Statistics

A yet to be released study from a Duke University researcher, analyzed 22,000 online daters and confirmed what the rest of us already know. Men prefer thin women and, women prefer tall financially secure men. I think what will be interesting about this study is the little details. Some reported examples of this in the study include, men prefer women with a body mass index of 18 or 19. This is on the very thin side since a women who is 5' 6" would need to weight about 115 pounds (I think women can blame the runway models for this). For the men, on average a guy who is 5' 9" needs to make $30,000 more than a man who is 5'10", just to be as successful with online dating.

We will report more interesting facts on this online dating study when it is released.

The BBC World Service commissioned a survey which polled about 11,000 internet users from 19 different countries. The results of the study concluded that 30 percent of people who use the internet feel that the online world is a good place to find a partner. Education played a factor in this survey as well. For those people who have completed high school, 28 percent believed that dating sites worked. When compared to adults who did not finish high school, a higher percentage, 36 to be exact, thought going online was a good place to find a date.

When looking at internet users from different countries, Pakistan came in at the highest at 60 percent, followed by India at 59 percent. British participants in the survey came in at 28 percent. This was followed closely by the French at 27 percent. Americans were fairly low at 21 percent.

The overall result from this survey is fairly close to a similar statistic from another story that roughly 30 to 40 million singles in the United States use online dating sites or social networks to look for love. This is about 1/3 of single Americans or 33 percent.

For more on this survey, read the eCommerce Journal.

Jennifer Viegas of Discovery News took a look at online dating recently and concluded that despite its flaws, dating sites are a useful tool. In the 15 years that online dating sites have been around (at least that was when Match.com started back in 1995) the success of online dating still remains somewhat questionable according to her. Singles have to become educated on how to use dating sites, what to look for, how to spot scammers and what websites to use, only then does it then become a useful tool.

The first thing online daters have to realize is, most singles tell a few white lies on their dating profiles. For the most part, there is no malice in this, when people mislead about something on their profile, it is usually because they feel a little inadequate. For example, it was found in a recent study about dating profiles at Michigan State University that 52.6 percent of men lied about their height, while 39 percent of women did. Women tended to fib more about their weight, 64.1 percent in fact. Age is also another attribute people lied about (24.3 percent of men and 13.1 percent of women).

Dating sites also tend to attract people who are married. While not as bad as before, since there are dating sites like AshleyMadison.com who deal with this dating niche, it can still be a problem, especially on the free dating sites. In one study, 83 percent of the participants felt that using online dating sites for a fling was not cheating on their partner as they had no plans to continue the relationship.

As far as scammers are concerned, members of dating sites need to watch out for those profiles of people with model like photos. This combined with poor spelling and grammar usually is an indication of someone who is not, who they say they are. Another huge give away of a scammer is, if they ask for money. They will use any sob story they can think of. If you haven't met the person in real life and met a few of their friends or family, I would instantly break off conversation with someone who asked for money. If you are unsure of a scammer another easy way to spot them is to ask them more about the city they live in. Usually scammers don't live in the city they say they are from and it is pretty easy to trip them up by asking them to list a few of their favorite spots to eat or something similar.

For more on the story, read Discovery News.

It's Just Lunch recently shared their survey about dating plans and dating etiquette for Super Bowl Sunday. Here is what the matchmaking service found out:

• 58% of singles say that they would bring a first date to a Super Bowl party.
• 74% of men and 82% of women stated that they will root against their date's team at the Super Bowl party.
• 65% of men and 72% of women will not stick to their diets during the game.
• Don't talk about anything except football. 52% of singles would try to turn the conversation back to football and if they persisted in non football talk, then 31% of singles would never ask them out again to a sporting event.
• If you had a ticket to the Super Bowl, 46% of men would prefer to bring a date rather than their best friend to the actual game. For women it was 37%.

For the full story read the press release and for more information on the matchmaking service which sponsored the survey, read our review of It's Just Lunch.

It looks like the gay dating site ManCrunch.com took a page from AshleyMadison.com play book. Last year AshleyMadison.com created an ad for the Super Bowl which was rejected by the TV Networks (see Story). They received a lot of free press because of it. This year it must be ManCrunch.com's turn. Here is the TV commercial in question:

Note: Unfortunately the source to the video and/or image which once was displayed here has since been removed by the authors for an unknown reason.

While I was in no way offended by the commercial and I did find it comical, the problem is the production values are just not up to the standards for a show like the Super Bowl.

ManCrunch.com spokesman Dominic Friesen told the New York Post that CBS had said all the commercial spots for the Super Bowl were sold. Dominic Friesen felt this was not true and that there were being discriminated against.

eHarmony has been in business for over 10 years now and to help celebrate, Dan, eHarmony's first Customer Care agent released a few fun facts. The most interesting fact I found was that on average, eHarmony members submit 24,000 photos per day to the dating site.

The other facts deal more with just Customer Care. Did you know, every day eHarmony's Customer Care team handle thousands of requests for help and information via emails and phone calls. This large and dedicated staff performs their job well and has been recognized by the industry. In 2009 eHarmony received 3 awards of excellence for customer service. You can see one example here.

For the full story, read The Official eHarmony Blog and to find out more about this dating site, check out our eHarmony review.