General News

Friends Reunited Dating is a large dating service based in the UK with over 1.6 million members. They are celebrating the upcoming Valentine's Day by offering a voucher code that gives members up to a 30% discount on subscriptions. To receive this discount use:

Voucher Code: FLOWER14

This code is valid from the 1st of February 2011 and expires on the 15th of February 2011. When you use this code you will receive 10% off a 1 month subscription, 20% off of a 3 month subscription or 30% off a 6 month subscription.

For more information on this popular United Kingdom dating site, please read our review of Friends Reunited Dating.

Forget those old-school dating websites that have you create your own profile. Now, a dating website will do it for you, whether you like it or not.

Last week, Facebook filed a cease-and-desist letter to Gotham Dating Partners, Inc., saying their plans to collect public data from sites like Facebook to create online profiles violates Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Gotham plans to collect information from various sources besides Facebook, according to Damon Jordan, vice-president of marketing for Gotham. They will include data from government census, mailing lists, and marriage and divorce records. Once the information is posted, a person can delete or update his own profile for free. But if they want to contact someone else, there is a fee.

And if their Facebook profile lists them as "single", they will automatically be added to Gotham's dating sites. Gotham's dating site roster includes UglyPeopleDate.com, PrisonHookup.com, and MarryMeFirst.com, among others.

They plan to relaunch on February 14th.

Jordan commented last week to news website the Star, "you can virtually do everything on our sites that you can do on Facebook. On Valentine's Day, you will be able to do that, and some. The value of Facebook is in the information, via membership, that it has on the public. They fear they won't have value anymore. Who would invest in a company going public sometime this year, for value that another company has, with significantly less overhead."

In any case, if you want to ensure your information stays private, you may want to make sure your profile is deleted from Gotham's site. And remove your Facebook relationship status.

Here is some exciting news for singles interested in trying out an online dating site to find a partner.

To celebrate Saint Valentine's Day which is right around the corner, Lavalife will be giving a 30 day free trial to any new user who signs up within the month of February. This free trial gives you unlimited access to Lavalife and all the features they offer, and all without a credit card. This includes sending and receiving unlimited emails and instant message plus you can find out who has viewed your profile. This 30 day free trial is the same as purchasing a one month membership from them.

February is the busiest month in the year for dating sites. When you have a professional high quality dating site like Lavalife giving away 30 day memberships to new users you can expect this service to be VERY BUSY. If you are single, this is one service I would definitely try out.

There are several things that makes Lavalife stand out among the other dating services. One of the main things is they offer 3 dating communities within the site. So if you are searching for a simple date, long term relationship, or an intimate encounter you can join 1 or more of these communities in Lavalife and find singles looking for the same type of relationships.

To find out more about this online dating site, check out our Lavalife review.

According to NBC, the coupon site Groupon and the speed dating site HurryDate have teamed up to break the Guinness world record for the largest speed dating event. This will hopefully happen at the new Paris Club in Chicago on February 8th, 2011 from 7pm to 11pm.

The event will be hosted by B-96 radio personality Showbiz Shelly. 500 tickets (250 for women and 250 for men) are being made available for purchase on Groupon for $40 each. The speed dating event will be setup in such a way that the women will sit and the men will move from table to table for 25, 3 minute speed dates. Once the main event is finished a hosted bar party will commence where the party goers can then talk further with anyone who peaked their interest.

To find out more about this speed dating service, please read our review of HurryDate.

A woman’s tears can stop men in their tracks, at least when it comes to sex.

Israeli researchers found that a chemical in a woman’s tears significantly lowers men’s testosterone levels, which could affect how attractive they find a woman and their level of sexual arousal.

Researcher Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute in Israel specializes in the study of pheromones, or biochemical signaling agents, and admits that so far most pheromone studies have focused on human sweat.

“But sweat is not the only way humans emit chemicals, and that’s what led us to consider tears,” Sobel said.

Previous research had shown that tears resulting from emotional reactions (sadness or fear) contained 25 percent more proteins than so-called “cleansing tears” we get from chopping onions or dusting. The six women used in the study watched their favorite tear-jerker films, and scooped their tears into vials which were then handed to 50 male participants.

Half the men were given saline solution vials and the other half actual tears, and were then asked to smell. Though the participants couldn’t tell the difference between saline and real tears, the ones sniffing tears showed physiological and psychological changes.

In one experiment, the male participants were shown images of women. The men who sniffed tears found the images less sexually attractive than the men who sniffed saline. In another experiment, researchers measured saliva samples and found that testosterone levels were lower in the men who sniffed tears.

The researchers originally set out to study the tears of both men and women, but when they advertised for subjects who were able to cry easily, they obtained an overwhelming response from women and no response from men.

Planning the perfect first date is hard. It's nearly impossible to choose the right place, the right time, the right ambiance...unless you're a current Match.com member, that is. Thanks to a new feature recently launched by the site, the perfect first date is only a few clicks away.

Match.com's DateSpark is an innovative approach to finding love online that takes the emphasis away from reading countless trite profiles and sending oodles of dead-end messages by helping users actually meet people with compatible interests in real life.

Using the new feature is as simple as proposing a date that you find interesting, like riding upside down on the Gravitron at the county fair or trying to order 1 of every cocktail on the menu of your favorite restaurant, and waiting for a response from members who are interested in the same activity. Match.com describes the new feature like this:

"DateSpark is a fun new way to meet people on Match.com. You suggest an interesting date idea, post it on your profile, and see what it sparks. If you see a DateSpark idea on another member's profile, you can tell them what you think. It's a great conversation starter with the added bonus of a natural first date, already planned!"

To suggest a date, click on the "DateSpark" link under Profile in the top navigation bar. Write a short description of your idea, select the appropriate options from three dropdown menus ("Type of date?" "When is it?" "What time of day?") and hit "Post this date." Once it's approved, your DateSpark idea will be added to your profile and other Match users can respond if it sparks their interest. Match.com wisely recommends being original, as creativity will draw more attention to your DateSpark proposal, and protecting your safety by keeping some information, like an exact location, date, and time, and personal details, private.

What I love most about this feature is that it reminds users that the reason they're on an online dating site in the first place is to go on dates. Instead of relying on the algorithms of the site to find members it thinks will be good matches, and hoping that love comes along, DateSpark allows users to personalize their search and encourages them to be proactive in the pursuit of potential partners. DateSpark focuses on the activity, rather than an often-uninformative profile, and gives Match members the encouragement they need to take their dating offline.

It's too soon to tell whether or not DateSpark will be a hit (it currently is available in only certain areas), but I'm excited to see how Match.com's newest development evolves.

To find out more about this online dating site, check out our review of Match.com.