Single in the city and a mom? Match.com has released its list of the Top 10 Cities For Dating Single Moms and it looks like Yonkers, NY, is the luckiest city to look for love. The list used Match.com's data to find the top cities where women with children have had more success meeting someone online. The dating site's top 10 cities for 2010 were:
Stalkers prowl social networks more than dating sites, according to news from earlier this week. But one LA woman, who was allegedly assaulted by a man she met on Match.com, thinks online dating services should do more to keep members safe, and she's suing Match asking that it start screening members for sexual predators.
After connecting with a guy on Match, the woman met him at a public cafe in West Hollywood. They hit it off and planned a second date. But on the second date, she claims he followed her home and forced himself on her. Following the ordeal, she looked him up online and discovered that he had been convicted on several sexual battery charges. Her attorney argues that as a powerful and successful dating service, Match has the means to screen such members and prevent similar incidents. Match maintains such violent occurrences are rare, and it does provide dating safety tips.
Whether you meet a potential mate at a bar or online, there's always a risk he may turn out to be a criminal, and it's true that we can all research our dates ahead of time to find out their possible sexual criminal past. But it may be a selling point for Match to assure users it does the screening itself. Do you think it should?
A new dating site has hit the Internet, and despite its efforts to seem more Match.com than red-light district, it looks to me like a thinly veiled escort site. Founded by Brandon Wade SeekingArrangement.com, WhatsYourPrice.com calls itself "the eBay of online dating."
The site likens its buy-a-first-date concept to charity date bidding, addressing the "p" word in its PR kit by emphasizing, "There is absolutely no sex involved." The concept and the members, however, paint a different picture. The men, aka "the generous members," bid on dates with the women, "the attractive members," who have profiles similar to other online dating sites. And in case you were wondering, the site is "100% free for attractive singles" . . . so what happens if you're not attractive? Do you have to pay? And who decides which members are "attractive"? By perusing the "attractives" on the site, I'm guessing flat-chested, clothes-wearing females need not apply. And once you get past the cleavage, the "Interested In" sections, which include "Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby," "Married Dating/Discreet Affair," and "Casual/Intimate Encounter" also insinuate there'll be more after a first-date dinner than dessert.
But what do you think? Is WhatsYourPrice just a smart, efficient way to meet people, or is it an escort service disguised as a dating site?
As Match.com's resident relationship expert, Whitney Casey, knows how to tailor her advice to a modern audience. Now the author of The Man Plan: Drive Men Wild . . . Not Away wants to help us tailor our dating profiles to our dream guys. In the super-saturated online world of dating, the profile is your first chance to make a grand impression. Here are four tips from Whitney to help you do that.
I'd say choose whatever color you look best in for a first date, but Match.com says the psychology of color disagrees. We know women are attracted to men in red and vice-versa, but what do other colors say? Fortunately, there are shades that say "come here" without going as far as come-hither red. Find out which color is best for you — and what colors we all should avoid — below.
Valentine's Day has come and gone, but that doesn't mean you have to stop looking for love (or at least a hot date), does it? And if you're into geeky guys, Match.com has your back — the online dating site recently released a list of cities you're likely to find one. Would you be surprised if I told you three of the top 10 cities were in the Bay Area? I didn't think so.
While I'm sure you can find yourself an eligible geek anywhere in the country, Match did their research to find where its most educated residents reside, and found that each of these top 10 places also house a tech firm or prestigious college of some sort. Top cities include Sunnyvale, CA, along with Cambridge and Somerville, MA. Of course, a "hot date" with a geek may mean cruising your local science museum before heading back to his place to play a mean match of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but if you're anything like me, that scenario is pretty close to perfection. Just add ice cream sundaes and it's officially the best date ever.
See the full list of cities with big geek populations after the jump.
Nobody knew what the Internet would become in the early '90s. At first, everyone thought it would function like some kind of gentleman's club, a place to go be anonymous and dirty. That's probably why Gary Kremen, founder of Match.com, snatched up sex.com first in 1994.
Yet the story behind the url is more fascinating than the site itself, which looks like nothing more than domain-squatting page: it's the most expensive url in the world. Last November, it sold for $13 million — a record — to a company called Clover Holdings, which according to Inc. is in the business of "selling remanufactured toner and inkjet cartridges."
I won't even touch that, and it's beside the point. Though Kremen lost sex.com to a conman (he was rewarded with millions in court), I suspect Match would still be the brand we all know on today's Internet — where real life and Internet life have become one — and sex.com would exist in the Internet's seedy underbelly.
There was a lot of lip smacking between Michael and Holly on last night's episode of The Office, and as we all know, too much PDA is always a big professional no-no. However, 60 percent of you think that relationships at the workplace are acceptable. It also likely depends on how you conduct yourself in public with your office sweetheart. If you're thinking of embarking on an office romance, you might be interested in these results from a Match.com survey:
What do you think of the research — are you surprised by the findings?
Photo courtesy of NBC
When you meet a potential mate over the Internet, you never really know who you may be talking to, and whether the details in his profile are fact or fiction. But it's one thing to find out a guy rounded up in the height category, and it's another to find out he has, say, a warrant out for his arrest. That's where online dating detectives come in.
For a fee, sites like My Match Checker offer background checks on the fellas you meet online so you can feel safer before meeting them in person. But as The New York Times points out, these tactics aren't perfect, and worse, they can give you a false sense of security. I would say if the cost of a background check was minimal enough, something is better than nothing when meeting someone who hasn't been vetted by mutual friends and family, as long as your guard doesn't go out the window. But what do you think? Would you shell out the dough to get the lowdown on a guy you met online? Or do you think common sense precautionary measures — i.e. meeting in well-lit, public places — and intuition are enough to feel safe? And share your reasoning in the comments!
What you worry about over the holidays might depend on your relationships status. A new Match.com poll claims that while paired up people stress about shopping and party planning, single people spend more time worrying about finding someone to spend the holidays with.
The site, which sees a 25 percent jump in traffic during the most wonderful time of the year, also posed some ridiculous hypothetical situations to users and got headline-making answers. For example, when asked if they'd rather have a kiss on New Year's Eve or a new laptop, 60 percent of respondents chose a kiss.
Before we overhype New Year's Eve and its midnight kiss more than it already is, or add to any remnants of the desperate online dater stereotype, let's consider another explanation: People on Match.com — an online dating site — presumably already have a computer they like.
