Online Dating

In March, Chicago Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart sued Craigslist for allowing pimps and prostitutes to use their classifieds service (see Story). Since then Craigslist has faced mounting bad press about their Erotic Services category and the famous "Craigslist Killers" which used their site to stalk their victims. With the mounting legal troubles Craigslist has changed the requirements to post an ad in their Erotic Services category. Users must now pay a fee with a credit card and provide a working phone number.

Last week Craigslist caught a break, U.S. District Judge John F. Grady dismissed Tom Dart's request to force the web site to eliminate its erotic services category. The federal judge stated that Sheriff Dart cannot sue Craigslist for the conduct of its users.

For more on the story, read NBC Chicago and to find out more about this classifieds website, read our review of Craigslist.

The American Association of Retired Persons or AARP, is the largest organization for people 50 years and older in the United States. AARP recently announced that they have a new love and relationships expert, Dr. Pepper Schwartz, who is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington and has more than 35 years of experience in researching love and relationships. Dr Schwartz is also Perfectmatch.com's relationship expert and helped oversee the design of their automated matching system.

As part of her new duties at AARP, Dr. Schwartz will be writing a weekly online column called "The Naked Truth" at the AARP website which will cover a number of topics related to relationships, love and sexuality. She will also contribute to other online resources with videos, online chatting and blogs. This content will be both for educational and instructional purposes.

To find out about the dating site Dr. Pepper Schwartz is associated with, read our review of Perfectmatch.com.

Ladies, this one's for you. If you've ever wondered how you can compete with all the other pretty faces on your dating site (and c'mon, you can admit you scoped out the competition, got upset, and poured yourself a big glass of wine - we've all been there!), then be prepared to learn the ways of a plain Jane who was never short on dates.

Your profile text is what's going to make guys REALLY want to get to know you. Sure, your face will help. But when those guys read an amazing profile, they'll be clambering to write you about how interested they are. (And, bonus: you'll easily be able to pick out those who read the profile and those who just sent a form email!)

Toot your horn!
Many women underestimate themselves in their profiles because they're afraid of coming off like a... witch (hey, it's almost Halloween!), or uppity or high maintenance. So instead of being that, they swing the pendulum ALLLLLL the way to the other side and come off sounding like a 1950s housewife. "Oh, I have some interests, but I'd really like to learn about yours, dear potential husband." Ugh!

Seriously, ladies, write about what makes you awesome. Do you climb mountains, write novels, change your own oil, bake the world's best chocolate chip cookies? Tell a story that makes guys want to be a part of your life!

The free dating site DownToEarth.com was officially launched in January 2009 by IAC, the parent company of Match.com and Chemistry (see Story). Down To Earth's target market was the College-aged crowd of 18 to 25 and their goal by the end of the year was to have 250,000 members. Well, it looks like they didn't make it. OPW reports that the dating site DownToEarth.com has been relaunched as Stir.com.

DownToEarth.com reached their traffic peak in March at almost 250 thousand unique visitors, since then the dating site's traffic has fallen by over half to 96 thousand unique visitors in September:

Free dating site OkCupid recently did several studies about online dating emails, looking at over a million of their members. They took a look first at the words that people wrote to one another and how those words correlated to response rate. (Here's a hint: Use proper English and not netspeak if you want replies.) But probably their most controversial article related to how your race determines the amount of replies you will receive.

We all want to assume that people are a lot more colorblind than they used to be, but OkCupid has found that's simply not the case. Even if we say that race doesn't matter, the numbers don't lie - it really does.

OkCupid's CEO, Sam Yagan, told NPR's Michel Martin that they were intrigued by the idea that they could get some answers to the questions people have about the role race plays in online dating. After all, when people are asked to state their dating preferences in their profile, they check off certain boxes. Do those boxes match up to the emails they deem worthy of a reply?

Having used various online dating sites for the past seven years, there’s really not a lot I haven’t seen come across my inbox. From winks from other women (daring, I applaud you) to hate mail, I’ve taken the time to read each and every message people have been brave enough to send my way. But I didn’t respond to all of them. Mostly out of a lack of time, but other times, there just wasn’t anything I could find to say that was…right. So, from a girl who has used online dating to all of you guys out there, here’s some insight as to why I didn’t email you back.

Grammar and usage. Anyone who took the time to read my profile will know that I’m a writer for a living. Grammar and usage are high on my list of “needs” from a partner. Granted, that’s not everyone’s strong suit. I get that. But when your email to me looks like you dropped the Manhattan yellow pages on your computer keyboard and hit “send,” I’m pretty unimpressed. If you’re not a great speller or even writer, take the extra minute to write your email in a word processing program (or even over in Gmail or Outlook) that has a spell check feature. Copy and paste the proofed email into the online dating site’s form and then click send. I’ll thank you a million times over! By not doing this, you’re telling me that you don’t respect what I do for a living. I’ll understand if you’re not Hemingway if you understand that I need you to understand the difference between “your” and “you’re.”