Month: February 2006

ROCKFORD REGISTER STAR — Feb 11 — Legislation advancing in Springfield would require online dating services that don’t conduct background checks to post this notice on their Web sites: “No background check of felony or sex offense convictions is done on members who use this service. Please take appropriate safety measures to increase awareness of possible risks associated with dating.”  A House committee unanimously approved the measure Wednesday, and the full House could vote on it next week.  Rep. John Bradley, a Marion Democrat sponsoring the bill, told the committee he is trying to protect Illinoisans who go looking for love online.

Mark Brooks: Here’s the bill

NEW AMERICA MEDIA — Feb 10 — As a 28-year-old single South Asian male entrepreneur living in downtown Chicago. I've traveled to India with my parents three times in the last five years. My family places an ad in a local New Delhi newspaper saying that I am looking for a wife and then the responses are collected and sorted. My father talks to various girls' parents on the phone about my astrological mapping.  The girl's parents, uncles, aunts, siblings and any living grandparents come over to our house in New Delhi, without the actual girl, to interview me. Then a second in-person meeting is arranged, and we have our first date; she and I are sent to a separate room of the house to talk and decide if we should spend our lives together. 

The full article was originally published at Pacific News, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Shaadi is the leading matrimonials site.

BUSINESS WIRE — Feb 10 — Users of MySpace® and Friendster® can now visit tglophone and instantly be enabled for free peer to peer calling to all their social network friends.  Community users can now "click to call" any friend. The service allows members of the MySpace® and Friendster® communities to download a browser helper application which adds "click to call" capabilities to any of the friends in their social networks. 

Mark Brooks: Downloading it now.  I’ll post my findings shortly…

ASSOCIATED PRESS — Feb 13 — "It’s like being at a giant music conference 24 hours a day every day," said Greg McIntosh, 27, guitarist for Ann Arbor-based ‘Myth Society.’ College students can rate their professors and find classmates or alumni. Others play games, view classified ads, send online party invitations or rate the brave on how "hot" they are.  Instead of using e-mail and instant messaging, Olszanowski keeps in touch with many friends simply by posting bulletins on her personal MySpace page/profile. Friends can send her a private message or post a public comment, see her photo album or read her blog.  CEO, DeWolfe said Myspace.com has worked with WiredSafety to create guidelines and improve practices – dozens of employees now monitor profiles and images 24 hours a day – and encourages parents to talk with their kids about online safety.  The site gets as many as 180,000 new members a day and has 54 million users, compared with 24 million for Friendster.  FULL ARTICLE @ FOX NEWS

BUSINESS WIRE — Feb 9 — The second annual LOVE@AOL Dating Trends (in conjunction with Opinion Research Corporation, survey of 4,000+) survey finds that 76% of singles nationwide who use Internet dating sites have met someone special, with 58% of those respondents saying they have turned an online connection into a relationship that has lasted for several months to more than a year. 54% of women said they would date someone who makes less money than they Do.  49% said the man usually pays for the first date. 68% of men agreed they usually pick up the tab!  While 82% of women say it is okay for a woman to call a man after the first date, 49% say they never make the call. Luckily for them, 77% of men call within two days after the first date.