There are few things more romantic than sharing the first kiss of the New Year with someone you love (or someone you really, really like), so it’s no surprise that dating sites see a boost in memberships just before the end of the year. According to LimeLife.com, dating sites like OKCupid, Match.com, and eHarmony experience a lift of about 10 – 15% in traffic in the last days of the year.

“New Year’s Eve is such a big deal because it’s a new beginning,” said Whitney Casey, a relationship expert for Match.com, who added that the site’s busiest time runs from the day after Christmas to Valentine’s Day.

We’d love to know what the results are of these membership hikes… do people find a date for New Years? Do they find love? Or does waiting till the last minute (just like procrastinating on anything) just end in disappointment?

According to TVLine, this video is a “leaked” clip of one character’s online dating video profile, and based on the clip, we can bet that this character is unbearably fun to watch. Check it out:

img via brown.edu

Just like a Christmas dinner with family, it seems as though politics are off-limits in the online dating world too!

According to the GlobeandMail, a recent study that looked at a random sample of 2,944 online dating profiles found that people are more likely to admit they are overweight than mention their politics! Surprising, no? Although 17 percent of the daters called their body types “stocky” or having “a few extra pounds,” only 14 percent of the singles stated their political interests, and of those, a whopping 57 percent answered with the very humdrum “middle of the road.”

The percentage got even smaller when it came to women and the less educated. So, what’s the deal? Do people really not care about politics when it comes to finding a mate? Not so – as the study pointed to an early survey which showed that married couples share political opinions more than anything else except religion.

From the researchers:

“At some point in the dating process we somehow filter out people who do not share our political preferences,” one of the study authors said in a release.

“Our best guess is that in the short-run most people want to cast as wide a net as possible when dating. However, in the long-run shared political preferences become a critical foundation of lasting relationships, despite the fact that many Americans are not even interested in politics.”

We at DatePro guess that another reason behind peoples’ shyness is that (as the researchers noted) Americans tend to be less knowledgeable about politics, and don’t want to run the risk of getting into a debate about a subject they are pretty ignorant about. Sure, you might call yourself a liberal or a die-hard republican, but you may not really know the implications behind that if you happened to be on a date with a political science major.

What do you think? Do you mention your politics on dating sites? Or do you think that politics are something to be brought up later in life? Why do you think people steer clear of their politics at first? Let us know in the comments!

Anyway, her article raises an interesting question that is shockingly under-analyzed: what role does Facebook play in modern relationships? We’ve already discussed the fact that it can be the demise of a relationship and that it is now cited in 33% of divorce case hearings, but on the other hand, can it be the grounds for a new relationship?

Tobi’s article talks about the pleasantries of sharing your relationship openly through photos and public postings on peoples’ walls, and the ease of chatting and messaging while in the midst of a busy lifestyle. However, the relationship she uses as an example is between two Christian young adults who met at a music festival and then communicated via Facebook until moving near each other and then getting married two months later. This, of course, is not how most secular relationships work out. People want to know they are sexually compatible and usually live together for months before tying the knot. In such cases as that, carrying on a relationship via Facebook might not be the best way to forge a bond.

We would say that although Facebook permeates every corner of our lives these days, starting a relationships via the social networking site might not give couples the opportunity to create the real in-person bond that a relationships needs. How does online dating differ? Its main purpose is to create offline connections. One could potentially carry on a relationship on Facebook for months just by interacting via commenting and chatting (and that’s where the married folk get in trouble).

What do you think? Is Facebook a viable platform to meet and court a new mate? Or should new relationships take place face-to-face?

In Jenni’s words:

Much like hacking together robots out of cell phones and vacuum cleaners, Tim applies open source and hacker philosophy to marriage as he puts together unexpected pieces in order to build his new life.  LOVE HACKING is a contemporary love story where Mormons and Hindus come together in a journey of faith, technology, and marriage.

Sounds pretty interesting, huh? Check out the preview below, and if you are compelled to, go to her Kickstarter page and donate to help!

via menmarried

In a revealing post at TechCrunch, author Sarah Lacy tells the story of Ibrahim Boakye, a young man in Lagos, Nigeria, and others like him, who have taken to scamming lonely American men out of money by pretending to be women on dating sites.

The article discusses Ibrahim’s innate knack for anything mechanical: fixing appliances, putting together computers, and coding, for example. As the internet began to flourish in his region of Africa, Ibrahim was swept up in the nation’s “419 letter scam” generation and became one of the best coders in the business known as the “Yahoo boys.” Once internet companies made it more difficult for 419 scammers, by restricting mass e-mails, for example, the Yahoo boys had to find a new way to continue the cash flow they had become accustomed to:  thus came online dating scams.

According to Lacy, the elaborate dating schemes usually hone in on single men looking for mail-order brides or married fathers looking for a fling on the side. The Yahoo boys carry on relationships with men they meet on dating sites, up to 6 or 7 at a time, and once the man trusts them enough, begin asking for money. It’s a difficult job, say the scammers, not nearly as quick and easy at the 419 scams of the past. The relationships they forge with these men last months, and the men genuinely fall for the “women” that the Yahoo boys concoct. So what’s the point of this story? Two words: BE. CAREFUL. It’s often implied that those that fall for online dating scams are dumb, lonely, desperate goons. But as the Yahoo boys and scammers like them hone their craft (i.e. hiring models to pose for photos and video), it will undoubtedly become more and more difficult to decipher who is real and who is fake on the internet.

Check these signs if you believe someone you are talking  to on the internet may be scammer, and remember, always go with your gut feeling… if it feels to good to be true, it probably is!

In the recent weeks, Google and Apple have been under intense scrutiny over rumors that their phones have been tracking exactly where their users go. People are supremely concerned that their privacy (in a world where that is fairly limited) has come under attack, this time not by the government, but by the phones they adore so much. According to both companies, there is nothing to worry about, but it is a convenient time to bring up how this relates to online dating…

With location based services such as Meetic and MeetMoi, users are specifically lowering the walls of privacy that online dating has always sought to keep up. The companies’ business plan is simple – help people who frequent the same places meet, and hopefully spark a connection. Most of these companies claim that mobile date services are used far more to “flirt” than to find long term relationships. Like the extremely popular Grindr app, which locates nearby gays and allows them to chat and/or meet up,  it seems as if it’s only a matter of time before these services become mainstream in the straight community.

However, are these services posing a danger to unsuspecting users? Possibly – with the recent sexual assault on a woman by a date she met on Match.com, location-based services are taking measures to ensure that their services don’t make that same situation possible. One app, called FlirtMaps, only hones in on a one-kilometer radius, unless a user decides to reveal their exact coordinates. Other companies are considering only showing where men are on the app, and then allowing women to reveal themselves once they feel comfortable.

The idea is fun, sexy, and progressive, but we hope location-based mobile dating services take into account the weirdos out there, and let’s be honest- there are a lot of them.

Via Bloomberg

We read articles of this nature nearly every week in this business – long-winded posts featuring people trying to explain the nuances of a rather misunderstood business – finding love online. I must say though, this article from the Guardian is by far the most introspective and colorful of the couple dozen I have read in the last couple years in this industry.

Written by technology correspondent Aleks Krotosky, the article discusses the strange notion of our most intimate of connections being mediated on a “cold, logical machine,” a perfect description of the strangeness of meeting someone online. She goes on to cite the work of Julian Dibbell, who wrote about the text-based LambdaMOO from the early 90:

“Well-rounded, colourful sentences start to do the work of big, brown, soulful eyes; too many typos in a character’s description can have about the same effect as dandruff flakes on a black sweater.” (Something tells me he was successful in online dating!)

Citing many other sources other than Dibbell, Krotosky makes a great case for finding love online. Much better, of course, than anyone who actually works in the industry could. Her outside point of view provides an thought-provoking and honest look at a generation in which 1 in 5 marriages are formed online (interestingly enough, she is from the UK, where the percentage is even higher).

Aleks ends her article by asking an important question, about whether or not we as a population are expecting too much from the love we find online. If we’re matched on “39 dimensions of compatibility,” might we expect too much -  that each match is The One?

Read the rest of this great article at The Guardian, and let us know what you think.

Is online dating a great way to be matched honestly and deeply? Or have we turned online dating into a place that gets your hopes up and inevitably lets you down?

Our DatePro profile scanners came across this gem a couple days ago from a guy who apparently wanted to share his, er… “standards” with the women of the site before they approached him:

1. No crazies, gold diggers, uglies, fatties or fugly women or anyone with more than one child: not interested.

2. My parents have been married for more than 30 years, I would expect that you have a similar story.

3. I am not looking to hook up, buy you new shoes or put gas in your car. Just because I’m a man doesn’t mean I’m a piece of meat.

4. I’m pretty selective about who I talk to, so please understand and accept that. If I don’t reply, it’s probably because you didn’t follow rule #1 or I just didn’t think we have much in common.

5. If you have baby-mama drama, poor self-esteem, habits of self-mutilation or a file at the local psych ward, I have a number for you to call and it’s not mine.

6. I can’t stand women that are attention whores.

If you text more than 10 times on our first date then it will be our last. If you made it this far and haven’t called me a jerk yet then congratulations! I’m not trying to be mean I just want to date a woman of high caliber.

WHEW. That was a tough one to even READ, right? Had this been a lady we would call her a Negative Nancy or a Debbie Downer, but since it’s a guy I guess we can call him Train Wreck Tom because EVERYTHING went wrong with this profile. From the start with his immediately demeaning women (“fugly”? REALLY?) of all types, to his last statement making it clear that he isn’t a jerk (WE BEG TO DIFFER), you can tell that this guy has some severe issues and probably has some major dating insecurities.

We are all for a person having high standards for their relationships, but this guy has broken the two most important rules of profile writing over and over again: 1) Don’t be negative, and 2) don’t bring your dating baggage to the forefront. Put out there what you ARE looking for – using positive words like, OH I DON’T KNOW, “like”?

Oddly enough, the only woman who would respond to a profile like this is someone with their OWN major insecurities. With their baggage combined, I would predict a mental nuclear explosion within the first 5 minutes of date #1!

via glamour

Your dating profile headline is a part of your persona that is oft overlooked in the internet dating world. People put tons of thought into lengthy “About Me”s and “Who I’m Looking For”s, and yet leave their virtual first impression as a dull one-liner from a movie or an awkward, “hey, I’m new here!”

The fun bloggers at OnlineBootyCall recognize that your headline can be a make or break situation… someone might not even click on your full profile and find out about the awesomeness that is you, just because you opted to put “hey” as your headline.

Head over to the OBC blog to read more about how to improve your online dating headline.