Online Dating

Yahoo! has partnered with Zonacitas.com a leading Latin America dating service. Currently Zonacitas.com has 400,000 registered users from Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and Mexico. With this partnership Zonacitas.com expects more exposure thanks to being Yahoo! Argentina's official destination for online dating. Look for Encuentros on ar.Yahoo.com for the link to the dating service.

To find out about Yahoo's dating partner in the US you can read our Match.com review.

Well, it has been complained about for years and now Plenty Of Fish has finally done something about it. Last week their redesigned dating site went live.

As far as I can tell the content hasn't really changed, they basically re-skinned the dating site (like adding a new theme in a WordPress site). The color pallet has not changed much, we still have the turquoise blue color as the main color. The use of color has improved in my opinion though with the text and titles in colors that complement the turquoise. The header has also shrunk significantly on the site. Gone is the tag line "Free Online Dating" and the little fish image logo which is replaced by just the title "PlentyOfFish".

The new theme does give Plenty Of Fish a more professional, modern and sleek look. I think they made a mistake and created the header to small and they should have included a logo. Without some sort of logo, I feel the site will lose a bit of its identity which is something you do not want to do in the competitive world of online dating.

One thing I wish they did update was the displaying of the thumbnail of the profile photos. Plenty Of Fish still stretches those images when viewed in a search. I understand the need for a uniform size but I think this could be accomplished by just shrinking the image based on the height and keep the width proportional. If the width of the image is still too big they could then crop it to the correct size.

Here are two snapshots of Plenty Of Fish. The one on the left was taken today and the one on the right is from August 2010.

To find out more about this dating site, you can check out our review of Plenty Of Fish.

There are plenty of places where people could potentially find the love of their life. There are bars, outdoor events, group activities, and even on a park bench as you read your favorite book. Members of the opposite sex are everywhere. They live and breathe among us. However even when surrounded by an incomprehensible number of options that pass us by every day, it can still seem impossible to find that one person that you may want to spend your life with. For a lot of people, online dating websites have become that key instrument in finding the love of their lives.

With more people pouring into websites like Match.com, Plenty Of Fish, Eharmony, Okcupid, and many others, online dating has become a more socially respectable way to find dates and potential relationships. Online dating statistics show that close to 20 million men and women join an online dating platform each month. The leading online dating website, Match.com, which launched in 1995, has over 20 million members alone. Free online dating websites like OkCupid, which launched in 2004, has over 3.5 million members, and Plenty of Fish, which launched in 2003, has over 10 million active users. As online dating continues to grow, it provides a significant option for people looking to meet the right person they might want to spend the rest of their life with. Here are some benefits of online dating.

1. More people online are taking dating seriously.

Online dating websites have accounted for one out of six marriages as of 2009. Online Dating Magazine estimates that over 280,000 marriages a year are a direct result of online dating. Certain pay sites like Match.com tend to have more people who are interested in finding a meaningful relationship. When someone pays for an online dating website there seems to be a greater likelihood that they're looking for something serious.

2. It's easier to find compatibility

Most online dating websites use compatibility tests to help their users find someone they could connect with. This is an amazing tool when some online dating websites have millions of users and profiles you might have had to browse through. Also, by having a personal description, you have the opportunity to define your interests and show others what you're into, unlike meeting someone at a bar where the only defining quality that you could measure your interest with is a person's appearance. By reading up about someone or finding out how he or she articulates themselves, you'll have an easier time gauging their personality and how it compares to your own.

3. You get to know someone before meeting them in person.

In the real world you'd have to go on a large amount of dates to find someone that even slightly comes close to your liking. You may go on a lot of these dates only to realize that you wish you got to know them better before you actually got to meet them. Dates take a lot of time, effort, and money. Going out weekly or even monthly with people you barely know can lead to a lot of wasted and disappointing evenings. When you meet someone online you could move slowly and really get to know each other. You could move from one form of communication to another. Before you actually decide that this is someone you'd like to meet in person, you could move from messaging each other online to instant messaging to talking on the phone.

4. Everyone is available.

One of the most aggravating issues with trying to meet people in the real world is that most people aren't single. An online dating website is a platform for only single men and women. You won't have to deal with falling in love with someone who's in a relationship or married. With an online dating website everyone is searching for someone new.

Do all races prefer to date within their own ethnic group? And what does that mean for the dating world?

OkCupid's research into the racial bias and racial composition of its members found that white members of the online dating site prefer to message other white users. This preference might be intentional, or it might not. It might be caused by a racial bias - conscious or unconscious - or be a result of the fact that white members outnumber users of other ethnic backgrounds on the site. One thing, however, is clear from OkCupid's research: "Given equal choice, every race strongly prefers itself." The data looks like this:

Preference For Own Race vs. Random Individual Of Another Race

• Whites: 2.9x
• Blacks: 4.3x
• Latinos: 4.2x
• Asians: 11.5x

White members actually prefer themselves the least, in comparison to other ethnic groups, but they represent such a large percentage of the online dating population that it's impossible for white users to avoid connecting with other white users unless they are content with dating pools that are much, much smaller.

To see what would happen if circumstances were different, if another race outnumbered whites 19:1, the OkCupid team ran a simulation in which Asians were the dominant group, and all other users were in the minority. Under those circumstances, Asian users would send messages to other Asian users 98% percent of the time, and would also be the most popular message recipients for users of all other ethnic backgrounds (White senders: 74%, Latino senders: 71%, Black senders: 66%). Insularity, according to OkCupid's findings, is common across all cultures.

This insularity, Christian Rudder notes, becomes especially clear when you take a look at cities with larger non-white user bases. As their numbers increase, members of minority populations tend to become increasingly inward-looking. In the 150 cities with the most black users, black members send 2.5% more messages to each other for every 1% increase in the black population. In Baltimore, for instance, 1 out of every 5 users is black, but half of the messages from black users are sent to other black users - a rate that is more than twice what would be expected.

The hypothetical scenarios Rudder and OkCupid created for this experiment will not be hypothetical for much longer, and soon much of this data is likely to become reality. According to the Census Bureau, white people will no longer be the majority in the United States by approximately the year 2050, although that projection doesn't necessarily mean we have a post-racial future to look forward to. Even with increased equality amongst races, OkCupid's research indicates that "people still like to date someone who looks like they do," so that "even when white people aren't the majority, society will be as divided as ever."

When we left off, Christian Rudder and the OkCupid research team were tackling a unique question: What if there weren't so many white people?

The online dating world - and, in fact, the Internet at large - is dominated by white users, who make up the largest percentage of both OkCupid members (74%) and message recipients on the site (89%). After gathering and analyzing data based on 82 million messages sent on OkCupid, the researchers rearranged their findings to create an artificial environment in which the online dating world was not dominated by white members. The numbers of average monthly messages received, per person, changed across the board:

• For white members the number decreased, though not significantly.
• For Latinos, the number increased and surpassed the number for whites.
• For Asians the number skyrocketed, placing them ahead of all other ethnic groups when it came to the number of messages received per month.
• For black members the number also increased, though not quite enough to overtake the users of other ethnic backgrounds.

Age played a role, but a relatively minor one. Asians proved to be the most popular users regardless of the age of the message senders, receiving at least 30% - but often more - of the messages on OkCupid. Latinos also maintained a consistent level of popularity, hovering around 25% for all users aged 18-50. White members saw a decrease in popularity as senders aged, beginning at 25% for 18 year old users and steadily dropping to 15% for 50 year old users. The popularity of black members, in contrast, rose as senders aged.

Next, Rudder put together a fascinating chart that must be experienced to really be understood. The graph, called "Who People Are Messaging" takes a look at the relationship between "racial bias" and "racial composition." Each factor can be adjusted to show what the graph would look like under current conditions, as well as how the chart changes when racial bias no longer exists and racial composition is equal. Rudder also breaks the results down into graphs based on messaging preferences by age, in a racially-balanced world.

But as interesting as graphs, charts, and numbers can be, eventually we have to get back to reality and ask: What does all of this look like in the real world?

"The kind of messaging imbalance that currently exists has observable effects on how people think about race and dating," writes Rudder. "Search for 'interracial couple' on a stock photo site: you'll find a rainbow of Asians, Latinos, Blacks, and Indians, all hanging out with their white significant others." And if you enter "Why do ______ [insert non-white race of your choice here] women like..." into Google, it autocompletes with "white men."

Despite OkCupid's findings indicating that Asians are the most desired racial group in the country, white members are still dominating online dating sites simply because there is a greater number of them, and they seem to prefer to date within their ethnic group...which brings up the question for next time: Do all races prefer to date within their own ethnic group? And what does that mean for the dating world?

The United Kingdom dating service, Friends Reunited Dating, is celebrating the upcoming Royal Wedding of Prince Willian and Kate Middleton by offering a 20% discount on all subscription. All members have to do is enter the following code when paying for a membership:

Voucher Code: ROYAL

This offer is valid between the 20th April 2011 and the 20th May 2011. This offer also excludes mobile payments.

To find out more information about this dating site, please read our review of Friends Reunited Dating.