WASHINGTON POST – Apr 22 – Almost four weeks after April Fool's day, Burrit-oh! – the dating site that pairs singles based on their taste in portable Mexican – has proven so unexpectedly successful that maker Zoosk is thinking of keeping it. To date, ~2K people have signed up for Burrit-oh!.
Category: Outlets – Washington Post
How Online Dating Works Better Than Offline Dating
WASHINGTON POST – Mar 23 – "The fear that online dating is creating unhealthy habits is being driven more by paranoia than by actual facts, according to Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford who has been conducting a long-running study of online dating. "I don't see in my data any negative repercussions for people who meet partners online. People who meet their partners online are not more likely to break up", he says. Once you're in a relationship with somebody, it doesn't really matter how you met. There's always a fear that comes with a new technology. One of the things he has found out is that people who meet online progress to marriage faster than people who meet offline. Because people can be more selective and there tends to be extensive communication before the first date.
Six Months Since Ashley Madison’s Hack, Nothing Changed
WASHINGTON POST – Jan 15 – People forget and don't demand changes. A report from Pew Research found that people view hacks as part of modern life. Last month, Ashley Madison claimed that ~6.5M people had signed up since the hack. It seems somehow unjust that Ashley Madison should return to business as usual. The site's only visible casualties have been the resignation of CEO Noel Biderman and a handful of yet unresolved lawsuits.
by Caitlin Dewey
See full article at Gensee Country Express
Man Who Founded Dating Site ‘Where White People Meet’ Says He Isn’t A Racist
THE WASHINGTON POST – Jan 4 – Sam Russell suspected his dating startup, Where White People Meet, would ruffle a few Internet feathers. This is Russell's first foray into the online dating industry; he's spent most of his career in auto sales, as the president of Automatic Car Credit. "It's about equal opportunity," Russell explained. "The last thing in the world I am is racist." While an early version of the site has been online since August, the site officially launched last weekend when Russell unveiled a billboard southwest of Salt Lake City.
by Caitlin Dewey
See full article at The Columbus Dispatch
Tinder’s Claim About Creating More Meaningful Matches Is Bull
WASHINGTON POST – Nov 11 – Tinder released an updated version of its matching algorithm. CEO Sean Rad promised that it would revolutionize the quantity of matches. According to Northwestern University's psychologist Eli Finkel, relationship success depends on three things: individual characteristics, quality of interaction and surrounding circumstances. Matching algorithms tend to focus on personality alone. And large-scale studies of married couples have shown that the similarity of partners' personalities accounts for only 0.5% of how happy they are.
Hookup Apps Result Of Gender Imbalance In Dating Market
WASHINGTON POST – Aug 27 – Today's college and post-college hookup culture is a byproduct, not of Tinder or Facebook, but of shifting demographics among the college-educated, as the widening gender gap in college enrollment has created lopsided numbers in the post-college dating pool. The dating pool for straight, millennial, college graduates now has four women for every three men. Dating and mating behavior is influenced by prevailing sex ratios, when there are plenty of marriageable men, dating culture emphasizes courtship and romance, but when gender ratios skew toward women the whole dating culture becomes more sexualized.
Dating Apps Aren’t Obliged To Protect Underage Users
WASHINGTON POST – Aug 6 – Dating apps usually require that their users be above 18 or 21. But Hot Or Not welcomes anyone over 13, the absolute minimum age set by a 1998 law that governs children’s online privacy. Tinder also openly welcomes underage users. 7% of Tinder users are between 13 and 17. Most of these apps do claim to segregate the over-18s from the under-18s. Tinder only shows adult users to other adults. But it is easy to falsely register as a 14-year-old looking to hook up. COPPA, the federal statute that governs how Internet companies interact with kids, only applies to children younger than 14. And under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a site operator can’t be held responsible for the misdeeds of its users. Skout also allows users under 18 but it moderates them relentlessly.
by Caitlin Dewey
See full article at Washington Post
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Bumble, The Dating App Where Women Make The First Move
THE WASHINGTON POST – July 11 – On Bumble, every user can swipe left or right like on Tinder, but once a match is established, only female users can send an initial message to her matches. They can do so in 24h. According to Bumble, ~60% of matches result in a conversation.
To Be Biracial Means More Attention On Dating Sites
WASHINGTON POST – June 29 – A new study presented to the Council on Contemporary Families and published in the American Sociological Review suggests that online daters aren’t always attracted to people who look like themselves. In some instances, multiracial daters are getting a lot of right swipes. Asian-white women get the most attention. Hispanic women preferred men who identified as Hispanic-white above all else. Hispanic men were less selective. Among all groups, men didn’t play racial favorites as much as women did. Except when it comes to black women, who were responded to the least. Biracial profiles without any photos performed about as well as those profiles with photos.
New Dating Apps Are Killing Monogamy
WASHINGTON POST – May 26 - OpenMinded is a new non-monogamous dating site. The site's founder, Brandon Wade, expects swingers, polysexuals and experimental 20-somethings to use his site. "If you look at marriage, it developed as a survival strategy and a means of raising kids," Wade said. "But relationships are no longer a necessary component of life." There's a long history of married men sleeping around, says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and one of the world’s leading relationship researchers. "What is new is that women are now also being more adulterous – and so people are beginning to be more open about it."