General News

It's Just Lunch has recently expanded and opened a physical location in the St. Cloud area. Over the last 3 years at the Minneapolis headquarters, the director, had noticed an increasing number of singles from the St. Cloud using their matchmaking services. Since It's Just Lunch requires an in-person interview it was decided back in April that a additional location which was closer to these clients was required in Waite Park.

The Minneapolis headquarters has 10 employees. When someone becomes a client of It's Just Lunch, there is a personal hour long interview which you talk more about yourself and what you want in a match. Matches are then hand selected and the staff coordinates the dates between the two clients. After each date, the client provides feedback which is then used to help further narrow a match for them. Memberships can be put on hold anytime if a couple want to explore a relationship further.

To find out what this matchmaking service is all about, read our detailed review of It's Just Lunch.

According to researchers, internet dating services are used more by a certain type of person which fits a particular psychological profile. In a 2009 survey of 3,345 US citizens, researchers found the following results:

More likely to use Internet Dating

• People who are more sociable.
• Singles with high self-esteem and who put some value in romantic relationships.
• Men and women with low self-esteem and who consider romantic relationships NOT to be an important part of their life.

Less Likely to use Internet Dating

• People who are more introverted.
• Singles with low self-esteem and who put some value in romantic relationships.

The average age of the participant of the survey was 48 and all were between the ages of 19 and 89. 47.5 percent were men and 52.5 percent were woman.

For the full story and more details on the results of the survey, read PsychCentral.

Are you someone who signed up to ChristianCafe and are still not sure if they are the right online dating site for you? To help you decide, check out their member testimonials. They are listed by year and month, and go as far back as 2002. Each testimonial contains a message from the happy couple along with a few photos (usually from the wedding).

If you haven't become a member yet of this dating site, read our review of ChristianCafe for more information and to find out how to receive a 10 day free trial that gives you complete access to the service (communication included). No credit card is required for the free trial.

Dr. Pepper Schwartz, the lead relationship guru behind Perfectmatch.com's matchmaking system is a sociologist at the University of Washington. Dr. Schwartz is finding more and more seniors are going online looking for love and companionship. She recently helped an 80 year friend join a dating site. The over 50 segment of the population has been the fastest growing group of online daters since 2007. Dr. Schwartz is happy to see the trend continue. She explains that 20 years ago, when a person in their 60s, 70s or 80s lost a spouse, they had a much smaller chance of finding a partner again. Meeting new people for seniors was hard because the chances of this happening beyond their current circle of relationships with the people at church, the senior center and through friends was small. With the rise of internet dating, this has all changed. Now single seniors can go online and meet thousands of other local singles in their age group, looking to meet new people.

For the full article, read the Washington Post and to find out more about the dating service Dr. Schwartz is involved with, read our review of Perfectmatch.com.

Our review of BlackPeopleMeet.com (BPM) is finally up. I had originally planned to have this review ready a couple of months ago but things kept getting in the way of me finishing it up (my subscription even ran out). With the recent purchase of People Media (the owners of BPM) by IAC (owners of Match.com), I thought it would be a good time to finish up the review (see Story). Expect to see more reviews coming soon of some other People Media dating sites, including SeniorPeopleMeet.com and SingleParentMeet.com.

If you are interested in meeting African-American singles, check out the full BlackPeopleMeet.com Review now.

Are you a member of BlackPeopleMeet.com? If so, why don't you post your own review.

BlackPeopleMeet.com User Review

In an article on the UK website, The Guardian, author Tanya Gold asks the question, Are Britons who are searching for love online, looking in the wrong place? At the point of writing the article Tanya had been internet dating for 3 weeks. She so far has mixed feelings. On one had she is dazzled by the possibilities but on the other, she feels "sleazy and slightly vulnerable".

Tanya gives four examples of online dating gone wrong. Two are her own dating experiences and all seem to point to men as the ones causing all of the problems 😲. I had a laugh at one of her dates named Clive. Apparently he had broken his dentures the day of the date and asked if he could pick her up toothless. What was he thinking? She also gave 4 positive examples of how online dating worked and created successful matches. One of her examples was Jane, who in 10 years, went on more than 200 internet dates before she met her soul mate.

Lets look at some of the UK stats more closely in which Tanya compiled. According to her information, fifteen million people in Britain are single, and almost five million are looking for love online. 20 percent of married people between the ages of 19 and 25 met their spouse online and a YouGov survey of 2000 people found that, for all age groups, 15 percent of couples met through the internet. The surprising twist here is that according to research at Bath University, a relationship that was started online lasts on average 7 months. I wonder how long an average relationship lasts that was not formed on the internet?

Across the pound and in America, Tanya found that according to the Plenty of Fish dating site, 33 percent of online daters form a relationship, 33 percent do not, and the last 33 percent give up on internet dating altogether. She also discovered a poll from the University of Texas which found 30 percent of women who met men online had sex on their first date. From these encounters, 77 percent of men did not wear condoms (how about other birth protection?) When compared to the information from the Centre of US Disease Control, almost 50 percent of all women required men to wear a condom during their first sexual experience.