Online Dating

Before Facebook was the site we know and love (mostly) today, it was Facemash: a Hot or Not-like site for Harvard students that compiled pictures from the online Facebooks of nine houses and encouraged users to rate them.

A later version of the site located at thefacebook.com was a small social networking service for Harvard students only. By March 2004, the site had expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. Other Ivy League schools, as well as Boston University, New York University, and MIT, soon followed. By 2005, it had spread to most universities in Canada and the US, and dropped "The" from its name.

The newly rebranded Facebook.com remained limited to college students until it opened to high school students in September 2005, and finally to everyone aged 13 and over a year later. Though the many iterations of the site were different, a common thread ran through most of them: students.

DateMySchool.com is picking up where Facebook left off. With Facebook no longer limited to students, two Columbia University MBA students, Balazs Alexa and Jean Meyer, saw an opportunity. They founded DateMySchool in 2010, after a woman in the Columbia School of Social Work complained that there were too few men in her department.

DateMySchool helps students and alumni connect with other verified students and alumni. "No weirdos, no classmates, no relatives, no stalkers, no colleagues, no Facebook," the site promises. The service has now expanded to 230,000 students in 2,800 colleges, and apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android were launched last month.

What sets DateMySchool apart from the competition is its commitment to safety and privacy. Unlike most social networks, which connect you with friends and family, DateMySchool ensures that you can only see and be seen by people you don't know but can trust. That way you'll never have an awkward run-in with someone you know in real life.

Each user must register with an email address that ends in .edu, to verify that they are an alum or a current student. Members are given control over who can access their profiles by filtering through schools, departments, location, age range, and personal attributes according to their preferences. Alexa and Meyer hope that enabling users to control who can and can't see their profiles will minimize online dating's stigma of embarrassment, decrease the likelihood of fake profiles on the site, and increase privacy and safety for members.

So far, the site has been a hit. DateMySchool was About.com's 2012 Readers' Choice Awards for Best College Dating Site and Best Free Dating Site, and claims to be "the largest dating site for college students in the United States."

"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" is solid advice for most every situation, but it rings especially true online. Anyone who has ventured into the untamed Wild West of online dating knows that it comes with certain risks.

Chief among them is the possibility of being ripped off by an unscrupulous Internet scammer. Your rational side knows it's a possibility, but for the most part it's a fear that's relegated to the deeper, darker recesses of your mind. A far as you're concerned, getting scammed is something that happens to other people in the cautionary tales told on the local news. It's not going to happen to you, right?

Odds are in your favor, but it never hurts to be prepared. SeekingArrangement.com recently posted a report called The Face of Fraud to help online daters separate the catches from the catfish. The site reviewed the profiles of 60,000 banned accounts, and discovered that fake profiles tend to have a few things in common. Here are 7 signs you might be looking at the profile of a scam artist:

Zoosk's dazzling rise to fame is the stuff of online dating legends. Over the last five years, Zoosk has evolved into a leader in the industry, and this year it celebrated a major milestone.

On May 22, 2013, Zoosk announced a company record: revenue exceeded $40 million in the first quarter of the year. That's not a bad way to celebrate the half-decade mark...

And that's not all Zoosk has achieved this year. The first quarter of 2013 also saw these breakthroughs for the popular dating site:

• Zoosk experienced a 116% increase in monthly total unique visitors compared to the same period last year.
• The number of monthly active users for Zoosk's mobile products increased more than 200% year-over-year.

Zoosk believes its success can be chalked up to its unique approach to matchmaking and a strong focus on the mobile market. The site set itself apart with its Behavioral Matchmaking engine, which learns users' preferences by observing their behavior on the site. It continuously improves subsequent matching suggestions as it more thoroughly profiles a user, resulting in increasingly better matches and higher levels of engagement with other singles.

The Behavioral Matchmaking engine is driven by three discovery tools:

• Zoosk's Scientific Matchmaking service, a daily introduction to a potential match
• Carousel, a rapid-fire round of profile pictures
• Search functionality that sorts through the millions of profiles on the site

On the mobile front, Zoosk created a variety of mobile applications to meet users' increasing demands for dating on-the-go. The applications are all optimized versions of the site's experience that are frequently updated to provide better and more sophisticated service. Applications are available for Apple devices on iTunes and for Android in the Google Play store.

Zoosk's commitment to mobile has paid off. It consistently ranks as the #1 dating app for the iPhone and iPad, and in Google Play the Zoosk app has been downloaded more than five million times.

"We wanted to bring a no-compromise approach to small screen dating for users on-the-go," said Shayan Zadeh, Zoosk CEO and co-founder. "So instead of designing our mobile product as an extension of our website, we built a brand new experience from the ground up. This mobile-centric design plus our Behavioral Matchmaking engine equals a powerful formula that is driving user adoption."

Congratulations to Zoosk on their stellar start to 2013. Can't wait to see what the rest of the year has in store...

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

In Hollywood, everyone wants to be on the A-List. It means invites to the best parties, schmoozing with the biggest celebrities, and being showered with the most expensive swag.

Much to my dismay, the OkCupid A-List doesn't involve quite as many sexy movie stars and free Chanel clothes. Instead, the OkC A-List offers:

• Ad-free browsing
• Extra photo albums
• A-List only forums
• Enhanced search features
• Username change
• Anonymous browsing plus the ability to see who viewed your profile
• Unlimited message storage
• Protection against scammers, trolls, and fake users
• Private photos attached to messages
• Increased visibility on the site

The service launched in 2009 to mixed reviews. For those with very specific needs, A-List membership comes with useful perks. But for the majority of OkCupid users, A-List membership comes with nothing but a question: "What's the point?" The features are far from essential, and some users feel that the additional elements detract from their online dating experience.

On the plus side, there are a few genuine advantages to using the A-List service. The site can become a more effective matching tool when you can specify a search radius lower than 25 miles. Anonymous browsing means you can check back on a profile to remind yourself who someone is without looking like a creepy stalker. The advanced search features can come in handy, as can the increased mail box size for those who are prolific writers. The most intriguing benefit of A-List membership is the ability to change that stupid username you chose before you realized there was no going back.

Other A-List features are a little odder. One feature allows an A-List member to send email to a user whose mailbox is completely full. Another gives feedback from A-List users priority over feedback from free users. A third allows for the creation of adult photo albums.

On the negative side of things, A-List services hardly provide any extra value and may come with unwanted baggage. Harsher users may assume that anyone who pays for A-List membership is creepy, desperate, or needy. That's a big price to pay for something that doesn't offer much in return.

In the long run, A-List seems to be a needless expense. Deleting messages from a full inbox is hardly a chore, is it? Why add features that make your online dating experience more complex instead of simpler? And with so few differences between A-List memberships and standard memberships, why pay for something that you could get for free?

For more on this dating site you can take a look at our review of OkCupid.

Don't you wish online dating came with an instruction manual?

Oh wait - it does!

Well, sorta. If what you're looking for is "a complete step by step guide on how someone would seduce you," then yes...online dating comes with an instruction manual. It's called the Seduction Style Guide, and you can find it (where else?) on POF.com.

Get those grains of salt ready, and let's dive in...

The first section of the test is called "Flirting." Choose up to three of the listed flirting styles that appeal most to you, and up to three that don't interest you. Do you prefer your dates "Playful," "Confident," "Coy," "Charming," or "Prim and Proper?" Then answer a question about your communication preferences. How would you like a date to ask you out? By phone? By email? In person at a dating event?

Section three delves deeper into your personality. Read each statement and indicate the degree to which it describes you: "Strongly agree," "Disagree," "Agree," or "Strongly agree." Statements to rate cover topics like humor and spontaneity:

• I enjoy trying different kinds of ethnic foods
• I brood for a long time in an attempt to solve some fundamental problem
• There is humor to be seen in just about everything

Of course, it wouldn't be a Seduction Style test without questions about seduction! The next sections ask questions about your first date habits and your sexuality. Again, you must rate the accuracy of words used describe your sexuality. Are you the "Sultry" type? Or maybe you're better described as "Adorable?"

The test wraps up with a free response section and the most salacious section of all. The free response questions inquire about what you most and least enjoy while on a date, and your turn ons/offs. Answer each with three responses, all in your own words.

The final section...well...let's just say it's a pretty intimate look at your favorite kinks, fetishes, and fantasies.

Put it all together and you get POF's take on how best to woo you. Got that salt ready?

The results page is surprisingly detailed. First, there's The Big Picture. Apparently people like me "tend to love life with zeal, often living in the moment and trying not to let experiences pass them by." (All true, as far as I'm concerned...perhaps POF knows me better than I would like to admit.)

Then there's the three step seduction plan: Approach Me, How To Date Me, and How To Sexually Seduce Me. Much to my surprise, POF also manages to sneak in some genuinely useful information amongst all the silly stuff. The report includes info on favorite dating conversation topics, online dating safety, preferred dating activities, and do's and don'ts.

To show others your results, send the link included at the bottom of the results page (and consider sending some salt with it).

To find out more about this popular dating site you can take a look at our Plentyoffish review.

The online dating industry is booming, but there's a dark cloud lurking on the horizon. For users, a successful stint of online dating ends in meeting a match and no longer needing a dating site. But for the dating sites themselves, business success means retaining customers and keeping them coming back for more. Clearly, there's a conflict of interest. Houston, we have a problem.

eHarmony may have the answer. While some dating sites are developing products for couples in order to remain relevant in users' lives, eHarmony is taking a very different approach.

With 565,000 marriages under its belt so far, eHarmony now plans to expand from the marriage market to the job market. eHarmony vice president Grant Langston says the company will launch a service to match employers with job seekers in the U.S. in June, followed shortly afterwards by a launch in Canada.

"We've seen indicators that 60 to 65 per cent of people are unhappy with their jobs, whether or not they are actively searching for new ones," Langston says. Expanding into the job market is a natural progression for eHarmony, he believes, given the company's extensive research into habits, desires, and personality types.

The typical hiring process is driven by employers, who ask a series of questions and evaluate potential employees' skills to assess suitability for the position. eHarmony's approach to hiring will look a little different: employers and employees will complete extensive questionnaires focused on culture to determine whether they're a good match for each other.

"When employers post a job on eHarmony, job seekers in the database will be matched to that job and both parties will be notified," TheStar.com reports. "They can review each others' profile and communicate online before meeting face-to-face."

Research agrees that the eHarmony approach to job hunting might be more effective. In December of last year, an issue of the American Sociological Review reported on a study of the recruiting practices of over a hundred professional service firms that found that applicants and employers with similarities in experiences, hobbies, and personal appearance made the best matches.

Langston is confident that the idea has a future, but acknowledges that there may be a few bumps along the way. eHarmony plans to allow for a year to iron out the kinks in the new service, and hasn't ruled out purchasing an online job board that can be combined with existing matching services. To date, there is no word on who will pay for the service or how much it will cost.