Mark Brooks: It’s best not to enter personally identifying information on any personals sites. No address, telephone numbers, license plate numbers… Social networks are designed not to be anonymous, so first names are ok. I recommend not entering your last name and age.
WASHINGTON POST — July 16 — The combination of young users and
a culture that encourages sharing personal details presents
opportunities for increasingly sophisticated methods to lure
information. The FBI last month warned MySpace users of a phony
bulletin post urging people to click on a link to "check out old school
pictures." A virus seeking financial information recently invaded
Orkut, Google’s social networking site. Sites spoof the MySpace log-in
page. Scammers can look at profiles and use information to better hone
their attack, then craft phony messages that appear to come from
friends to trick people into revealing credit card or cellphone
numbers.
FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON POST — Apr 2 — Flirtingintraffic.com aims to unite you with the cutie in the car next to you. Look for their sticker (assuming they have one), then scribble down their ID number and send them a note on the site. So far, there are more than 3,000 users, mostly in Pennsylvania, where the site launched. Carless? Don’t fret; Flirtingatthebar.com is up and running, and Philips has planned the launch of Flirting on Campus, Flirting at the Beach and simply Flirting Around in the next year. FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST
Mark Brooks: If you have someone in front of you, why not just talk? I’ve seen this flirting card idea quite a few times now. It’s useful in the context of speed dating. Speed dating is like online dating in reverse. You can meet someone, THEN check their profile…and preferences for starting a family etc. Chemistry first.
WASHINGTON POST — Feb 20 — Falling in love has never had a reputation for making much sense. Dante glimpsed Beatrice a few times and wouldn't shut up about her for decades. Why should not falling in love be any more rational? There is something peculiarly modern about this phenomenon, something aligned with our dark privilege of too much, this consumeriffic culture in which jeans and houses and breasts and ring tones are customizable. Consider it all: geographical dislocation, cities filled with singles, extended childhoods and postponed childbearing, speed-dating, the growing sense that the dating pool is as vast as the 454 men-seeking-women between the ages of 29 and 31 within five miles of your ZIP code on Yahoo Personals.
The full article was originally published at Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: We are in a throw away culture…why commit? Seismic changes on our views on marriage and long term relationships (commitment) will continue. How will this affect online dating. More importantly, how will online dating influence these seismic changes? Your comments please.
THE WASHINGTION POST — Feb 12 — Online profiles make you easy to find. And not just your résumé, which is why you have to be careful about what you post. That four-year-old party pic of you doing a keg stand could some day cost you a dream job. FULL ARTICLE @ THE WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON POST — Oct 9 — Owing to a glitch, profiles and preferences for many members temporarily were shuffled for several days on Match.com. For several days, Tom’s profile page sported his picture with a headline identifying him as a "funny girl" and half his profile was wiped out. The error came at a bad time for Tom: He had just sent e-mails to a few women he was interested in. Match.com spokeswoman Kristin Kelly said the "unprecedented" problem affected about 10,000 of its 15 million users and that an explanatory e-mail (that offered seven free days as remuneration) was sent out. FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST
The full article was originally published at MSNBC, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: This feature plays to the egos of the 'connectors.' Engage the connectors and they rave and make lots of (viral) noise, spreading the word. I score 7790. Meir Strahlberg, CEO of Date.com has me beat at 18020.
WASHINGTON POST — May 30 — There's a handful of new Web sites that are making it their business to let users review their online dates. "This dater takes great photos, but when you meet face to face, he's small and skinny. The face is the same, but none of his photos show his true size," says a typical posting. Singles, be afraid. Be very afraid. Truedater launched in January. Visitors can input online identities from Match, American Singles, Yahoo Personals and JDate and search for reviews that'll tell them if, say, Lovinit62 isn't quite the six feet he claimed, or if Cutedoctor14 seems longer in the tooth than 32. Helpful links take you to the target's profile with a button click. The site's basic question: whether the person reviewed is a "truedater," i.e., truthful in his or her self-portrayal. Match.com's Kelly says, "a free-form venue to discuss people is interesting. That does seem to be something that consumers want to do. But you have to be real careful about violating people's privacy." Opinity.com launched last month as an "online and social reputation services company," also guards its information carefully. "We don't let users browse the reviews," says CEO Ted Cho. "This is not for fun." Users can rate other people online under the categories of commerce (say, a seller on eBay) , community (a voice on a Yahoo message board), gaming (a player of Ultima Online) or dating. FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST
Mark Brooks: This idea may well catch on. Bodes well for Truedater.com. How will they make money though? Background check add-ons perhaps? Advertising?
WASHINGTON POST — May 10 — Shawn Henderson tried online dating through AOL, but he preferred a personals site for those, like him, who're HIV-positive. Nancy stumbled across Meet People With H (http://www.MPwH.net). She posted information about herself, along with a photo, and within days, responses from "tons of men" — including CEOs, a firefighter and an architect — came pouring in. More than 65 million Americans live with a viral sexually transmitted disease such as herpes, human papillomavirus (HPV), hepatitis B and HIV. Many online dating services find the subject of STDs to be taboo. Positive Personals (for people diagnosed with HIV) and After H (herpes and HPV) work like any online dating service. The Antopia Herpes/HPV Network is the largest and busiest STD community on the Web, with nearly 45,000 members (http://www.gotherpes.com). FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST
Mark Brooks: Mainstream dating sites have left this niche completely unattended. A great niche and valuable public service.
WASHINGTON POST — Apr 3 — What is this service Yahoo unleashed on Tuesday, anyway? Yahoo says it's designed to help you stay in touch with existing friends, not introduce you to strangers. But it feels a lot like Friendster and other social networking sites, with the addition of a blogging tool, a smattering of traditional Yahoo content and two odd new text-messaging tools. Yahoo's service (360.yahoo.com), released to a limited number of beta testers, lets people create personal online sites to share content with their friends and family. "Think of this as a My Yahoo page with your friends," said Julie Herendeen, Yahoo's vice president of network products. FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST
Mark Brooks: Friendster worked because it was simple (a la Craigslist). Sign up, invite friends, see who your friends are buddies with…and add testimonials to make the 'connectors' egos ever larger. Add in all the cute pics and you get a viral fever pitch. The more social networking sites spring up, the less motivated the connectors get.