Online Dating

A new report by Juniper Research says that by 2012 mobile dating and chatroom services will have over a quarter of a billion people using them and revenues will pass $1 billion by 2010. Large dating services like Match.com and Date.com already have invested heavily in mobile services with Match.com recently upgrading their Match Mobile service with new features and a better interface (see previous story). Match Mobile members now have access to search all members available to regular Match subscribers.

For more information on this report head on over to PC Advisor.

The Motley Fool has an interesting point of view regarding eHarmony's charges against Chemistry before the Better Business Bureau's ad council. The charges are in response to Chemistry's new TV and internet ads that mention eHarmony has rejected over a million singles.

The article goes on and explains that the Chemistry ads are free advertising for eHarmony and they don't necessary reflect them in a bad light. It can be a good thing for a dating service to be choosy over which singles can join.

Hot or Not has decided to abandon their free dating format. The main reason the dating site suggests, is because the number of spammers and fake profiles increased to the point of being out of control and slowing down the system. In my opinion Hot or Not is switching back to a paid dating site because it is more profitable. A couple of months ago they switched to a free dating site system hoping to draw in more users. Free dating sites make money by selling ad space on their site or by the number of users who click on these advertisements. Hot or Not was hoping with their current user base and the additional users they would receive for being free would off set the cost of loosing membership fees. This was obviously not the case.

You must remember running a good dating site, with some sort of quality control of profiles and customer support costs money. Not only that, online dating is a very competitive market and dating services must be constantly upgrading their services and adding new and useful features to their site to help attract more singles, which again costs money. With Hot or Not going with basically the same paid format as before, will benefit singles on the site more in my opinion, than being free.

As an update to this article, Instant Messenger Dictionary for Online Daters I have a number of more terms and Acronyms that singles using dating sites may come across. This slang will most likely appear in emails, instant messaging and chatting between members of dating sites. Singles who are new to online dating personals and online chat in general will find this article about dating jargon most useful. Even us supposed experts forget some of the net lingo from time to time and have to look it up. Some of this dating lingo can mean several different things, but we have listed here the most popular definition as it relates to online dating. Keep in mine the capitalization of letters is important and can mean different things if changed.

2NITE - Tonight
420 - Marijuana
ADR or addy - Address
AFK - Away from Keyboard.
A - Asian
B - Black
B4N - Bye for Now.
B&D - Bondage and Domination.
BBL - Be Back Later.
BI - Bi Sexual
BBW - Big Beautiful Woman.
BHM - Big Husky or Heavy Man.
C - Christian
C-P - Sleepy
CWYL - Chat with you later.
D - Divorced
D&S - Dominance and Submission
Dom - Dominant
DDF or DD free - Drug and Disease Free.
DWM - Divorced White Male.
Ebony - Used by white men looking for a interracial relationships with a black women.
F - Female
F2F - Face to face.
FWB - Friends with benefits, a casual sexual relationship.
G - Gay
GSOH - Good sense of humor.
GTG - Got to go.
H - Hispanic
HWP - Height Weight Proportional
ILU or ILY or 143 - I love you.
ISO - In Search Of.
IWSN - I want sex now.
J - Jewish
K - Kiss for you.
KOTL - Kiss on the lips.
L - Lesbian
LD - Light Drinker
LMIRL - Let's meet in real life.
LS - Light Smoker or Legally Separated.
LTR - Long Term Relationship.
M8 - Mate
M - Male
MBA - Married But Available.
MM - Marriage Minded.
MorF - Male or Female.
NALOPKT - Not a lot of people know that.
NBM - Never Been Married.
ND - Non Drinker
NIFOC - Nude in front of computer.
NS - Non Smoker
NSA - No Strings Attached. Refers to either being single and/or no kids.
OLL - Online Love
OTP - On the Phone.
P - Professional
PC - Prince Charming.
QT - Cutie
RUMORF - Are you male or female?
S - Single
SBM - Single Black Male.
SBF or SBW - Single Black Female, Single Black Woman.
SD - Social Drinker
SI - Similar Interests.
S&M or S/M - Sado and Masochism.
SMIM - Send me an Instant Messager.
SMEM - Send me an E-Mail.
SO - Significant Other.
SOH - Sense of Humor.
SorG - Single or Gay.
Sub - Submissive
SWF - Single White Female.
TDH - Tall, Dark, and Handsome.
TDTM - Talk dirty to me.
TIAIL - Think I am in love.
TIC - Tongue in Cheek.
W - White or Widowed if in first position, as in WHM (Widowed Hispanic Male).
WE - Well Endowed.
WTR - Willing To Relocate.
WUF - Where are you from?
WYCM - Will you call me?
WYRN - What's your real name?
YO - Years Old.

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Login to Lavalife to try out Profile Doctor or read our Lavalife review for more information.

Yahoo! Personals has decided to settle with Robert Anthony from a lawsuit reported late last year. Robert claimed he was a victim of a "date baiting" by Yahoo which Yahoo! Personals has denied completely. Yahoo decided to settle to prevent a long drawn out case which would obviously result in bad press.

A couple of good things have come out of this settlement. The first one being inactive profiles of more than 120 days will be removed from the system. This should have been standard procedure for Yahoo from day one. A few of the larger dating services (like Match) already do this. Why waste customer's time and frustrate them by allowing them to try to contact someone who hasn't been online dating for a while. Yahoo will also keep the ability of users to report bad behaviour and suspicious profiles along with the ability of when the user cancels there paid membership they can have there profile deleted.