The judges sit with their backs to the stage while singles parade out and try to convince the stars that they are the best choice for a date - sight unseen. If a contestant peaks a judge's interest, he can turn around to face her. If more than one judge is interested, the date has her own choice to make. There's even going to be a "speed dating" round where the contestants have limited time to make the case for why they'd be the best date, and a final challenge question.

This new dating show provides an interesting concept for reality TV, which reminds me of the short-lived show Dating in the Dark. The age-old question is: do you date someone based on her looks, or what's on the inside? When you take away the visual, then the possibilities open up. Like Dating in the Dark, The Choice prevents the judges from basing their picks on a contestant's appearance - by keeping them from actually seeing potential dates. Instead, they talk and see if they hit it off. But are a few minutes of verbal convincing enough to determine real chemistry?

I'm a fan of keeping an open mind and looking for opportunities when it comes to dating, but I'm not so convinced that dating reality shows of any kind give us a real picture of how people interact and what sparks chemistry. After all, there's a lot of pressure for matches to happen - for The Bachelor to meet the love of his life among twenty pre-selected beautiful women (none of whom may actually be right for him), or for the new judges on The Choice to meet someone they might want to take out on a second date.

They might be fun to watch, but don't look to dating shows on TV to give you lessons in finding real and lasting love. That only comes with practice, and often times a lot of dates.