Online Dating

There is a new dating app now available on the Apple App Store from WealthyMen.com. Just like the actual website the WealthyMen app aims to connect attractive women with established professionals looking to meet that special someone.

What makes WealthyMen unique among dating sites is that it is one of the few that offers a verification service in which male members can verify their income, photos and profession. Because of the type of site this is, it has a high female to male ratio.

The dating app offers most functionality of the dating site including creating a profile, searching for members and communication. For more information on this dating site you can read our Wealthy Men review.

China's largest dating site, Jiayuan.com, announced last week that they had reached 90 million members around 7pm on July 7, 2013. It took them only 6 months to signup 10 million more members (in January of 2013 they had 80 million members).

Jiayuan.com is also the only Chinese dating site company that is trading on the NASDAQ. Their IPO happened on May, 2011 and the company has since doubled in worth.

For more information on this milestone of Jiayuan you can check out the press release.

If you've been on the Internet in the last week - and seeing as this is 2013, there's no way you haven't - you've probably come across an article proclaiming that online dating has scientifically been proven to be better than traditional dating.

Every feed I follow has been blowing up with the news that 1 in 3 Americans now meet their spouses online, and that a new study has found that marriages born out of online dating are more satisfying and less likely to end in divorce. The study's results were published in a paper called "Marital Satisfaction and Breakups Differ Across Online and Offline Meeting Venues" in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"These data suggest that the Internet may be altering the dynamics and outcomes of marriage itself," said the study's lead author John Cacioppo, the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago.

Before you vow never to meet people in person again, it's important to note that the study was funded by eHarmony.com and Cacioppo is paid as a scientific advisor for eHarmony. Of course, everyone involved promises that eHarmony's backing did not affect the outcomes of the study in any way, but...

I know I'm not the only one looking at this new data with a healthy dose of skepticism.

I am, however, not so skeptical about a few of Cacioppo's claims. Online dating clearly has changed the face of relationships forever, and there's no going back. Cacioppo's research found that nearly 8% of marriages initiated offline end in breakups, while couples who meet online report divorce and separation rates of only 6%.

I'll be holding firmly onto my grains of salt until further studies - ones that aren't in any way connected to online dating sites - confirm his data, but I'm willing to admit that Cacioppo may have a point. Online dating may indeed lead to greater marriage satisfaction for a few key reasons:

1. The pool of prospective partners is significantly larger online, increasing the chance that you'll meet someone you're highly compatible with.
2. Singles who take the step of joining an online dating site may be more serious about finding a long-term partner than singles encountered offline.
3. Online daters may be more honest and up-front about who they are and what they're looking for (barring those infamous little white lies told in profiles), meaning that the connections they form are more genuine.

"It is possible that individuals who met their spouse online may be different in personality, motivation to form a long-term marital relationship, or some other factor," Cacioppo said in a press release.

That sounds like the perfect opportunity for another study - one that isn't funded by an online dating giant.

Related Article: The Secret To A Happy Marriage Is…Online Dating?

Remember the three-day rule? Well, you can forget about waiting to make that call and a lot of other advice that might have worked in the dating scene ten years ago.

Now in the age of GPS-based apps like Tinder that can hook you up with someone instantly, and the way we communicate primarily via text rather than phone calls, this kind of advice falls short. Now that we have instant access (and therefore expect more immediate gratification), we don't have the time or patience to sit around and wait. After all, there could be five other hot men (or women) to meet in the meantime.

So how do you navigate the new digital dating world with so much access to new people - whether it's online dating, mobile dating, or meeting through Facebook? What are some guidelines to help figure out when to contact someone and how?

Following are some new tips to get you started:

Get familiar with technology. If you're new to the dating scene then it's important not to dismiss technology when it comes to helping you find someone. Online dating is extremely popular, with thousands of singles joining various websites every day. Mobile dating also offers a lot of different options - from apps that connect you to friends of friends on Facebook to those that tell you who is single and within a five-mile radius of where you happen to be in the moment. See what's out there. Don't assume that it's not for you until you try it.

Communicate. Instead of playing coy and waiting around for someone else to make a move, it's good to communicate with him so he knows you're interested. Dating moves very quickly, so if you drop in and out of communication with someone or wait a day or more to answer a text, you could miss out on opportunities. Be consistent - respond in a timely way to texts and emails, and check in with your online dating site often.

Be honest. If you are serious about finding a relationship, then it's important to be honest about who you are. It's easy to pretend to be someone else online and paste old photos on your dating profile or fudge your age or height. But when you start meeting people to date, you're going to have to explain yourself. Be true to who you are, that is the best way to connect to someone else.

Be bold. Good relationships don't just magically happen. They require risk - we have to put ourselves out there, to be willing to show who we are to someone else. If you go solo to that party, or talk to the stranger in front of you in the Starbucks line, or get up the nerve to message that guy you've been eyeing on your online dating site, you are making the effort. These are all small steps, but can lead to something great. Take more risks by putting yourself out there. Love is worth it.

When you’ve first decided to join an online dating site, it can be tempting to just jot down the first thing that comes into your head before you’ve lost your nerve. However, unless you really think you will truly lose your nerve and never come back if you don’t publish a profile that very minute, it can be more helpful to save your work temporarily and revisit it later.

The perks of revision are numerous and broad. First of all, there are the same upsides that there are for editing any work: you’ll have a better chance of catching mistakes if you read it over later. Nothing pulls a reader out of a profile faster than a blatantly misspelled word, or worse, an autocorrect that is completely wrong and inappropriate. Giving yourself even a few hours’ worth of space can save you countless embarrassing moments.

Then there’s the issue of content. When a profile is written in the heat of the moment, the emotion behind that moment tends to permeate the profile. That can be helpful if you were feeling particularly confident, excited and inspired, but not so much if you were despondent, anxious or angry at an ex. Plus, some “spur of the moment” writers might be under the influence of something else, like peer pressure (“Say you like long walks on the beach! It’ll be hilarious!”) or alcohol. By the light of the next morning, you may find more than simple typos: red flags, jokes that aren’t funny, rants, or inappropriate double entendres make frequent appearances.

At the same time, that’s not to say that those first-draft profiles are completely useless. Often there’s a candidness or an honesty to such writing that’s harder to get when you’re carefully evaluating each word. Sometimes those “spur of the moment” writing sessions reveal more of the “real you” than would otherwise surface; other times they’re clouded by self-consciousness, bitterness or beer. Luckily, it’s often clearly apparent later which you’re dealing with - and if you’ve got a gem, the trick is to polish it through editing without wearing away the character.

So don’t be afraid to sit down and pour out your feelings on who you are and what you want; don’t fling it out immediately onto the internet, either. Instead, save those candid writings, but don’t be afraid to view them with a critical eye later. It’s the combination of passion and polish that produces a memorable profile.

As if we don't hear enough about the perils of online dating already, this is the latest news about the potential dangers of looking for love online: your online dating site doesn't have to tell you that your date might be a murderer.

Eric Goldman, a Forbes contributor who also teaches Internet Law at Santa Clara University in California, cautions daters in a recent article on Forbes.com. He begins with the story of Mary Kay Beckman, who met a man named Wade Mitchell Ridley on Match.com in 2011. After dating briefly, Beckman broke it off.

Three months later, Ridley attacked Beckman in her home, repeatedly stabbing and kicking her. Later, it was revealed that Ridley already faced a murder charge in Arizona, where he was suspected of killing an ex-girlfriend with a butcher knife. Authorities also believe he robbed a pharmacy of painkillers earlier in the day. He was sentenced to 28-70 years in prison, where he died in May 2012.

Beckman survived the attack, and believes Match.com should take responsibility for the tragedy. She sued the dating site, but her suit was eventually dismissed.

Goldman thinks the outlook is bleak for suits like Beckman's. "Lawsuits against online dating sites tend to generate widespread press coverage going into detail about the victimization," he writes, "as stories like Beckman's prey on common fears about online dating." But although they generate outpourings of sympathy, they have historically been completely ineffective.

Beckman's suit was doomed from the start, says Goldman, because of a law that says websites aren't liable for user content. Plaintiffs have argued that they aren't suing dating sites over posts, but rather for failing to provide protection from dangerous users, but to date they've had zero success.

A similar case ruled that "all of Match.com's conduct must trace back to the publication of third-party user content or profiles. Match.com is a website that publishes dating profiles. There is nothing for Match.com to negligently misrepresent or negligently fail to warn about other than what a user of the website may find on another user's profile on the website."

Plaintiffs will no doubt continue their attempts to hold dating sites accountable for the actions of their members, and get increasingly creative in doing so, but Goldman believes their efforts are unlikely to be fruitful. "I've never seen a successful 'failure to warn' argument make any progress in working around" the law, he notes.

The best hope is that the websites will care enough about their reputation to voluntarily take measures to protect their members from harm.