General News

Research published earlier this year in Communication Quarterly has identified five flirting personalities, reports USA Today.

More than 5,020 heterosexual adults participated in the study, by filling out questionnaires about their flirting technique and their romantic partners. "The flirting styles inventory is for the very first stage of romantic development," explains Jeffrey Hall, co-author and assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He also notes that, in most cases, an individual uses a combination of the 5 flirting styles, though one type is typically dominant.

The flirting styles identified are: physical, traditional, polite, sincere, and playful.

1. Physical: People with a physical flirting style have a tendency to develop relationships quickly. Both sexual chemistry and emotional connection is strong with their partners, though sexual interest may be the greater focus in the relationship.
2. Traditional: Traditional flirts adhere to conventional ideas of dating and relationships. Men and women who favor this style believe that men should pursue women, and women should not pursue men. They often tend to be introverted.
3. Polite: Daters who fall into these categories place emphasis on proper etiquette and nonsexual communication. They are less likely than daters with other styles to approach someone they're interested in, and they are often not flattered by flirting, but their relationships are meaningful.
4. Sincere: Deep relationships are the name of the game for sincere flirts. Their relationships feature both strong emotional connections and sexual chemistry, but are based primarily on the emotional bond. This is the flirting style that was cited most in the study.
5. Playful: Flirting is all about fun and building self-esteem for playful daters. They tend to be interested in flirting as a recreational activity, rather than as a tool to find a long-term relationship. This is the most uncommon flirting style.

The researchers make it clear that one style is not objectively better than the others in all situations, though one can be more effective than another, depending on the outcome you want to achieve. "For example," Hall says, "a playful flirt is more likely to have short-term relationships. People with a playful style of flirting are effective in having that type of relationship but may find it difficult to let people they're interested in know they want something more."

Daters who leaned towards the physical, sincere, and playful styles were likely to experience the most success for dating and long-term relationships. Individuals with a combination of the physical and sincere styles showed "rapid relational escalation of important relationships with more emotional connection and greater physical chemistry."

Take the flirting styles survey at http://connect.ku.edu/tests/flirt/

Plenty of Fish is looking to hire a Database Administrator (DBA) so if you are interested in the job and have the qualifications you should comment on their blog. Markus also released a few statistics about his dating site and what the DBA will be up against. Last year alone Plenty of Fish sent out 5.5 billion messages. This works out to about 15 million a day. He also noted that Plenty of Fish's Behavioral Matching Engine deals with almost 20 billion pieces of data from their 30 million plus registered users that is stored in their database.

What this all boils down to is POF needs some heavy duty hardware to run its website and a DBA that knows how to optimize databases and SQL statements.

For more information on this free dating service you can read our PlentyofFish.com review.

It looks like IAC won control of Meetic after a number of shareholders agree to IAC's buy out at 15 euros per share. IAC now owns 77.6 percent of the French online dating service.

For more on this story you can read Reuters.

eHarmony has a new CEO. It is the well qualified Jeremy Verba. Mr. Verba last job was as an Executive at Zynga (they make popular Facebook social games like Treasure Isle). He also has worked at other internet companies like AOL, E! Online and CNet.

eHarmony also revealed that in 2011 they hit several milestones. Their mobile dating app (for both Android and iOS platforms) has had over 1 million downloads and on average it gets downloaded about 10,000 times in a day. The eHarmony mobile dating app also accounts for about 30 percent of all user registrations on the site now.

For more on this story you can read the press release To find out about this dating site you can take a look at our eHarmony.com review.

In February of this year Zoosk had 2.7 million Facebook fans. In just 6 months the number of fans has reached 4 million and is still climbing. This goes to show you how a smart marketing campaign and especially TV advertisements can make a dating site. It also helps that Zoosk has a unique but easy to remember name.

Zoosk first reached 1 million Facebook fans back in June of 2010.

For more information on this dating site, you can read our Zoosk.com review.

Last week OkCupid.com added location based dating to all of their mobile applications (Android, iOS). Since OkCupid.com is geared towards a younger crowd (20 and 30 something's) and this demographic has embraced the smart phone, it just makes sense for this much talked about dating feature to be available through this service.

OkCupid has added a few neat twists to their location based feature. One of them is you can set it up to broadcast your location to people near you who match you based on your interests and personality. Not just to everyone who happens to belong to the dating site and is near you. Once you have connected with someone close to you through the location based feature of the OkCupid App, you can then chat via text with them and share photos.

For more on this service you can go ahead and read our OkCupid.com review.