General News

Let's take a look at the Dating Site Background Checks poll.

A couple of months ago when I started the poll I was curious to see if background checks were important to members of dating sites. Of the 388 votes the poll received, 224 were by women and 163 were by men. Since the visitors of this site are pretty much evenly split between genders, this topic appears to be more important to women. Overwhelmingly women voted that background checks were important to them. Of the 224 votes, 192 or 86 percent of them said yes. Only 5 percent said no and a further 9 percent didn't care about background checks. On the flip side, 55 percent or 89 votes of the men thought background checks were important with 20 percent thinking the opposite and a further 25 percent not caring about the topic.

I am not surprised with the result that only 55 percent of men really cared about background checks. I thought more women would care than men but I didn't think we would see that 85 percent of all women find background checks important. This poll may be a reality check for some dating sites. If you want attract women to your service it looks like by offering an integrated background check of members into your website would go a long way to achieve this goal. This service should also be mandatory on all members with either having the cost integrated into the price of a membership or as an add-on for free. Having only certain members with background checks like some sites do, doesn't really help anybody.

An interesting press release went out claiming that the Chinese dating site Zhenai.com is now the largest in the world. Zhenai first started 11 years ago, in May of 1998 as a free dating site called 96333.com. In 2005 they rebranded as Zhenai.com (which means "cherished love") and now has about 20 million registered members and claims that daily, another 40,000 singles signup. Zhenai's largest demographic are singles who are 25 to 45 years old, who live in an urban area, and are white-collar professionals. More than 85% of these members have a bachelor's, master's or doctoral diploma. Zehnai expects its number of registered members to hit 30 million by the end of the first quarter of 2010.

Zhenai claims to be the world's largest dating site by surpassing Match.com which had 15,000,000 registered members and a daily increment of 60,000 new members in May of 2009 (Note: Match.com now claims 20,000 new members a day). The problem is Zhenai switched a few of Match.com's numbers around. Match.com actually claims to have had more than 100 million registered users between 2000 and 2008 (see Press Release). That doesn't even include the profiles registered in the 5 years from when Match.com first launched in 1995. In the Zehnai press release, they are using Match.com current number of members which accounts for 15 million. I believe Match.com defines a current member as someone who has logged in at least once during the last year. I have a feeling that Zhenai is including all registered members since the launch of their dating site and only used the lower Match.com current registered members numbers to highlight their claim that they are the largest dating site.

With the popularity of weight shows like "The Biggest Loser" and the dating show "More to Love", Date.com during the months of July and August asked thousands of men if they preferred to date women who are thin or women who have a few extra pounds. In a surprising result, 85 percent of men preferred to date a heavier women. 80 percent of the men who liked heavier women said the reason for this was heavier women appreciate the attention a man would give them more and that heavier women are also less bitchy than thin women (their words not mine). The funny thing is, in a similar survey for women, Date.com found that 90% of women thought heavier women would have a harder time dating because men can't see beyond a few extra pounds.

View the press release for more results from the survey by men and women and to find out more about the dating site, read our review of Date.com.

Black State has an interesting article on interracial dating which is based on statistics from the 2008 U.S census results. In 2008, in the United States:

Black men married

• 4,190,000 Black women.
• 310,000 White women.
• 39,700 Asian women.

For a total of 4,539,700 marriages. This is 7.1% of all marriages.

White men married

• 55,399,200 White women.
• 713,000 Asian women.
• 137,000 Black women.

For a total of 56,249,200 marriages. This is 88.2% of all marriages.

Asian men married

• 2,790,000 Asian women.
• 193,000 White women.
• 8400 Black women.

For a total of 2,991,400 marriages. This is 4.7% of all marriages.

In total there was 63.8 million marriages in America last year.

According to Wikipedia of the 300 million or so Americans in 2006:

• 73.6 percent or 220.8 million are White.
• 13.5 percent or 40.5 million are Black.
• 6.4 percent or 19.2 million are "some other race". This was a non standard category in the U.S. Census.
• 4.4 percent or 13.1 million are Asian.
• 2 percent or 6.1 million are Multiracial
• 0.8 percent or 2.4 million are Natives.

The marriage statistics are 2 years newer than the other data but are close enough for us to do some rather simple comparisons. From the marriage statistics you can see Black, White and Asian all married within their own race the majority of time. As far as different ethnic groups are concerned, it looks like White men appear to prefer Asian women over Black women. White men married Asian woman 5 times more often than Black women even though there are 3 times as many Black Americans. This also appears to be true for Asian men since only just over 4 percent of their marriages to other ethnic groups was to Black Americans.

For more information on some of these trends, visit BlackState.com and for a dating site that specializes in Interracial dating, read our review of Interracial Match.

We found information on a poll which looked at how money and the recession plays into relationships of younger adults. 1000 men and women from the ages of 18 to 34 participated in the poll. Here are some of the question that were asked to women:

If you were on the fence about dating someone, would you more likely go out with them if he made a lot of money?

• 59 percent of women said yes. Part of the reason this percentage is so high is, scientists suggest that women may be hard-wired to find a man who can provide for their offspring.

Do you use what a man is wearing as an indicator of their success and resources?

• 74 percent of woman said yes.

Would you tell your friends and family if your boyfriend was unemployed or under-employed?

• 62 percent said no.

If your boy friend was unemployed or under-employed would you down play your own accomplishments?

• 73 percent said yes.

For the men, here are some of the question that were asked:

Do you earn less than your girlfriend?

• 28 percent said yes. A third of these men said they still paid for most things.

Would you tell your friends and family if your girlfriend was unemployed or under-employed?

• 42 percent said they would not tell anybody.

For the full story, read CBS News.

I read a story recently about a 55 year old divorcee who ran into an unexpected obstacle when she decided to try online dating. It was her daughter. She had told her that her main worry was safety and the type of men she may meet online. I think her daughter's real problem is that her mom wants to date again. Safety concerns of meeting people from dating sites are important, but in reality are not much different than meeting other people at bars or singles events. You just have to use common sense.

I went through a similar experience a while ago myself when one of my parents decided to get back into the dating game. Most of my mom's friends are happily married which made it hard for her to meet someone new and single through them. She also lived out in the country which further distanced herself from other singles. While it was a little weird for me to have one of my parents wanting to date again I knew the most obvious solution for her was online dating. Dating sites make it easy for you to scope out who is available close by, while you remain anonymous until you want to take the plunge. I recommended a few sites to my mom, told her what was involved and how things worked, and she was off and online dating.

She had success in the first 2 weeks of her online experience. She went on a date with the man who she is still together with, almost 3 years later. While it takes the average online dater 3 months to meet Mr. or Miss. Right, a large part of my mom's success was due to the time and effort she put into writing her dating profile. I gave her a few important tips about writing a dating profile and while I told her I didn't want to get too involved in the whole process (as I had mentioned, it was still a little weird for me), I told her it was important to review the profile with a few of her closest friends during her rewrite sessions so she could get an outsiders perspective.

If you are 50 and over and are thinking about trying online dating, you are not alone. Your age group is reported to be the fastest growing segment over the last few years by many of the major dating sites like Match.com (see Review) and eHarmony (see Review). For dating sites which specialize in matching older singles, take a look at our Dating Over 50 category.