General News

At the World's Fair in Queens in 1964, a giant computer selected foreign pen pals for visitors to the Parker Pen Pavilion where it was housed. Curious sightseers filled out a questionnaire, inserted it into the machine, and shortly afterwards received a card with the name and address of a participant with whom he or she was determined to be a match.

Sound familiar? That machine, according to a recent article by Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker, marked the humble beginnings of online dating. Inspired by the computer, Lewis Altfest, a 25 year old accountant, and Robert Ross, a programmer at I.B.M., teamed up to develop a similar method for finding matches a little closer to home. Altfest and Ross partnered with a group of Harvard students who had created Operation Match, a program that used a computer to pair people with potential dates, and soon a prototype called Project TACT was born.

Project TACT - which stood for Technical Automated Compatibility Testing - became New York City's very first computer-based dating service. TACT was initially restricted to users living on the Upper East Side, where the freedoms of the sexual revolution had been unreservedly embraced by many, and within a year over 5,000 subscribers had signed up for the service.

For a fee of $5, each user filled out a 100 question multiple-choice survey, the results of which were then fed to an I.B.M. computer for analysis. Questions covered a wide range of topics, from likes and dislikes to personal values, and also included gender-specific queries about a participant's ideal matches. When the program had evaluated the data, the computer produced 5 cards (blue if the participant was a woman, pink if the participant was a man) with the names of potential dates.

As TACT became increasingly popular and expanded to the rest of New York, Altfest and Ross found themselves in the pages of Cosmopolitan and the New York Herald Tribune. One woman, a reporter from a local radio station scheduled to conduct an interview with Altfest for a story about how New York couples meet, married Ross two years after Altfest was out of the office for the interview and Ross took his place.

Though Ross was pleased that TACT, in a way, did help him meet his wife, he eventually grew tired of the project, moved to London, and began working in finance instead. Despite the success of the project, Ross says that, looking back on TACT now, he considered computer dating to be nothing more than a gimmick and a short-lived fad.

Oh, how times have changed...

What does it take to make a summer date as hot as the summer weather?

"With summer officially in full swing," says the blog of Match.com, "we polled our Match.com members to find out this year's summer dating essentials to help heat up their love lives - from tips on picking the perfect place for a summer date to fashion do's or don'ts."

Ladies, if you're headed to a sizzling summer date, here's what the men of Match.com think you should wear and what you should leave at home:

• Copped tops: Some men - 12%, to be exact - think that midriff-baring shirts don't belong on a date.
• Your bikini: 34% of women said that they'd be willing to wear a bikini in front of their dates, but only after they'd seen each other 1-3 times. Men, on the other hand, were more comfortable with their beach bodies - 23% said they would don a swimsuit on a first date.
• Braided hair: Boys dig braids! 63% of men said that they like it when women wear braids in their hair.
• White pants & short skirts: 81% of men think their dates look great in white pants, and it should come as no surprise that a whopping 92% are firmly in favor of short skirts.
• Thong swimsuits: Save your thongs for the bedroom - 53% of male participants said that it's not acceptable for a woman to wear a thong swimsuit on a date at a pool or beach.
• Giant sunglasses: Most men think the bug-eyed sunglasses trend should be for celebrities only. 56% said they aren't into it.

The ladies of Match.com offered the following style advice for men on summer dates:

• Your abs: They may be phenomenal, but women would prefer that you keep your shirt on. 80% said that a guy shouldn't walk around shirtless on a date, no matter how toned his stomach is.
• Skinny jeans: Ditch 'em. 68% of women said a man should never wear skinny jeans on a date.
• Speedos: Speedos are definitely a spee-don't. 91% of women said that a man should never slip into a speedo for a date.
• Polo shirts: A polo shirt and khakis are the preferred uniform for men on summer dates. 93% of women expressed a preference for this look, while 87% opted for the polo shirt and shorts.
• Shade: Visors are a huge turn off, said 84% of women. Stick to aviators (favored by 75% of women) instead.

The Match.com survey also found that, although 1% of singles still prefer to meet a date over coffee during the summer, the majority prefer to meet in cooler locations, like a deck or patio. And for those who are wondering whether or not a summer fling is a good idea in the first place, 49% of participants said that they'd had a summer romance that turned into a long-term relationship.

For more information on this dating service you should check out our review of Match.com.

How have marriage and divorce changed over the years?

In 2009. the United States Census Bureau surveyed 39,000 households in an attempt to get a glimpse into the evolution of marriage and divorce in America. The results from the Survey of Income and program Participation (SIPP) were just released, and FlowingData.com used their findings to create visual charts of the state of America marriage. You can see the original graphs here, at their website.

Their primary finding concerns the ages at which men and women choose to marry. "In 1986," says FlowingData.com, "nearly three-quarters of women from 25 to 29 years old had married at least once, while in 2009, only about half of women in the age group have married."

In each survey year - 1986, 1996, 2001, 2004, and 2009 - the graph shows the same trend: the lowest percentage of married people fall into the 25-29 years bracket, and the percentage steadily increases through each successive age bracket until it peaks at "55 and older." The huge disparity seen in the 25-29 years category between the 1986 graph and the 2009 graph is almost completely gone by the time participants had reached the 55+ group, where the points from the two graphs nearly intersect.

In most age and race groups, according to the survey, a "lower percentage of people were married in 2009 than in 1986. However, in some groups, such as those 55 years and older, a higher percentage of people were married in 2009 then in 1986; although the differences are quite small." The SIPP results also confirmed that, in 2009, it was no longer particularly uncommon for someone, either male or female, to be married more than once.

Divided into ethnic groups, the survey found that, though in most cases fewer marriages happened for each age bracket in 2009 than in 1986, marriage in both years increased at a fairly steady rate (regardless of race) as age increased. The lowest percentage of married people for all ethnic groups fell in "25-29 years," and the highest in "55 and older." The greatest differences between 1986 and 2009 are seen in the 25-29 age bracket for all races.

And what of the infamous seven year itch? According to this survey, the idea of the seven year itch isn't completely accurate, but it isn't far from the truth either. "The median marrying age for men is 24.5," reports FlowingData.com, "and median divorce age is 32.0. For women: 22.3 and 30.1, respectively."

For the first time this year shipments of tablets and smartphones exceeded those of desktops and laptops. According to the Flurry blog, 2011 is also the year that the daily time a user spends on mobile applications exceeded that of normal internet browsing (both on the desktop and smartphone). They came to this conclusion while compiling internet usage data from Alexa and comScore, and comparing it with their own data that they track for mobile application usage.

In June, 2010 the average user spent 64 minutes a day on the web and 43 minutes a day using mobile applications. By December of that year web use jumped to 70 minutes and mobile application use went up 23 minutes to 66. By June, 2011 web use has risen to 74 minutes a day but, mobile app use surpassed that and has reached 81 minutes a day. According to Flurry, this means that the average user now spends daily 9 percent more of their time using mobile apps than browsing the web.

I was initially surprised by these numbers but after thinking about it they do makes sense as mobile applications have come a long way in only 3 short years of popularity. When looking at these numbers from Flurry it looks like that more people now use mobile applications than browse the web. That is not the case, many more people still use the internet than mobile apps, it's just that those who have both tend to use their mobile applications more. Still, these numbers are interesting and it shows that dating sites need to take into consideration not only allowing their members to access their service by the web but by mobile applications as well.

For dating sites who offer a dating mobile application please read our Match.com review and our eHarmony Review.

I was surprised this morning when I read that Perfectmatch.com has been acquired by FriendFinder Networks (FFN). I am sure there have been others but this is the first dating site that I know of that FriendFinder Networks (or Various) has purchased. The only thing in the press release mentioned about the terms of the deal is that:

... founder Duane Dahl will join FriendFinder Networks as General Manager of the Company's general audience dating websites group ...

Having Duane Dahl join the FriendFinder ranks is a good move on FFN's part. In the past Perfectmatch.com is one of the few dating sites that has been able to get their dating service featured in movies from Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. and NBC Universal. The dating site also has been a part of the "Dr. Phil Show" and "Dancing with the Stars".

For more on the story read the press release. To find out about the dating service FriendFinder acquired you can check out our Perfectmatch.com review.

The European dating giant Cupid plc acquired 75% of two German online dating services, WomenWeb GmbH and OnlineLiebe GmbH for £2.5m last month. This is part of Cupids plans to grow internationally and it gives them a foot hold in Germany. According to Cupid, with their knowledge in online marketing along with the existing team knowledge of the German dating life they are confident that their new acquisitions will grow.

For more on the story read BBC News. To find out information on one of their leading dating sites you can check out our Cupid.com review.