General News

Bill Tancer of Hitwise released a book recently called "Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters". For those of you who don't know Hitwise monitors the internet and compiles anonymous statistics for clients on how often web sites are visited, how they are found and the demographics of the person doing the surfing. There are many companies that do this type of work with Compete.com and QuantCast.com being some of the other popular ones. These 3 statistic sites of course usually don't see eye to eye and the data they release every month never fully matches. What it does though when you compare the statistics is give you a general idea on how websites you are interested in are performing.

One of the topics the book covers is online dating. Of the top 10 dating sites it lists most of the Male to Female ratios hover around the 50 percentile mark with the most notable exceptions being the gay dating sites. eHarmony also has a much more uneven Male to Female ratio of 38% to 62%. What I was surprised at is the average age range of eHarmony visitors. Bill pegged it at 25 to 34 years of age. I had thought eHarmony members tended to be older than this. Match.com members average age according to Bill is between 35 and 44 which I would see as being more reasonable for eHarmony. eHarmony also appeared 7th on the list behind such dating services as Adam4Adam and DateHookUp. While these are popular dating sites, in my view and research eHarmony receives many more visitors. With this ranking issue found with his online dating facts, it puts into question the rest of the statistics.

Now QuantCast monitors eHarmony directly through a business agreement, you can trust their statistics for this site much more. Bill's book and Quantcast do pretty much agree on the gender ratios and age ranges for eHarmony. For the month of August 37% of the visitors where male (which makes 63% female) and 40% of the visitors where between the ages of 18 to 34. 38% of visitors fell in the age range of 35 to 49 and 20% were over 50.

QuantCast also had another stat which was interesting. 16% of visitors used eHarmony through a business internet connection. With the way companies monitor their internet connections these days, I wouldn't be doing this.

eHarmony announced today that they have partnered with AOL Personals (which is in BETA). They will be offering their matchmaking services to American Online visitors along with dating and relationship advice through the “eHarmony Boutique”. The interesting thing here is AOL already has a partnership with Match.com. On the AOL Personals homepage both dating services share the same space. AOL tells visitors to use the Search for a Match option (which is powered by Match.com) to give you complete control over your searches and to use the Get Matched option (which is powered by eHarmony) to receive matches to compatible singles. I would be surprised if Match.com was happy about this new eHarmony partnership. They already have a sister site called Chemistry.com which competes with eHarmony directly.

How do you tell someone on a dating service you are not interested? Winks are easy, you don't reply. It starts to become difficult when you have corresponded with the person for a while and it is even worse if you have gone out on an actual date.

Our poll that asked this question of our readers got some interesting results. Out of 255 votes, 38% of the voters (98 votes) would tell the person the truth about why they do not want to pursue the relationship. Almost 16% or 40 votes would tell a white lie instead. That means not quite half of the voters (46%) just stopped talking to the person with no warning what so ever. You have to wonder why online dating sometimes has a bad name. In the real world we wouldn't just walk away from someone whom we grew board talking with. We would politely excuse ourself.

Young people (and some older ones as well) need to remember that whatever you post on the internet will then be available forever. It doesn't matter if it is a text message, a picture or a video, it most likely will be replicated on other websites. Sites like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook are extremely popular and some postings on these sites have ended up haunting people. More and more, employers, police and institutions are using these sites to see how people they are interested in, are behaving. A few court cases have even used pictures from these social networking sites as evidence in criminal court. You of course also have to watch out for your camera happy friends who like to post pictures on the internet. You may not have posted it but sites like Facebook still let you link pictures of people with their member accounts.

Just remember posting a picture of yourself doing something funny may seem like a great idea now but, will it still be funny in 5 or 10 years when you are trying to get hired for an important job?

For more insight on your privacy and internet posting, plus examples of legal cases where pictures from the internet are used, check out Canada.com.

The word cougar in the dating world describes a female who usually in her forties or fifties (sometimes older) who is looking for someone who is 10, 20, even 30 years younger than them. While still used as a putdown more times than not, these type of relationships are becoming more main stream. Everyone knows of the famous couple Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher who got married over 3 years ago. A lot of media pegged her as a cougar when she was seen dating Ashton who is 15 years younger. A more recent case is Hulk Hogan's wife, Linda. She has been seen around LA this summer with Charlie Hill, who is 19 years old. Linda is reported to be 49, that is thirty year difference. Of course, the media hasn't been kind to these two.

It is far more accepted for woman to date men 5 to 10 years younger than them now days than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Once you get past the 10 year mark the word cougar starts to get thrown around. Of course men who date woman much younger than them are seen as sugar daddies or men who are suffering a midlife crisis. Still, men have it easier perception wise but, as more celebrity woman date much younger men the perception of the cougar will change for the better as the general public gets use to the idea.

The popular Canadian blogger behind Are You My Wife? recently got engaged. Allan Wills (who is 31) started a blog two years ago to chronicle his quest on finding a wife. After his website was discovered by the media things got crazy. In the end, Willis went on 45 dates in 13 different countries in the first year of the websites exisitence. Some of the countries where he went on dates include Switzerland, Australia and China. Near the end, Willis did start to feel the pressure:

At some points I must admit it did get a bit out of control, but I promised I'd put myself out there for a year and even if I stayed single, I'd lost nothing and gained everything.