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Lab42's Relationship Status Update (Part II)

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  • Friday, December 09 2011 @ 09:23 am
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Ever wondered how technological innovations like text messaging and social networking affects modern dating? So did the team at Lab42, who surveyed 500 social network users over the age of 18 in hopes of gaining a little insight into the intersection of love and technology.

We took at look at the infographic created from their data (see it here) and covered a few of their findings in Part I, so let's move on. After gathering some basic information on relationships in the 21st century, the Lab42 team turned their attention to social media, email, dating sites, and text messaging. This is what they found:

  • Have you ever broken up via text message, email, or Facebook?: 67% No, 33% Yes

  • Would you ever break up via text message, email, or Facebook?: 60% No, 40% Yes

  • Have you ever signed up for an online dating site?: 77% No, 23% Yes

Then came the burning question that many avid Facebookers have agonized over: How long do you wait to change your relationships status? At the start of a new relationship, 38% said they update their status immediately. 24% wait until after they've notified their friends, and another 24% hold off on updating until they see that their SO has changed theirs. After a breakup, participants were quicker to announce their new single status to the world: 52% responded that they change their status immediately, compared to 19% who tell their friends first and 9% who wait for their ex's status update.

Although technology may seem impersonal, many technophiles are still doing their best to keep the human touch in their relationships. 42% of survey respondents said they they are most likely to ask someone out on a first date in person. Other popular options were Facebook (24%), the phone (16%), text message (11%), and email (5%).

It also turns out that stalking someone online isn't the most popular way to get to know someone: 29% answered that they research new love interests on social networks and another 26% admitted to Googling them, but the majority (57%) favor being upfront about their interest by Facebook friending potential dates. Facebook was also a popular way to communicate with SOs: 64% answered "Yes" when asked if they post romantic messages on their sweetie's wall.

The top three most common communication tools for tech-savvy daters are mobile phones (76%), text messages (65%), and Facebook messages (45%). That left email (34%) and Facebook chat (34%) in the 4th and 5th places, while instant messaging (21%) brought up the rear.

Lastly, Lab42 asked respondents currently in relationships about the average number of text messages they send their partners per day:

  • 0 messages: 19%

  • 1-5 messages: 26%

  • 6-10 messages: 17%

  • 11+ messages: 38%

It doesn't take a psychic to see Carpal Tunnel in their futures!

The Biggest Online Dating Success Story Of 2011: Badoo.com

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  • Thursday, December 08 2011 @ 02:31 pm
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As of November 2011, Badoo had:

  • 130,000,000+ current users
  • Members in 180 countries
  • 127,503 new users per day
  • 1,411,665 photos and videos uploaded daily

Add all that together and what do you get? The biggest online dating success story of 2011.

Badoo is taking the world by storm according to TechCrunch. It's a truly global, multi-lingual phenomenon, with location-based social networking functionality that is bringing people together to chat and flirt all around the world. In fact, if Badoo was just a site for social networking, it would be the 4th largest in the world. But Badoo is so much more.

Knowing that each user's needs are different, Badoo takes on different roles in different countries. In the UK, it's primarily used for casual dating. In the Czech Republic, it's a marriage site. In Indonesia, it's a safe space for burqa-clad women to explore self-expression. The site has been used for everything from making friends to throwing parties. Thanks to that ability to be so many different things to so many different people, Badoo now brings in $100 million per year in revenue.

Their success story began in 2006 when, rather than seeing Facebook as competition, Badoo set out to fill a gap that Facebook had left in the market: helping strangers connect. Badoo then offered all of it's core functionality for free, giving users a full experience without the big price tag that comes along with many traditional dating sites. For those who want even more out of the site, paid subscriptions are available that unlock special features like the ability to see who has viewed your profile. A system of micropayments is also in place to help users improve their search rankings and become more visible.

Jessica Powell, Chief Marketing Officer of Badoo, believes that the site's success stems from its flexibility. Unlike sites that are specifically designed for dating, Badoo creates a space in which users can connect in any way they want. It's more like real life, she says, when "meeting new people" can be anything from being introduced to a friend of a friend, to saying "hi" to a stranger at a bar, to flirting, to going on a date. Badoo reflects the offline world because people want to meet real people, not pages of meaningless data.

The site's strategy of "real world meets cyberspace" seems to be working - Powell says that 50% of the conversations on Badoo now lead to an offline meetup, and at the rate Badoo is going, that number is only going to increase.

For even more information about this dating service you can read our Badoo.com review.

The Rise Of Mobile Dating

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  • Wednesday, December 07 2011 @ 07:52 pm
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If the lightening-fast speeds of email and text messaging aren't fast enough for you, there's a new way to meet your match: mobile dating. According to AreYouInterested.com and SNAP Interactive, 61% of Are You Interested members are now more likely to hook up on a mobile dating app than on an online dating site. Is it possible that online dating, once hailed as the way of the future, is already becoming a thing of the past?

4 out of 5 of the 50,000 singles surveyed said they now prefer mobile dating to online alternatives. While I don't think that online dating will be going anywhere anytime soon, it's impossible to ignore the meteoric rise of mobile dating. These days it seems like everyone is glued to their smartphones, so it's hard to beat the accessibility of dating apps and the promise of instant dates they offer.

AreYouInterested.com found that the top 10 cities for mobile dating in America are:

Online Dating Liars Will Not Face The Wrath Of The DoJ

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  • Tuesday, December 06 2011 @ 09:43 am
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The Department of Justice announced in November that it will not prosecute people for lying online. Watch out online daters: that means that anyone who fibs about him- or herself in a profile on a dating site doesn't have to worry about being locked up.

Richard Downing, the deputy chief of the Justice Department's Computer Crime section, told Congress that although federal law could be interpreted to mean that fabricating on the World Wide Web is a crime, the DoJ has no plans to pursue such cases. "The DoJ is in no way interested in bringing cases against people who lie about their age on dating sites, or anything of the sort," Downing explained to a House Judiciary subcommittee. "We don't have the time or resources to do that."

The law in question is the CFAA - or "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act" - which criminalizes "exceeding authorized access" of a computer. The CFAA was initially created to prohibit the hacking of sensitive databases, but the DoJ has since argued for a wider interpretation of the law that makes it illegal to break any rule set by a computer's owner. Under that more expansive interpretation, checking Facebook on a work computer when an employer has forbidden it could be a federal crime. Violating a Web site's terms of service - like the rules about lying that are found on most, if not all, dating sites - would also be a federal crime.

The CFAA has traditionally been used to prosecute individuals who used a computer system they had legitimate access to for unauthorized purposes. Take the case of Lori Drew, the 50-year-old woman who used a bogus MySpace profile to harass a 13-year-old girl who later committed suicide. Because MySpace prohibits the impersonation of others in its terms of service, Drew was convicted under the law, though the conviction was later overturned.

Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who also testified before the House Judiciary subcommittee, raised concerns that the DoJ would not keep its word, and noted that he is confused as to what the Justice Department's current position actually is. "I'm still not sure DoJ has disavowed such prosecutions - it's hard to know what DoJ's position is," he told POLITICO.

Downing offers minimal clarification: "What we do need to be careful about is to make sure... that we don't harm the ability to bring cases that everybody in the room would agree are proper and appropriate ones," he testified. "We are highly concerned about the effects of restricting the definition of 'exceeds authorized access' in the CFAA to disallow prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider."

Lab42's Relationship Status Update

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  • Thursday, December 01 2011 @ 08:13 pm
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How do people treat relationships nowadays?

That's the question the team at Lab42 asked before embarking upon a survey of 500 social network users over the age of 18. Relationships are more public than ever. With the rise of social media, friends, family, and ex's can find out far more about your love life than you would ever knowingly tell them. So how does all that transparency affect our dating habits?

Lab42 asked a range of personal questions and created an infographic (see it here) called "The Relationship Status Update" to display the participants' answers. Here are some of the survey's most interesting findings:

When asked to share the most important trait a significant other should possess, physical attractiveness ranked last, with 11% of the vote. Emotionally attentive (12%) and similar humor (13%) came next, followed by strong family values (20%) and same personality (21%). The majority of respondents (23%) chose something other than the proscribed answers, like political views, religion, taste in music, and financial stability.

Cheaters - at least those willing to fess up to it - are still the minority of the dating population. 68% of men and 77% of women said that they have never cheated, meaning that 32% of men and 23% of women have stepped out on their partners. The numbers don't quite add up, however, when the participants were asked if they had ever been cheated on:

  • "Yes:" 48% of men, 53% of women

  • "No:" 37% of men, 35% of women

  • "Unsure:" 15% of men, 12% of women

Then came the moment if truth. "If there was no chance of getting caught," Lab 42 asked, "would you cheat?" 76% of women answered with a resounding "No," along with 58% of men. But 24% of women said they would cheat if their actions didn't have consequences, as did 42% of men. There's no need to lose faith in love and romance, however. When asked if they believe that there is one true soulmate for every person, a clear majority of survey respondents (75%) said "Yes."

With the basics out of the way, the Lab42 team moved on to the main event: social media and other technology. How should delicate subjects like the Facebook relationship status be handled by modern daters? What is contemporary breakup etiquette? How do couples prefer to communicate? And how popular is Facebook stalking anyway? We'll answer those questions, and more, in Part II.

Sugar Daddy Dating Under Fire Again

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  • Wednesday, November 30 2011 @ 10:44 am
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Sugar daddy dating sites are on the defensive again, after another news story paints the service in a negative light.

In September, an episode of Dr. Phil took on sugar daddy dating, calling it "the Internet version of the world's oldest occupation." Now Inside Edition is following suit, saying that sugar dating arrangements are a last resort for college students who can't afford the rising cost of tuition. Lisa Guerrero and the I-Squad launched an investigation into the sugar lifestyle, determined to find out exactly what goes on behind the scenes.

They began by interviewing a young woman who joined a site called EstablishedMen.com in hopes of finding a man who could help her pay off the thousands of dollars she owed in college loans. Her search payed off - two full years of her college tuition were paid for by a man she met on the site, who also covered expenses like rent. She said she understands why some would be concerned that sugar daddy arrangements amount to nothing more than prostitution, but insists that her own experience has shown that that's not the case.

Another young woman, who went by the name of Kelly, decided to go undercover on several sugar daddy Web sites, in hopes of exposing men who were exploiting vulnerable young college students. A man from SeekingArrangement.com was one of many suitors who responded to Kelly's profile. He met Kelly at a cafe while Inside Edition filmed their encounter, and proceeded to explain exactly what he wanted out of the arrangement. "I'm looking for slightly unusual things to do" he said, in exchange for covering Kelly's tuition, rent, and bills, before asking about her pain threshold. When questioned by Inside Edition about offering money for sex, the man explained that he what he was really looking for was friendship and companionship.

Despite that experience, positive views came later from the first woman interviewed by Inside Edition, who said that "everyone can set their own boundaries and everyone has the ability to decide that this is something they want to do." The CEO of several sugar daddy sites also added that women who choose to become sugar babies make a "conscious decision about what would make them happy in life."

Brandon Wade, Founder & CEO of SeekingArrangement.com, says that "The media is always focused on casting a negative light on the Sugar Daddy and Sugar Baby relationship. The fact is, if the media coverage was balanced, it would feature thousands of positive personal stories that come about from people who meet through our dating website."

So what's going on here? Was the man who met with "Kelly" a simple case of one bad apple spoiling the bunch? Are all sugar daddies looking for "unusual things?" Is there anything wrong with that in the first place, or do consenting adults have the right to enter into whatever kind of relationship they wish?

What do you think?

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