Category: Outlets – New York Times

Oxytocin Hormone Appears To Know Some Bounds

Posted on January 11, 2011
Oxytocin NY TIMES – Jan 10 – Oxytocin has been described as the hormone of love. This chemical, released from the hypothalamus region of the brain, keeps male prairie voles monogamous and makes people trust each other more. The love and trust it promotes are not toward the world in general, just toward a person’s in-group. “Oxytocin creates intergroup bias primarily because it motivates in-group favoritism and because it motivates out-group derogation.” FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

A Long-Distance Affair

Posted on January 11, 2011

Long_distance_love NY TIMES – Jan 7 – Generations of high school sweethearts have stayed together into college. College dating is changing. Skype figures large in this trend. But what students say they find most romantic is a handwritten letter. Also long-distance involvement keeps many from fully embracing their own campus. “Sometimes they don’t feel that they are fully present at school because they are getting pulled back into the connections with the other person,” says Jefferson Singer, a clinical psychologist and Connecticut College professor. College administrators pride themselves on a vibrant, engaging campus life, and prefer students to start fresh, open to new experiences. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

Mark Brooks: We'll see a lot more visibility on this desensitizing of our worlds of communication. Face to face communications 'feel' very different than computer mediated communications. Face to face, in short, is far more psychologically rewarding and healthy for us. We all need to maintain a balance, and not drift too far online.

Google Deal Divides Travel Industry As Kayak Registers For IPO

Posted on December 29, 2010

Fairsearch logo NY TIMES – Dec 27 - Six months ago, Google announced its intention to buy the company that made it easy for travelers to compare airfares, ITA Software, for $700M. The acquisition, if approved, would let Google digest ITA, which was founded in the 1990s and has become the leading provider of flight data to airlines, travel agents, global distribution systems, flight comparison sites and technology companies. This fall, a coalition that included Expedia and Kayak formed FairSearch.org to push regulators to thwart the deal. Microsoft recently joined the cause. Kayak, in registering to file its IPO, suggested that a combined Google-ITA could present a risk to its business. Orbitz has stated publicly that it is neutral on the deal. Priceline, in a public filing, cited Google as a risk factor. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

Mark Brooks: Where is the 'Kayak.com' of the idating industry? Lycos failed with their comparison engine in 2005. It required sites to send weekly data flat files, and then Lycos paid out on a per registrant database. Canoodle, powered by EasyDate, has packed together some of their internal brands. Courtland Brooks is advising Dating Starts Here, meanwhile. DSH is founded by Chris Walker, a Yale grad who was one of the people behind the Harvard/Yale 'Operation Match' punchcard based dating service launched in the 60's.

Difference Is The Norm On These Dating Sites

Posted on December 29, 2010

Nolongerlonely logo NY TIMES – Dec 28 – Several dating Web sites for singles with health problems have started up in the last few years. Dating4Disabled is a site for people with an array of disabilities, including paralysis and multiple sclerosis. Other sites include NoLongerLonely, for adults with mental illness, and POZ Personals, for people who are H.I.V.-positive. Another site, Prescription4Love, has communities dedicated to sexually transmitted diseases and physical disabilities. Awkward issues that come with an illness can be discussed frankly and openly in an online space in which everyone is dealing with something out of the ordinary. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

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Background Checks

Posted on December 20, 2010

Mymatchchecker logo NY TIMES – Dec 18 - New York and New Jersey have begun regulating Internet dating sites. A law that takes effect this month in New York State, the Internet Dating Safety Act, requires sites to post common-sense safety tips, like “meet in a public place." In New Jersey, dating sites with a membership fee have to inform users whether they do criminal background checks. Whether it is possible to effectively screen people and make sites more truthful is unclear. "Background checks might lead daters to think everyone they encounter on the sites is safe", said Mandy Ginsberg, GM of Match.com. “What we want to do is provide some degree of safety,” said Robert Buchholz, founder of MyMatchChecker.com, a site that enables people to request background checks on anyone they have met on a dating site. The basic background search costs $9.95. Mobile phone apps, such as ValiMate, aim to make background checks as quick and easy as ordering a pizza. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

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Daughter Of Operation Match Founder To Be Married To OKCupid President

Posted on October 30, 2010

Tarr coyne NY TIMES – July 11 - Jennifer Davis Tarr is to be married today to Christopher Roger Coyne. Roger is working on the development of OkCupid.com, an Internet dating service, of which he is the president. He was a founder in 1999 of TheSpark.com, a humor Web site, and of SparkNotes, a series of condensed versions of classic literature, world history, math, economics and philosophy study guides. He also graduated from Harvard. Jennifer's father, when he was at Harvard in the 1960's, was a founder of the first computer dating service, called Operation Match, for which applicants would send in a paper form, which would be turned into punch cards and six weeks later they would get a list of names and phone numbers.' FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

Mark Brooks: Coincidences or fate? This is old news from 2004, but interesting news.

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Patti Stanger: The Brutally Honest Millionaire Matchmaker

Posted on October 27, 2010

Patti stanger1 NEW YORK TIMES – Oct 25 – Patti Stanger is the star of the popular Bravo reality program ''The Millionaire Matchmaker'. This abrasive-to-the-point-of-abusive style of matchmaking has made Ms. Stanger famous, and her show, whose fourth season had its debut last week, a hit. In the Darwinian universe of Patti Stanger, anyone in search of a partner should simply follow her guidelines. Women must enhance their appearance by whatever means necessary: religiously caring for their skin, or growing out and straightening their hair. Men, for their part, need to remember that a woman must be wooed. ''I don't care if you have to take me to Olive Garden,'' she said, ''you've got to take out the c.c. you know?'' And no sex without and ''exclusive, committed, monogamous relationship.''

The full article was originally published at Globe and Mail, but is no longer available.

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Craigslist Blocks Access To ‘Adult Services’ Pages

Posted on September 6, 2010

Craigslist logo NY TIMES – Sep 4 – Craigslist, the popular Web site for classified ads, has blocked access to its “adult services” section and replaced the link with a black label showing the word “censored.” Law-enforcement say the adult ads helped facilitate prostitution. Ads cost $10 to post and $5 to repost, and are expected to bring in $45M revenue this year. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

Mark Brooks: Craigslist needs to decide…does it support prostitution or not. It is profiteering from prostitution. As are other adult dating services. Just how alturistic do Craig and Jim want to get? Running events to educate and encourage the formation of charitable groups is great. But their yin, to that yang, is meandering them into the solacious fields of prostitution. When you do adult dating, you also do prostitution and all that that world plunders.

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Dating Site Marks 10 Years With Ad Campaign

Posted on August 16, 2010

Eharmony-articleInline NY TIMES – Aug 15 - eHarmony turns 10 on Monday, and it is celebrating the anniversary with an advertising campaign called “Love Begins Here.” The campaign features couples who met on the site and a message that singles can still find meaningful relationships. Nearly 100 people, mostly couples, participated in the eight-day shoot in Los Angeles. The participants were not paid to appear in the spots. The new campaign is a change in the creative direction of eHarmony. Instead of having couples talk about how they met or why they like the service, eHarmony chose to let music and images tell their stories. The company plans to spend $25 – $30M in online and offline advertising for the campaign through the rest of the year. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

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Skype, Going Public, Hopes For $100 Million From First Offering

Posted on August 10, 2010

Skype logo NY TIMES – Aug 9 – Skype hopes to raise $100M in IPO. Analysts have speculated that Skype’s sale, planned for the Nasdaq market, could be the biggest initial offering in the technology sector since Google went public in 2004 and raised $1.67 billion. Skype has ~124M users a month worldwide. In the first six months of this year, those users made 95 billion minutes worth of calls, the company said. But only 8.1M Skype users are paying customers. Video calling represents 40% of total calling time on Skype, and analysts say this could grow further as the proliferation of smartphones enables more people to place such calls while on the go. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

Mark Brooks: Fascinating. 40% of Skype users use the webcam. So people are becoming more comfortable using their webcams, it would seem. However, growth for the webcam based dating site leaders Speeddate and Woome growth has stagnated in the USA according to Compete. Have you considered adding webcam based dating to your dating site?