General News

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.

eHarmony won Silver in the Customer Service category for the 2008 Gartner and 1to1 Customer Awards. Gold went to Overstock.com with Bronze being received by Cricket Communications. You ask, who is 1to1? Quoted from their website:

1to1.com is a personalized Web site developed by Peppers & Rogers Group to help people interested in CRM and one-to-one marketing find information and resources to create more loyal, profitable relationships with their customers by treating different customers differently. The site is built around the four-step IDIC methodology of Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. - identify your customers, differentiate them based on value and need, interact to learn more about what they need and then customize your products and services to meet their needs.

eHarmony is a client of 1to1 Media and it is nice to know they are taking an interest in customer service to help not only the company's bottom line but to improve the overall experience of members at eHarmony. Too often dating sites rely just on FAQs and Help sections built into the website. Paying customers need more than this. Emails and calls to customer support need to be tailored to the member. Dating Sites should be exceptionally good at this since they already have a lot of personal information about the member and hopefully they keep track of the members usage pattern of the dating service as well. Simply substituting a members name in a stock email doesn't work anymore, people are smarter than this.

See the complete winners and category list Winners here.

For more information on eHarmony, read our review.

Markus Frind, CEO of Plentoffish.com, blog has a post today called Lots of changes lately…. In his post Markus mentions 5 interesting points he has noticed in the dating industry. I think he may need to add another point to his list. The reason for this is he also asks the question:

Here is a question for everyone what are the best merchant accounts to use?

Merchant accounts are used by websites who offer paid services or goods to process credit cards, online cheques and debit cards. Markus has hired a few people lately and is obviously working on something. I wonder if he is planning to offer a paid membership that has some added benefits? Maybe he is adding some other type of dating related service? He hasn't given us any real hints. The merchant account could even be for a whole new project which isn't even related to PlentyOfFish.com.

Has anyone else heard any rumours?

Comment below...

Last year it was San Francisco, this year it is Atlanta which gained the number 1 spot in Forbes annual top 40 cities in America for Singles to live. The 40 largest cities in the United States are ranked in 7 different categories. This includes, nightlife, online dating activity, job growth, number of singles, culture, cost of living alone and coolness. All cities where ranked in the 7 categories. Then all categories, which were given equal weight, where totalled for the cities final ranking. The top 5 cities for singles are (according to Forbes):

1. Atlanta
2. San Francisco
3. Dallas
4. Minneapolis
5. Washington D.C.

As a city, Atlanta offers an above average ranking in almost all 7 categories with Job Growth as a stand out in which they were ranked number 4 out of 40. Online Dating activity was their worse category with a ranking of 24. Out of a population of over 4 million, 26.8 percent of adults are single which gave them a rank of 14. San Francisco earned the top spot for the number of singles category with 30 percent of their adult population being single.

According to Forbes methodology on how each of the 7 categories are used to rank a city, Match.com was used to determine the online dating activity. This was based on the number of active profiles in each city. To figure out the coolest city, Harris Interactive conducted a poll that asked U.S. adults to name the city from among the 40 selected.

Check out Forbes Special Report for singles.

Related Story: Forbes Magazine Best Cities for Singles

According to a local Michigan author, 97.5% of the almost 300 online daters she interviewed did fudge the facts about at least one aspect of their dating profile. Woman tended to lie more about their age and weight while men lied more about age and their marital status. The author found about 60 percent of men who stated they were either single, separated or divorced where actually married. Most of the interviewed online daters used popular dating sites such as American Singles, eHarmony, Match.com, Senior FriendFinder and Yahoo Personals.

While I expect a few not quite truthful answers in a dating profile (I always assumed more people than not probably round down their weight), I was surprised at the percentage of men she found who lied about their marital status. This is a much larger issue than saying your 6 feet tall, when you are only 5 foot 11 inches. I wonder if the same percentage holds true for men at bars?

This topic would make a good poll. I should create one to see what visitors of Dating Sites Reviews fib about in their dating profiles.