METRO.CO.UK – July 8 – Match.com and Pizza Express are hosting a speed dating for single parents. Parents can meet like-minded singles while their kids are kept entertained by creating pizza with fully qualified babysitters from service Yoopies. Upon arrival, parents will be greeted with a glass of prosecco, whilst kids will be welcomed by Yoopies babysitters before getting rolling on their pizza-making party. Parents will then get the chance to speed date other single Match.com members for around an hour, with couples rotated to allow singles to meet as many people as possible. The event will be held on 29 July, at Pizza Express, Leicester Square.
Category: Match.com
Match Launches Lara Chatbot That Lives Inside Google Assistant
CITYAM – June 7 – Match has teamed up with Google to launch its dating chatbot Lara across the Google Assistant network, after a successful run in Facebook Messenger. Match users can speak to Lara through their Google Assistant on their phone, smartwatch, laptop or Google Home smart speaker to ask for dating tips and find new matches. Every day Lara will send through a unique Daily Match via a text message, based on a search conducted on the user's Match preferences like age, location and common interests. Using the phrase "OK Google, talk to Lara from Match", users can then have a conversation with Lara to get suggestions for potential date locations, hooked up to a pin on Google Maps.
by Emily Nicolle
The full article was originally published at CityAM, but is no longer available.
Dating Apps Tend To Connect Neighbors And Friends Of Friends
BUSINESS INSIDER – June 1 – Dating apps are increasingly connecting people who live or work close by, have the same commute, or went to college together. Match.com data reveals that 69% of active users set their default distance – i.e. how far away a match can live – to five miles. Meanwhile, dating app Clover found that, in New York City, most matches happen between people from the same borough. Still, Hinge reports that less than half of users set a maximum distance, and of those who do, the average maximum distance is 25 miles.
by Shana Lebowitz
See full article at Business Insider
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Millennial Couples Don’t Rush Wedding
NEW YORK TIMES – May 29 – Young adults not only marry and have children later than previous generations, they take more time to get to know each other before tying the knot. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist who studies romance and a consultant to the dating site Match.com, has come up with the phrase "fast sex, slow love" to describe the juxtaposition of casual sexual liaisons and long-simmering committed relationships. The eHarmony report on relationships found that American couples aged 25 to 34 knew each other for an average of six and a half years before marrying, compared with an average of five years for all other age groups. Both men and women now tend to want to advance their careers before settling down.
by Roni Caryn Rabin
See full article at New York Times
Match.com User Alleges Site Spams Paying Users With Fake Profiles
LEGAL NEWSLINE – May 9 – Matthew Ditnes, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, filed a complaint against Match Group over alleged violation of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and Illinois Dating Referral Services Act. He alleges that he subscribed to Match.com in Dec 2017 and paid $59.94 for a six-month subscription. He alleges immediately after signing up, he received messages that other users were interested and that many messages used the same profile picture for different accounts.
by Noddy A. Fernandez
See full article at Legal NewsLine
Match Wants To Move From ‘Swipe Right’ To ‘Press Play’
Online Dating: People Hate It, But Use It
SURVEY MONKEY – May 1 – Nearly a quarter of people have used or are currently using online dating services. For young and middle aged adults (18-44 years old), this number increases to a third. More than half of young adults (18-24 years old) see dating sites and apps as platforms for casual hookups. Older adults are more likely to see them as a means to helping them develop short and long-term relationships. 75% of young adults use Tinder, and 31% Bumble. Adults between 25-34 years old begin to transition to Match.com (36%). 56% of adults view dating apps and services as either somewhat or very negative.
by Jon Gitlin
See full article at Survey Monkey
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Match.com Partners With William Shatner For Perfect Date Giveaway
The full article was originally published at Match Blog, but is no longer available.
Q&A With Helen Fisher: What Love Does To Your Brain
VOX – Apr 24 – Helen Fisher is a biological anthropologist, the chief scientific adviser to Match.com, and the author of several books including Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. She's written six books about human sexuality, gender differences in the brain, and how cultural trends shape our views of sex, love, and attachment.
Q: What happens to our brains on love?
A: There is an activity in a tiny little part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area. It turns out that this brain system makes dopamine, which is a natural stimulant.
Q: Is it different from the experience of sex?
A: The sex drive is largely orchestrated by testosterone, but romantic love is orchestrated by the dopamine system.
Q: So being in love is like being hooked up to a perpetual dopamine drip.
A: It's a great way to put it. But the dopamine hits occur even when you're not with the person. You can think of love as an intense obsession, but it's really an addiction. We found that, in addition to the dopamine system being activated in the brains of people in love, we also found activity in another part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. This part of the brain is activated in all forms of behavioral addiction – whether it's drugs or gambling or food or kleptomania. So this part of the brain fires up in people who have recently fallen in love, and it really does function like an addiction.
Q: What do we, as a culture, get wrong about male and female sexuality?
A: A lot. We think men want to have sex with everything that walks, but that's not true. They're much more picky than people think. We also got it wrong that women are not interested in sex. Women in college have more sex than men in college do. Men fall in love faster and more often. Men like public displays of affection more regularly. Men have more intimate conversations with their girlfriends and wives than women do with their husbands and boyfriends because women have their intimate conversations with their girlfriends, not necessarily with their man. Men are also 2.5 times more likely to kill themselves when a relationship is over.
Q: What makes for a happy marriage or relationship?
A: Express empathy, control your own emotions, and overlook the negatives in your partner and focus on the positives.
A Match.com Glitch Reactivated A Bunch Of Old Profiles
THE VERGE – Apr 23 – A Match Group spokesperson confirmed that a "limited number" of old accounts had been accidentally reactivated recently and that any account affected received a password reset. Match.com's current privacy statement says that the company can "retain certain information associated with user account" even after they close it. The company plans to roll out a new privacy policy in order to comply with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); under the new policy, all those years-old accounts will be deleted. Although there is no federal data destruction law in the US, 32 states have data disposal laws that require "entities to destroy, dispose, or otherwise make personal information unreadable or undecipherable."