General News

Last month we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001, Match.com paid tribute to New York City by conducting an investigation of the Big Apple's dating scene. As home to the largest population of singles in the United States, the city had plenty of interesting information to offer.

Despite their prickly reputation, New Yorkers are softies at heart. 94% of city-dwelling singles said that they are looking to settle down with a long-term partner. Fortunately for romantic-at-heart New Yorkers, their chances of finding love seem to be good: 47% of people who moved to NYC within the last 5 years claimed to be dating more since their relocation. 56% of those singles stated that they felt like they had a much larger dating pool to explore after becoming New Yorkers.

As they say in real estate, it's all about location, location, location. The borough that you call home has an effect on your love life, according to the Match survey. 94% of singles said that they would be willing to date outside their borough, though Manhattan's prime location still makes it the center of the NYC dating scene. Staten Island, on the other hand, is the least popular borough, thanks to its more remote location. The maximum amount of time the average New Yorker is willing to travel for a date, says the poll, is 39 minutes and 59 seconds.

Location continues to be an important factor when it comes to planning a first date. The West Village was voted the best neighborhood for a date (44%), while Astoria, with only 5% of the vote, was voted the worst neighborhood for a romantic outing. Popular date ideas are:

• Seeing a Broadway show (32%)

• Having a picnic in Central Park (23%)

• Attending a sporting event (17%)

New York singles also show a fondness for museums (particularly the Met) and watching the sunset from landmarks like the Chelsea Piers, Highline, and Brooklyn Bridge. What won't work when it comes to wooing a New Yorker is a trip to Times Square, a meal at a chain restaurant, or a night of karaoke.

The survey also found that:

• When it's time to escape the city for a romantic weekend getaway, Long Island is New Yorkers' top choice, followed by Newport and Fire Island.

• New York a surprisingly good place to be broke: 57% of single women in NYC said they would be happy to split the bill on a date.

• Singles in NYC have fairly traditional taste in partners. Women consider firemen (30%) and Wall Street execs (26%) the sexiest potential dates, while men find actresses (34%) and women working in the fashion industry (29%) most appealing.

If you're in an Empire State Of Mind, check out Match.com's infographic here. For more information on the dating service you can read our review of Match.

The online dating site Christian Cafe has received a lot of media attention lately. Sam Moorcroft, the founder of ChristianCafe.com, was first on the radio for the Boundless Show as an online dating expert. This episode of the show took a look at behind the scenes of online dating. Sam and his wife Polly was part of a round table discussion in which a panel of online daters got to ask him a number of questions. You can find a pod cast of the show here on iTunes.

Next, Sam was on a Canadian Christian TV show called Full Circle. He appears around the 6:00 minute mark and discusses the history of Christian Cafe and how to best succeed in online dating. A former host, Denise, was also on the show with her husband whom she met on Christian Cafe. To view a video of the show you can visit Full Circle.

For more information on this online dating service please check out our review of ChristianCafe.com.

Match.com (Match.ca in Canada) is now powering online dating at Yahoo! Canada. Yahoo in the United States has been using Match.com since May of 2010 (see Story). Previously Lavalife had partnered with Yahoo! Canada to provide online dating to their visitors (see Story).

To find out more about this dating site you can check out our Match.com review.

The Jewish New Year just happened and I noticed that JDate has more to celebrate than Rosh Hashanah. They just released the results from a survey by ResearchNow (an independent research company) which shows that JDate is responsible for 52 percent of all Jewish marriages that started online. From the survey of 948 married Jewish internet users they also concluded that 63 percent of the online dates originated at JDate, this is many times more than the leading competing dating services. The survey also showed that 76 percent of Jewish internet users who used an online dating site to find love, became a member of JDate.

For more information and statistics you can read this post from the JDate blog. To find out if this dating service is something you would be interested in you can also check out our review of JDate.

FriendFinder Networks announced September 12th that they have acquired BDM Global Ventures which owns JigoCity. JigoCity is similar to the popular Groupon website which offers visitors local daily deals. JigoCity has about 150 employees and has offices in China, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and the US (Los Angeles). JigoCity has about 1 million members. Revenue in July for JigoCity was $600,000 and in August it was $1.1 million.

The acquisition cost FriendFinder 1.6 million in shares and about 6.4 million in warrants with exercise prices ranging from $5 to $18 per share.

For more on the story you can read the press release.

According to a new study, people don't like to talk politics in their online dating profiles.

The study, published in the August edition of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, revealed that participants were more likely to admit being overweight than to disclose their political beliefs. Only 14% included "political interests" among their favorite interests. Politics ranked 23rd out of 27 categories identified by singles as topics of interest, just below "video games" and slightly above "book club."

Of those who did list politics as an interest, a whopping 57 percent identified themselves as "middle of the road," compared to 16 percent as "conservative" and 9 percent "liberal."

Older daters and those with higher educations were more likely to share a definitive political preference, such as "very liberal" or "ultra conservative." Women were also 8 percent less likely to say they were interested in politics.

Considering the polarized political climate of America today, it makes sense that daters might not want to share their political beliefs in their profiles, or even discuss politics in the first few dates. It can be a controversial topic, and therefore a turn-off. You could be rejected or reject someone else before even meeting each other. When people don't share the same political leanings, virtual strangers tend to view each other in a less positive way. Some singles refuse to date across party lines altogether.

Even though James Carville and Mary Matalin have made their political differences work in their relationship, not everyone can follow suit. The majority of married couples, about 70%, have similar political beliefs.

Many daters prefer to keep initial conversation and online dating profiles free from controversial topics such as religion, politics, and exes - saving those topics for when the relationship develops.

My advice? Don't bring up who you're going to vote for in the next election until you've had a couple of dates. If you're interested in someone, discussing politics is part of trying to get to know him or her better, but it doesn't have to be the center of attention on a first date. If you feel compelled to talk about politics from the beginning because it's the deciding factor in choosing your dates, then I'd advise looking at niche dating sites like DemocraticSingles.net or DatingRepublicans.com, depending on your preferences.

Casey Klofstad, an associate professor of political science at the University of Miami, and co-authors Peter Hatemi, a genetic epidemiologist at Penn State University, and Rose McDermott, a political science professor at Brown, collected their data from a random sampling of 2,944 profiles from 313 randomly selected zip codes off a free dating site in the fall of 2009. The results accounted for sex, age, race, education and income.