General News

I've never been particularly interested in experimenting with the sugar daddy dating scene, but this new site nearly made me rethink my position. As a frequent traveler, there are no two words in the English language that I love seeing more than "free vacation," so MissTravel.com - which calls itself the only online dating website for travelers' - caught my eye immediately.

The site takes dating in the sugar lifestyle to the next step and refines it. Singles at MissTravel are looking for one thing, and one thing only: travel buddies. Got money burn, but don't want to see the world by yourself? Sign up for the site to find a pretty travel companion. Got an itch to see the world, but don't have the funds to do it? Join MissTravel to find a wealthy benefactor who will subsidize your international adventures in exchange for getting to tag along.

The site is divided into "attractive travelers" and "generous travelers" (and for those who are wondering...no, generous travelers can't be women and attractive travelers can't be men). Attractive travelers have the choice of accepting a generous traveler's proposal to visit his home town or going on a trip together. And if that isn't reason enough to join the site, attractive travelers also receive benefits, via a points based incentive system, for signing up. MissTravel breaks it down like this:

"Generous members have the ability to gift frequent flyer points to Attractive members (hence gifting them the gift of travel). Attractive members who accumulate enough frequent flyer points may redeem them for free airline tickets and hotel rooms, allowing them the opportunity to travel the world for free."

Other than that, MissTravel is pretty much like any other dating site you've encountered. Attractive travelers click on the "All attractive members" button and fill out a traditional dating profile. The profile covers all the expected basics, with the addition of a list of the places you're most interested in visiting. Generous travelers click the "All generous members" button and fill out a similar profile, then browse through attractive ladies and select their travel companions of choice.

After that, it's up to you to pair up, plan the trip, and set off into the sunset together. If a globe-trotting love affair sounds like your style, sign up for MissTravel here. Perhaps it will be love at first flight.

Earlier this month Lavalife announced new functionality for their instant messaging feature. Members can now turn off instant messaging for up to 10 minutes. This allows members to take a timeout from being hit with chat requests if they happen to be searching for profiles or composing a private email to another member. When you disable IM only the person you are currently communicating with or anyone in your hotlists may contact the member.

To find out more about this Canadian dating site you can read our Lavalife review.

What do Sinead O'Connor, Demi Moore, and Charlie Sheen have in common? Rumor has it all of them have tried online dating, and they're not the only celebrities than have allegedly turned to the Internet to find love.

Match.com relationship expert Whiney Casey recently made an appearance on "The Insider" to discuss what happens when Hollywood and the World Wide Web collide. It seems that online dating is more popular amongst the rich and famous than you might think!

According to Casey, Match is a popular destination for celebrities who haven't had luck in love. Jenny McCarthy joined the site though ultimately, she said, "It didn't really work out for me." Ricki Lake also tried her hand at online dating, with considerably more success. She told Chelsea Handler on Chelsea Lately that she met her husband, Christian, on Match.com. True Blood star Deborah Ann Woll is also a success story - she met her boyfriend on Match.com, and they've now been dating for more than four years.

Melissa Rivers says her infamous mother, Joan, signed her up for a dating site in hopes of finding a prince charming to sweep her off her feet. It came as a shock to the younger Rivers - "She made a profile for me on a dating site," she said, "that I was unaware of." It has also been reported that Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry, and Halle Berry have explored the possibility of finding love online.

The prize for most romantic celebrity success story goes to "Dancing With the Stars" judge Carrie Ann Inaba, who revealed last year that she met her fiancé, Jesse Sloan, online. "I met him on eHarmony," she said. "I was dating all these younger guys. I was like, 'Maybe I need to change it up a little.'" To make sure that the men she met were interested in her, not her fame, Inaba didn't post a picture or offer any clues to her profession. Most singles would probably consider that a dealbreaker, but Sloan was willing to take a chance - and it paid off, big time.

"In his picture, I felt like I already knew him," Inaba told "Access Hollywood" last October. "He took a risk because he didn't know what I looked like or anything." Sloan finally discovered who his secret admirer was when she sent him a photo of her without makeup, and in March of 2011 he proposed on "Live! With Regis and Kelly."

So next time you get a message from a sparse profile, give it a chance...it just might be your celebrity crush.

For more details about the dating site mentioned here you can read our Match.com review.

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.