PR WEB – Feb 13 - AfricaBeauties.com, which connects women from Africa with men around the world, has opened a new office in China. “The new office and staff is part of AfricaBeauties response to the increased attraction and demand by Chinese men for African females. AfricaBeauties.com is part of the Anastasia Family of web portals that includes AnastasiaDate.com, AmoLatina.com and AsianBeauties.com.
Month: February 2013
Online Matchmaking A Hit With Saudi Couples
AFP – Feb 13 – Um Sami is a well-established matchmaker from the Red Sea city of Jeddah. Families ready to marry off their offsprings contact her with details about their children and provide pictures which she carries around with her on rounds to match candidates. There are many different types of weddings that can be contracted in Saudi Arabia, from the traditional unions to unconventional ones by Western standards such as the "misyar" marriage. A misyar ("visitor's" marriage) is one in which couples live separately but can meet up when they want, usually for sexual encounters. Misyar is often the marriage of choice for polygamous men as well as divorcees and widows in Saudi Arabia, where extra-marital relations are strictly banned and punishable under rigid Islamic laws.
The full article was originally published at Times of India, but is no longer available.
Jewish Dating Sites
NEW VOICES – Feb 13 – Everyone knows JDate, but there are plenty more out there that don’t take the typical route to matchmaking.
- Yenta – A mobile app that uses GPS to help users find a “JewBoo” in their vicinity.
- TheJMom.com – Moms post profiles for their single kids.
- TheShidduch.com – A site that is relying on matchmakers. Similar sites include SawYouAtSinai.com and YUConnects.com for Y.U. students. These sites usually don’t let you see other profiles until they’re matchmaker-approved.
- Jewster.com – The site offers community events and organizations to support.
- JewCanoodle.com – Free site that provides AccuPic Trust Ratings, which let people know just how trustworthy someone’s picture is.
See full article at New Voices
See all posts on JDate
See all posts on TheJMom
See all posts on SawYouAtSinai
Science Shows Dating Sites Aren’t Better At Finding You Love
TECH CRUNCH – Feb 14 – Dating sites basically claim to predict the future, arguing that they have a crystal ball with a higher probability of users ending up in romantic utopia. It’s a funny assumption, because even the bleeding edge of social science, which arguably has access to a lot more accurate data than eHarmony, is really quite bad at predicting human behavior. Individuals, in general, are terrible at knowing what they want in a significant other. The browsing process can cause users to objectify potential partners, commoditizing them as options available in a marketplace of profiles. Social scientists see this as a perfect case of the ‘paradox of choice,’ when increasing options decreases satisfaction. Online communication shuts out the most informative pathway of communication by completely obscuring body and intonation. It’s very easy to lie online. Dating is entirely a numbers game, and the search method is largely irrelevant.
How Technology Has Changed Romance
CNN – Feb 12 – Technology isn't killing courtship. But for many young couples, it's redefining what romance looks like. We've come a long way since those AOL chat rooms. Using your phone's GPS feature, mobile social apps such as Blendr, Grindr, Are You Interested? and Plenty of Fish help you zero in on potential dates, or hook-ups, right around the corner. OkCupid recently launched Crazy Blind Date, which sets users up on short notice with someone they know almost nothing about. Some young single people today would rather have information than mystery. When Jason (29 years old) was skeptical of a potential date he'd met online, he turned to Facebook. There can be drawbacks to this Facebook sleuthing, said Dr. Corinne Weisgerber, an associate professor of communication at St. Edward's University in Austin. Brushing up on someone's background pre-date means you could skip over some of those foundational moments of discovery in person, she said. Although meeting in person will always be essential, the concept of romance has evolved to the point where weeks of IM or e-mailing can plant seeds of a relationship.
Virgin Mobile & OkCupid Pair For ‘National Breakup Day’
VENTURE BEAT – Feb 13 – On “National Breakup Day,” Virgin Mobile wants to get people to break up with their wireless carriers. It will give $100 off a Samsung Galaxy S II 4G to anyone who terminates their phone contract. “We want people to understand that they don’t have to be stuck in a bad relationship,” said Ron Faris, the head of brand marketing for Virgin Mobile USA. OkCupid is giving folks relationship advice via Virgin Mobile’s @VirginMLive Twitter account.
BeautifulPeople.com Turns Ugly People Away At Events
MASHABLE – Feb 13 – BeautifulPeople.com, a dating site that allows only attractive people to join based on member votes, employed "beauty screeners" for their events. The police squad, made up of one woman and one man, will assess people at the door to see if they match up to their online profile pictures. In 2010, the site expelled 5K members for gaining weight over the holidays. The site boasts ~750K members and new applicants must undergo a 48-hour democratic rating process before joining.
Romantic Delusions Allow Online Dating Scams To Flourish
SCIENCE DAILY – Feb 13 – A research, which was carried out by Professor Monica Whitty of University of Leicester and Professor Tom Buchanan of the University of Westminster, argues that the police, policy-makers, doctors and dating companies need to take into account the emotional state of those who have been conned, in order to prevent the crime, bring criminals to justice and support victims effectively. "In romance scams, people have to deal not just with losing thousands of pounds. They have to deal with the psychological trauma of being both robbed and jilted by a 'lover'." ~230K people in the UK have been conned by online romance fraudsters since 2007, according to the study. "Daters need to be told, from the moment they sign up, that if a person is not willing to meet them in the first month they should move on. They also need to be told never to respond to requests for money.
How To Hack Online Dating And Use Data To Find True Love
READ WRITE WEB – Feb 13 – In her book, Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match, Amy Webb, outlines how she "reverse engineered" online dating, reevaluated her strategy and met her future husband. Webb kicked off her digital quest for a mate by listing 72 traits she wanted her future partner to possess; everything from personal habits and marital history to work ethic. Next, she narrowed down the ten most important characteristics and listed them as "top tier" traits. Then Webb assigned a total number of points to each item. 100 for her top trait and 91 for her least-critical item in her top ten list. The second-tier traits were all assigned 50 or fewer points. The result was a 1000-point scale that would allow her to grade. Before setting up her new profile, Webb decided to evaluate the competition. Using her 1000-point grading system, she had created 10 fake profiles and interacted with 96 different women. She paid attention to things like which gender initiated conversations most and made data visualizations of the most commonly used words in the profiles of popular women. Armed with new insights, Webb set out to create what she calls her "super-profile." It was concise, used positive language and wasn't as fixated on work.
by John Paul Titlow
The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.
Call For Volunteers, For InternetDatingScience.com
OPW – Feb 13 – We could really use a couple new reviewers for InternetDatingScience.com
(IDS). Care to help? It would entail reviewing a paper a month, and
summarizing it for IDS, the sister site to OPW. Write us at petra@courtlandbrooks.com.