General News

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.

The New York Times seems to be covering a number of dating topics recently. In this article they looked at the marketing of the science behind online dating. A professor of psychology, Jeffrey Lohr is quoted several times in the article. He released a research paper recently which looked into some of the claims from the more popular dating sites (see Story). In summary of his research, Professor Lohr stated:

It seems to me that everybody is marketing their product far beyond the available evidence. There is none to very little effectiveness in the matching process.

The one person he did have praise for is Dr. Helen Fisher of the anthropology department at Rutgers. She helped Chemistry.com create their profile questions and matching system. Dr. Fisher based her work for Chemistry on her own published and peer reviewed research about how love and matchmaking works. Unlike Chemistry, most dating sites have very little science that has been published to back up the claims of their service and matchmaking system.

There is an interesting article in the New York Times about evolutions role in finding a partner. Most people believe when it comes to dating, women usually are pickier than men.

The usual explanation is evolutionary: because women have a bigger investment in reproduction — they are the ones who have to endure pregnancy, childbirth and breast-feeding — they need to hedge their bets against selecting a dud to be the father.

With the rise of Speed Dating, Psychologists now have easier access to information in a semi controlled environment to test this theory of women being more selective about their mate. Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick of Northwestern University have recently published a experiment they did which challenges the current thinking. They found that it didn't matter what sex the person was. A person who initiates contact, in regards to going out on a date, tends to be less selective about who he or she asks when compared to the person who is being asked.

People Media's CEO Josh Meyers and VP of Marketing Ron Worthy attended the Beverly Hills iDate 2009 conference recently and answered a few questions regarding their company's dating services. Some of these questions included:

• The importance of the iDate conference?
• What are the latest online dating trends?
• How is safety maintained on your dating sites?

In their answers Josh and Ron referred to how People Media's group of dating sites have seen a 55 percent increase in unique visitors when compared to last year. They also talked a bit about BlackPeopleMeet (BPM) and how The Steve Harvey morning radio show partnership came about. When asked about how they maintain safety on their dating sites, they made a comparison to how a dance club would work. Like a club, they look at a number of factors right from the start when members signup, and the monitoring continues while they are using the site. If anything misleading is detected then the account is closed. They also rely on other members as well to report potential scammers.