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It seems that the desire for online dating has reached even the most religiously conservative societies. According to The Jerusalem Post, the Palestinian Authority's Supreme Council has legalized online dating, but with a catch. Daters must abide by Shari'a rules, which means communication between members must be with the intent to marry.

Though Islamic scholars have dismissed online dating in the past, the council stated that the mingling of men and women online was now "a central characteristic of our time" and "unavoidable." This opens the door for many Muslims to date outside their social circles and provides more opportunity for meeting people than ever before.

Islamic dating websites have emerged in recent years, modeling themselves after other popular religious dating sites like JDate. But many Islamists, including Palestinians, already converse freely over social networks like Facebook and Twitter, according to The Times of Israel. It seems that allowing online dating was the obvious next step.

First of all let me say, I do not think so 😉

GeekWire recently found a Microsoft patent filing from 2009 which explains a matchmaking system based on matching peoples private affinities:

The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can leverage private affinities in order to facilitate or enrich relationships between people. In particular, the architecture can receive a profile associated with a user wherein the profile includes a set of private affinities that are cryptographically protected from public inspection. The architecture can decrypt and/or cryptographically compare a private affinity from the profile to an affinity in a disparate profile (associated with a disparate user) in order to identify a matching affinity. Once a matching affinity is identified, a message indicating such can be provided to the user along with a request to publish certain revealed information to the disparate user, possibly based upon a mutual exchange of commensurate information from the disparate user.

So basically this sounds like a matching system based on a person’s attributes that are not available for public viewing. I doubt Microsoft would run with something like this directly (i.e. create a dating site) but I could see them maybe eventually incorporating it into Windows Live profiles.

It looks like Barry Diller will be turning over his CEO job at InteractiveCorp (IAC) soon to Match.com's Greg Blatt. Barry Diller will still remain IAC's chairman and their biggest shareholder. Greg Blatt has been in charge at Match.com since the beginning of 2009. There is no word yet who will take over at Match.com.

For more on the story, read the WSJ and to find out more about some of the dating sites IAC owns, read our Match.com review and our Chemistry.com review.

What do you do when you're a Stanford Business School graduate in the early '90s and you're searching for "the best woman in the world?" For Gary Kremen, the answer was simple: invent online dating.

The quest for a wife (and the financial security it would require to marry her) led Kremen to create Match.com, an idea that came to him after he realized how much revenue personal ads generated for his local newspapers. In 1993, Kremen founded Electric Classifieds Inc., the first company to provide online classified advertising, and in April of 1995, after raising $200,000 from investors, Match.com was born. Though the site's functionality was limited (it only allowed users to exchange messages and pictures via e-mail or fax),100,000 users registered with the site within its first 6 months. Now Match.com has over 1.7 million paid subscribers, and Web sites in 30 and 8 languages.

Kremen chalks up the wild success of Match.com to his "'relentless' work ethic." He ran the business from "a cramped, one-bedroom apartment that he shared with two roommates," often remaining in his pajamas while he "sat glued to his Sun workstation, designing Match's Web site and developing marketing strategies." Despite his hard work and the $1.5 million in venture capital he received, Match.com didn't initially pay off either romantically or financially for Kremen.

In 1997, much to Kremen's chagrin, Match.com's investors sold the startup to Cendant, a consumer-services company, for $8 million, and in 1998 the company was sold again, this time to IAC/InterActiveCorp (then still known as Ticketmaster), for $50 million. All Kremen got out of the transaction was a lifetime account on the site and $50,000 from selling his stock in the company.

Kremen was not discouraged, and in 2001 his perseverance was rewarded: Match.com partnered with AOL and MSN, which "brought in a large influx of people at a rapid pace," and in 2003 Match.com launched MatchMobile, its incredibly popular mobile phone service. 20,000 singles now register on Match.com every day, making it one of the largest and most influential online dating sites. It is consistently ranked among the top five online dating sites based on traffic.

Kremen finally found financial security after a judge awarded him $65 million in a dispute over the domain name sex.com in 2001, and after buying Electric Classifieds (then named Instant Objects) debt in 2004 so that he could retrieve its priceless patent. He held a foreclosure sale and sold the patent for $1.7 million.

Kremen's romantic goals were also met. In an age in which 1 in 5 relationships, and 1 in 6 marriages, are between people who met using online dating sites, and in which "roughly 74 percent of the 10 million Web users who are single and looking for a partner have turned to the Internet to find someone," Kremen met his match the old fashioned way - through a mutual friend.

Read the original article here. To find out more about this popular dating site, read our review of Match.com

Well, the BeautifulPeople.com latest press release about them launching a virtual Sperm Bank sure has garnered some attention. Newsweek, Mashable, The BBC, and a pile of other media websites have all written articles on the news. Some of the articles are a little confusing though and make it sound like BeautifulPeople.com are actually running a Sperm Bank and distributing donor samples. In fact all they have done is created a forum on their dating site which allows people to connect with those who are interested in supplying their sperm/egg.

The BeautifulPeople.com virtual sperm bank is a forum where members register and state their procreation interests. A number of members already registered on the forum are married or in a relationship where for many reasons, an external donor is required. Likewise, many men have been able to register to help infertile couples or single women to conceive healthy, attractive offspring. ... Members wishing to donate will be able to access information on which clinics to contact and gather information on the donor protocol.

Entrepreneur Magazine has released their Annual 100 Brilliant Ideas list. For the Seniors category, Florence Hendersons FloH Club received a nod for offering telephone based tech-support service designed for seniors. A dating site called "Dating for Seniors" (DatingForSeniors.com), was one of 9 other ideas put on the watch list for this category. This was the only dating site mentioned on the entire list.

I can understand why a dating site for seniors was put on the list since this online dating niche is a growing market (thought not a new idea). What I am not sure on is why this particular seniors dating site was picked. There are other much more popular senior dating services like SeniorPeopleMeet.com and Lavalife Prime.

For more information on this story, visit Entrepreneur Magazines 100 Brilliant Ideas list. The senior category is on page 4. For other dating sites which are designed for single seniors, check out our list of Dating Sites for Seniors.