Advice

As the economy continues its downward trend in December, singles continue to use online dating sites in increasing numbers. Are people trying to save money on dates by finding a better match first through a dating service rather than trolling bars? A night out on the town with your single friends is expensive when you add up all the costs, cab fare, drinks and cover charge. For probably much less than a night out with friends, you can join a dating site for a month. Some statistics from an article by the Los Angeles Times seem to back up this thinking:

Craigslist personals postings and eHarmony.com registrations have each seen 20% increases in 2008. Match.com has seen an even larger spike; its memberships were 22% higher in December than they were in the same period last year. Even more interesting, both eHarmony and Match.com reported especially high traffic on days when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted.

Match.com also reported a 50% increase in profile views for the month of December when compared to November. Remember, November also saw its share of increases as well, where dating sites like Match.com, Perfectmatch.com and Date.com all saw more members joining and/or participating in the month of November, when compared to the same month from previous years. Match.com also performed a survey of 1,500 members and found 84 percent of them were "being more selective about first dates in today's economy."

For more information about the online dating sites and how they are performing in the recession, read this article from the Los Angeles Times. Check out our reviews of Match.com, PerfectMatch.com and Date.com for more information on these successful dating services.

I saw this article on December 1st at CNet News. It talks about a recent ruling regarding a cyber bullying, suicide and MySpace.

The specifics of the Lori Drew case are messy and emotional. The important fact is that there is no federal cyber bullying statute, so the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles turned to a novel interpretation of existing computer hacking laws to try to punish the woman. The general idea is that in creating terms of service, a Web site owner specifies the rules of admission to the site. If someone violates any of those contractual terms, the "access" to the Web site is done without authorization, and is thus hacking.

A jury found Lori guilty of 3 misdemeanor violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This means she could get up to $300,000 in fines and a year in prison.

At the moment, (unless it gets overturned) using this case as a example, a websites Terms of Service currently have the power of US federal hacking laws. As the article points out most companies have strict Terms of Service. Google is used as an example. Their terms do not allow people under the age of 18 to use any of Google's services. Which 17 year old and under teen exactly follows this term? You would be hard press to find one. Most dating sites have strict policies as well. You are not suppose to join Match.com if you are married and eHarmony forbids members from lying in their profiles. Breaking these rules in theory classifies you as a computer hacker which mean you could potentially be charged.

Read MySpace ruling could lead to jail for lying online daters for the full story.

Not much online dating news as of late since we are in the midst of the most popular weeks people go on holidays. I did find a well written article from Times Online that looks at one authors humorous view of online dating in the United Kingdom. I especially liked the question he asks:

Is getting drunk and pouncing on the person least able to resist really less superficial than meeting someone online?

I would say it depends on the dating site! At least with online dating sites you can take peoples interests and goals into consideration and not just their looks.

In the end the author says that internet dating is a "no-brainer" for single people serious about finding a match. After looking for someone special at work and the bars, where else do you have to look?

David Wygant Blog gives advice regarding dating and relationships. On Sunday he had a good post which looks at several warning signs that may point to someone being untruthful or hiding something major in a relationship. More often than not these types of problems arise with people in long distance relationship where you have to rely on electronic communication like email and the phone. It is a lot easier for people to mislead you when you are not meeting face to face. For the most part these signs deal with someone who has been in a relationship for at least a few months. Here is a summary of David's 5 warning signs:

1. Your partner provides limited information. The person likes to discuss only certain aspects of his or her life.
2. You are never invited to their home.
3. Key information is missing. As an example David mentions if you have been dating for a while and you still don't know how the person is financially.
   • Another thing I would add here would be things like phone numbers. Do you only have the persons cell number and not their home phone number? Is there a reason for this and does it make sense?
4. You have not met friends or family.
5. Inconsistent Information.

There is a small article at the Calgary Herald which mentions a Ipsos Reid survey about Canadians. The survey asked 1,033 Canadians several questions about relationships and love. The following conclusions where reached:

• 70 percent of Canadians are in love (80 percent of woman and 67 percent of men).
• In total 16 percent found love online. When split into age ranges, the 18 to 34 demographic leads with over 25 percent finding love online. Only 7 percent found love aged 55 or older.

So what did we find out from this poll and how does it relate to online dating? Well it seems there are approximately one third of Canadians not in love. This means online dating sites who service Canadians has a market of about 10 million people. It also appears that 84 percent of singles who are in love found it offline, with the other 16 percent finding it online. It is too bad they didn't mention how many Canadians were not successful in finding a mate online, we would then have a more complete picture on how successful online dating is.

Love at first byte by the Daily Record looks at the question about if Online Dating is still a tabooed subject and if couples are embarrassed to tell others how they met online. The author contacted 10 local couples to tell their story and only one gave their permission. Apparently based on just this statistic the author assumed that people do not want to share their online dating experiences. The article does mention the point of "Some people certainly don't want their personal lives splashed on the newspaper's pages.". This is certainly true but, I think the author should of increased the number of people he asked to share their online dating experience with. He should of also asked couples who didn't meet online if they would be willing to share how they met each other. I bet when he compared the two results, the ratio would be not as bad as he thinks it is.

Early last year we did a poll called Do you tell your friends you're Dating Online?. Of the 330 votes, just over 43% said they would tell their friends. So this means almost half of the people said they would share their online dating experiences. This is a much better result than 1 out of 10 that the Daily Record assumed. Of the 86 voters who said no in our poll, the reason for this was they did not want their friends to see their dating profile and the personal information it contained. This makes sense to me but, it is a little weird that it is ok for strangers to see some of your personal details but not your friends. I think this can especially hold true for men. You want your image to remain tough and macho to your male friends, so you can't show them you have a soft side in which your dating profile might portray.