General News

Cougar dating has been a hot topic of conversation in the past few years, resulting in the emergence of cougar dating reality shows and tv series like Courtney Cox's Cougar Town. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, it refers to an older woman (usually over 40) dating a younger man. Think Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. But is this really a trend?

According to a recent study by Michael Dunn, psychology researcher at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, the cougar craze is "a myth". He maintains that after studying singles ads from 22,400 singles across the globe, he found no sizable evidence of women preferring to date younger men. In fact, the men also seemed to prefer to date younger women, not cougars.

This has sparked some controversy among those who have studied and written about the emerging cougar trend. Valerie Gibson, a Toronto-based journalist who was one of the first to write about cougars, claims that studies like this promote an "anti-cougar bias". According to a recent article in Time Magazine she said, "Society has always told us that the older woman who is still sexual isn't supposed to exist. We should be wrapped in a shawl baking cookies for our grandchildren and all that crap."

A similar study done in 2003 by AARP found that 34% of 40+ women were dating younger men, which seems to debunk Dunn's findings. It could be argued that because Dunn's study was based on online surveys from dating websites, the preferences listed don't necessarily reflect actual dating behavior. That is, though the majority of women who online date claim they prefer to date men their same age or older, a significant portion do date younger men.

A more interesting question that seems to have emerged from this study is, if there is a significant cougar dating population, why are they afraid to admit it when online dating? Perhaps this is something to investigate.

What do you do when you're a Stanford Business School graduate in the early '90s and you're searching for "the best woman in the world?" For Gary Kremen, the answer was simple: invent online dating.

The quest for a wife (and the financial security it would require to marry her) led Kremen to create Match.com, an idea that came to him after he realized how much revenue personal ads generated for his local newspapers. In 1993, Kremen founded Electric Classifieds Inc., the first company to provide online classified advertising, and in April of 1995, after raising $200,000 from investors, Match.com was born. Though the site's functionality was limited (it only allowed users to exchange messages and pictures via e-mail or fax),100,000 users registered with the site within its first 6 months. Now Match.com has over 1.7 million paid subscribers, and Web sites in 30 and 8 languages.

Kremen chalks up the wild success of Match.com to his "'relentless' work ethic." He ran the business from "a cramped, one-bedroom apartment that he shared with two roommates," often remaining in his pajamas while he "sat glued to his Sun workstation, designing Match's Web site and developing marketing strategies." Despite his hard work and the $1.5 million in venture capital he received, Match.com didn't initially pay off either romantically or financially for Kremen.

In 1997, much to Kremen's chagrin, Match.com's investors sold the startup to Cendant, a consumer-services company, for $8 million, and in 1998 the company was sold again, this time to IAC/InterActiveCorp (then still known as Ticketmaster), for $50 million. All Kremen got out of the transaction was a lifetime account on the site and $50,000 from selling his stock in the company.

Kremen was not discouraged, and in 2001 his perseverance was rewarded: Match.com partnered with AOL and MSN, which "brought in a large influx of people at a rapid pace," and in 2003 Match.com launched MatchMobile, its incredibly popular mobile phone service. 20,000 singles now register on Match.com every day, making it one of the largest and most influential online dating sites. It is consistently ranked among the top five online dating sites based on traffic.

Kremen finally found financial security after a judge awarded him $65 million in a dispute over the domain name sex.com in 2001, and after buying Electric Classifieds (then named Instant Objects) debt in 2004 so that he could retrieve its priceless patent. He held a foreclosure sale and sold the patent for $1.7 million.

Kremen's romantic goals were also met. In an age in which 1 in 5 relationships, and 1 in 6 marriages, are between people who met using online dating sites, and in which "roughly 74 percent of the 10 million Web users who are single and looking for a partner have turned to the Internet to find someone," Kremen met his match the old fashioned way - through a mutual friend.

Read the original article here. To find out more about this popular dating site, read our review of Match.com

The UK dating company, EasyDate, has purchased a number of dating sites recently. These include the Lesbian dating site, PlanetSappho.com (£200,000) and the Spanish language Granamor.com (£25,000). In an interesting move they have also signed a "try-before-you-buy" deal with the owners of the popular Flirt.com for 6 months. The reason behind the deal is Easydate wants to expand the Flirt brand internationally into the United States. Depending on the success of this venture over the next couple months, it could lead to the sale of the dating property.

Easydate has also entered into several dating partnerships with print companies, Associated Newspapers (for Metro) and National Magazine (for Cosmopolitan and Men’s Health magazines). They will be promoting two dating events in London sometime in September.

For more on the story, read the Herald Scotland. To find out some more information on one of the more popular EasyDate dating sites, read our Cupid.com review.

Just a quick note to those of you who use the TangoWire dating service. They have just launched a mobile version of the site. It is currently in Beta and over the coming weeks additional dating features will be continued to be added. To access the mobile version, all you need to do is surf to TangoWire.com on your phone. TangoWire will auto detect if you are using your smart phone (iPhone, Android, etc...) internet browser and switch to the mobile version of the site. This new version has been setup for easier navigation on the smaller screens offered by mobile phones.

For more on this dating service, you can check out our TangoWIre.com review.

The research company Ground Truth has stated that mobile dating has increased a total of 92 percent from the first week of June until the end of July. In the month of June there was a 31 percent increase alone followed by 46 percent in July. So who is seeing a lot of this traffic? According to Ground Truth it is the mobile-optimized dating site Flirtomatic. They received 65 percent of the total mobile dating traffic this summer so far. Other dating sites like Match.com came in as the 7th most visited dating site on a mobile phone. eHarmony was 17th (which is not bad considering eHarmony's iPhone App just launched). Ground Truth said part of the reason why there has been such an increase in mobile dating traffic this summer is because no one wants to be inside sitting at the computer. Singles enjoying the warm weather find it easier just to use their cell phone where ever they happen to be, to check out their online dating profile.

One other item noted by Ground Truth was that the average visitor to a mobile dating service spends 12 minutes and 44 seconds per week on the site.

For a list of dating site who offer dating through your cell phone, check out our Mobile Phone Dating category.

ChristianMingle.com launched a new faith-based content website late last month that is a destination designed to serve the Christian community. The website is called Believe.com and it allows Christians to obtain advice, insights and to interact with other community members. Believe.com also features:

sermons in written, audio and video formats from Christian leaders of congregations and organizations across the United States. Topics include encouraging relationship advice, raising children God's way, following biblical financial principles to successful stewardship and many more.

Additional notable features of Believe.com include a Prayer Wall and a searchable Bible. Christian Testimonials can also be found from other visitors and well known Christians that describe life changing experiences and how their faith grew as a result.

To find out more about the dating site, you can check out our review of ChristianMingle.