Profiles

"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" is solid advice for most every situation, but it rings especially true online. Anyone who has ventured into the untamed Wild West of online dating knows that it comes with certain risks.

Chief among them is the possibility of being ripped off by an unscrupulous Internet scammer. Your rational side knows it's a possibility, but for the most part it's a fear that's relegated to the deeper, darker recesses of your mind. A far as you're concerned, getting scammed is something that happens to other people in the cautionary tales told on the local news. It's not going to happen to you, right?

Odds are in your favor, but it never hurts to be prepared. SeekingArrangement.com recently posted a report called The Face of Fraud to help online daters separate the catches from the catfish. The site reviewed the profiles of 60,000 banned accounts, and discovered that fake profiles tend to have a few things in common. Here are 7 signs you might be looking at the profile of a scam artist:

My generally-cynical friend, Rose, announced that she wasn’t going to keep her online profile up through the month of December. “There’s no point,” she explained. “Last year it was totally dead in my area, and besides, people just want to have a date for their work holiday party or something to do on New Year’s.”

Now, in general I don’t agree with Rose when she becomes a Negative Nancy, but for a moment I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she was completely accurate. Perhaps the online dating site she uses was particularly quiet last December - after all, people often travel to see family, or use up their vacation time, over the holidays. Perhaps the majority of those still in town were looking primarily for a date to a holiday event. Still...

“So what?” I asked her.

She raised her eyebrows. “So what?” she repeated.

“So what if someone is just looking for a date to a holiday party?”

“Well,” she said, “It makes me feel like there’s just some ulterior motive - like I could be any random person, being used for some specific purpose. It seems hard to believe that a relationship could start under those conditions.”

“Sure,” I said, “I understand that. But the truth is, we never really know the motivation of the person we’ve just met. How is wanting a date for a party any different from wanting a first date to get back on that horse after a bad breakup? Or ultimately looking for a future spouse and parent to your future children? We all have some ulterior motive, but that doesn’t mean it’s sinister. Either way, we’re still not going to go out with someone we’re not remotely interested in. And if we have a great time, we’re going to want to see them again, even if we were just planning on finding someone for this one party. And what’s wrong with wanting someone to laugh with over the holidays?”

Rose looked thoughtful, but I wasn’t done yet.

“Besides,” I added, “Sure, it’s true that the majority of relationships probably start on some random day of the year and not in some ultra-romantic setting like waiting for the ball to drop on New Year’s Eve. But just because the majority of them start in more mundane settings doesn’t mean that all of them do. There’s no reason to avoid a potential relationship just because you think it’s a cliche.”

Perhaps I’m just a hopeless romantic. However, Rose did ultimately keep her profile up for the month of December, though she claimed it was just due to her “laziness.” What do you think?

You’ve been single for awhile. Although you’re OK with that, you really would like to find someone special. You’ve tried having your friends fix you up on blind dates, but that didn’t turn out so well. And you really don’t want to date someone at work because of possible complications if things go wrong with the relationship. The logical alternative is online dating. If you’ve decided to take the plunge into the online dating world, following these five strategies will produce the best possible odds of finding someone compatible.

Smile for the Camera

Yes, you have to include a photo. Actually, you should include at least two photos – one of your face and a full body shot, both of which should be recent. Additional photos of you engaged in a favorite hobby are a nice bonus. If you’re worried that someone you know will see your photo on a dating site, don’t. After all, how would they know you’re online dating unless they’re doing the same thing? If you absolutely refuse to include a photo, be prepared to receive very few responses. It’s not fair, but looks matter.

Choose the Right Username

Online dating is not like posting a professional profile. You’re allowed to have a little fun. A username like “Leo Princess” is cute and gives potential dates a clue to your personality. On the other hand, a username like “Sexy Stud” implies that you’re only interested in casual encounters. If that’s actually the case, no problem, but otherwise you run the risk of putting off potential prospects who are actually seeking relationships.

Have a Positive Attitude

Yes, there are creeps out there. But dating profiles that rant endlessly about “no game players need apply” or “gold diggers not welcome” are not attractive to anyone. It’s possible to express the same sentiment in a more positive way by saying, for instance, “honesty is essential for me.” You may be skeptical about online dating, but try to maintain at least some optimism that you’ll meet nice people, even if you don’t find The One.

Emphasize the Unique

You enjoy walks along the beach and beautiful sunsets. Congratulations. So does the bulk of the human race. Remember, there is a lot of competition with online dating. Unless you’re drop dead gorgeous, you need to include something in your dating profile that allows you to stand out from the crowd. So if you were a standout track star in high school or college, why not include that in your dating profile? On the other hand, avoid getting too personal. Save the fact that you’re taking meds for depression until you have established a steady dating relationship.

Spelling and Punctuation Count

Your dating profile is not a school essay, but it still needs to be letter perfect. Use proper punctuation and grammar, and avoid too many abbreviations. Unless you’re fourteen years old (in which case, you have no business being on an online dating site), don’t write your ad in text speak. Proofread your profile thoroughly, with spell check and by reading through your profile and making manual corrections. Remember, you only get one chance to make a good first impression – and that includes online dating.

Most of us are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or some form of social media. Maybe you even have a blog. Whatever the case, it seems these days we all have an online persona as well as an in-person one. And sometimes, you don't want these worlds to meet - (or at least you don't want your boss to discover you're secretly complaining about your job in 140 characters or less). So how do you manage all of these identities when you're dating?

If you blog or tweet about your awful dates, what happens if you meet someone you like? Do you tell him about your blog or propensity to share these intimate details, wait a few weeks to see if the relationship goes anywhere, or do you erase all links to your real-life self and hope he doesn't stumble across it?

And if you're not so inclined to blog or tweet about your dates, are there some Facebook posts or pictures you'd rather not admit to - like when your friend tagged you one embarrassingly drunken night out? Or when you posted a rant on your ex's wall?

Chances are there are some things you don't want on display for someone you're just meeting. But if you want to keep them private, it may be harder than you think - especially when it comes to dating. With the help of Google, Facebook, and a little sloothing, your date could discover some of your well-hidden secrets. And if they are doing their due diligence, they will.

Before you panic, there are some definite steps you can take to make sure your online persona comes off as swimmingly as your real-life one does when you meet in person:

Adjust your Facebook privacy settings. This is a really easy fix. Don't assume your information is private because you haven't changed any settings recently and Facebook wouldn't dare make your information public. There have been some adjustments on Facebook's part over the last few months to make information more accessible unless you say no, so be sure to check your settings often and make sure you have your privacy settings as high as possible.

Protect your tweets. It is possible to have separate Twitter accounts - one for work and one for your private life. Just make sure you never mix them up! (I had a friend who did this and almost lost her job.) If you want to use your real name, then protect your tweets so only followers can see them. Otherwise, I suggest changing your handle (or name) so that you're more anonymous.

Don't friend or follow anyone you just met. This means don't exchange Facebook names so you can "friend" each other as a way to get in contact. Do you want the new girl you're interested in to see your picture with another girl, or read your fringe political viewpoints? Keep social media out of the picture until you've been dating a few weeks (or months)! Otherwise you could be misunderstood.

Own up to your past. If you have something online that might be a red flag to potential dates, it's best to disclose it upfront. A friend of mine started dating someone only to find out he had a website with another woman - announcing their engagement! Even though the two were broken up by the time he met my friend, she couldn't get past her initial shock that he hadn't mentioned it. So the relationship never got off the ground.

Bottom line? Pay attention to your digital trail, and know how you come across.

For more information on how to use social networks for dating, you can check out our Facebook review and our Twitter review.

"Every ten years in the United States we take a census, the purpose of which is to determine how many people live in different areas of our country, so that the makeup of the House of Representatives reflects the makeup of the nation. Along with a simple count of heads, the census asks other questions which give us insight into our income, jobs, homes, ages, and backgrounds. This information is analyzed and published by the government, telling us who we are.

But these facts and figures, interesting and useful as they may be, are not really us."

With that interpretation of the U.S. census, artist R. Luke DuBois introduces his latest project, a piece entitled "A More Perfect Union." In an effort to define Americans more accurately and create his own version of the 2010 United States census, DuBois joined 21 online dating sites - from Match.com to AsiaFriendFinder - and analyzed the profiles of 19,095,414 single Americans. The results are "a road atlas of the United States, with the names of cities, towns, and neighborhoods replaced with the words people use to describe themselves and those they want to be with." The maps contain 20,262 unique words, each of which appears in the location in which it's used more frequently than anywhere else in the country.

DuBois found, among other things, that the nation's happiest people seem to be living on the coasts, particularly in Washington, where online daters in Seattle take the title for most instances of the word "happy" appearing in their dating profiles. The least happy women appeared to be living in New York, in the Bronx, while the least happy men call central and western Nebraska home.

Ladies in parts of Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, and Ohio - and men in parts of Texas, Wyoming, and Georgia - are the most "lonely" in the country. The least lonely women are in Illinois, and the least lonely men have settled in California, around Los Angeles.

Some of DuBois' more scandalous findings trace instances of words like "naughty," "virgin," and "kinky." No one in Wyoming, it turns out, uses the description "naughty" in their profiles, though many women in Colorado do. The highest concentrations of virgin men and women are in New York's 12th congressional district (which includes Williamsburg and the Lower East Side) and Louisiana's 2nd (New Orleans), respectively. New Orleans does, however, come in first when it comes to the least virgin men, an award that went to Houston, TX for the women. If kink is your thing, search San Jose, CA and southern West Virginia, which tied for most kinky women, or New Mexico for kinky men. Kinksters would do well, on the other hand, to avoid Wyoming completely.

Though DuBois doesn't theorize about why certain words are more prevalent in certain parts of the country, his experiment tells us a lot about what it means to date in contemporary America. "Online dating requires a very specific, complex act of self-identity," he told ABC. "If you don't do online dating, you assume everyone says the same thing, e.g. 'I'm nice, cute, smart, fun'.... But it turns out that the real objective of an online dating profile is to stand out from the crowd and get noticed, so people talk openly and honestly about their aspirations, their hobbies, their life history. It's really fascinating."

Describing yourself is one of the hardest things to do especially when you have to write it for an online profile. Online dating has become the fastest trend of meeting new people but it is also very competitive. You need to invest valuable time to create an attention grabbing profile that is creative and unique. The following are 3 tips to make your dating profile work for you.

Choose a Great Username

Your online username is the first thing members see on a dating website. Most people don't take the time to create a memorable username. You don't want to have a username that is generic and forgettable to members. Remember, the username you choose will represent you the entire time you are on the dating site. Don't use a name that is too long to remember or raunchy and offensive. If you are having trouble coming up with a name, make a list of your hobbies and traits that describe you. Play around with the words and combine something that is catchy and unforgettable.

Create a Unique Header

There are many people who leave this part blank or use something common that will have potential dates bypass. A good tip is to review the profiles of other members. You will quickly see how many did not take the time to write something exciting. Do take note of the profile headers that capture your attention and use this research to write something that shows off your personality.

Get Picture Perfect

It's always surprising to see how many people on a dating website use outdated photos of themselves. If you end up going out on a date with a member, your date will expect the person she or he saw in the photo you displayed on your profile. Always be honest with the information you share on the dating website. Most people have signed up in hopes to meet a potential future partner. If you don't have a recent picture of yourself, get a friend to take several pictures to choose from. Get picture ready by choosing a background that represents you. It will give potential dates a chance to see you in your element, moreover, it gives them something to write to you about.

Say Something of Interest - Stand Out!

The more that you can write about yourself the better, how else is someone supposed to find out about you and appreciate you for the unique individual that you are? Consider short a series of funny stories in addition to likes and dislikes, and how you spend your free time.