An interesting new player has arrived to the online dating game, and we could see this site being the “Millionaire Matchmaker” of the online dating world. According to the Huffington Post, Blackbook365 is a new dating site launched on November 15th, that the author calls “Match.com meets The Sartorialist meets Gilt Groupe meets a group of Yentas. It’s bespoke online dating with a side of highbrow editorial. Simple, innovative and filling a need in society,” which must mean it’s not for someone like me because I don’t understand 90% of that sentence.

The site, which take an upscale approach to online dating, has launched first in New York City and offers an interesting way to get yourself seen on the site.

 It costs about $340 to be featured for one day on the website (price will vary with location). When compared with the monthly subscription fees for other online dating sites, the price is actually quite reasonable. Considering the Blackbook365 team spends about an hour with each featured individual and a professional photo shoot is part of the deal, it’s quite the steal… especially if matches are made.

Of course, women can create a profile for free, and are able to send “calling cards” to the featured men they see on the page. Blackbook365 also plans to host coktail parties and other events soon, perhaps solidifying their position as the ultimate in elite online dating. Only time will tell!

What do you think? Does the Blackbook365 model appeal to you? Would you pay to have a professional level featured page on a dating site? Let us know in the comments!

Photo and story via HuffingtonPost

Getting back into the dating game after divorcing can be just as difficult as the divorce itself. You feel uncomfortable, nervous, and vulnerable, not to mention rusty at meeting people! However, a new website aims to lessen the pain of post-divorce dating by allowing much of the initial interaction to remain online. Via NewsJunkyJournal:

“When I design a concept for a client, a portion of my inspiration comes from the type of person they are, their personality and style. With NewlyDivorcedDating.com, the message and design of the site has a very personable, genuine and caring nature. In my experience, this tells you a lot about the intentions of who is running the website. The owners of NewlyDivorcedDating.com have an incredible passion to assist divorcees in finding meaningful relationships – to find love. ” Ronnie Roper, Senior Designer at I-Tul.

Seems like a good idea to us – we know that online dating as a never-married can be tough, let ALONE online dating with a fresh wound of divorce on your heart. And by keeping the dating online and casual, we expect many divorced singles to flock to the website, especially if they have children.

We haven’t seen a dating site with this much potential in a long while, and look forward to its success.

I remember once seeing a comedian who talked about the unfortunate name of female genitalia, saying it sounds more like a disease than the body part that gives and receives so much pleasure. That’s exactly what I thought of when I came across this new UK dating site called DoggingDirect.com.

What does that bring to mind for you? To me it sounds like some sort of dog-fighting or beastiality or anal rape or something, when in reality, “dogging” is just the term for frisky couples who like to get in on in public or semi-public places. Perhaps I am just clueless to UK slang, but I feel like there are a hundred other names that could convey a sexy site for those who have a public sex fetish. Then again, the site claims that more people know the term “dogging” than know “blogging” (yeah right).

What do you think? Is doggingdirect a name that fits? Or should people try and pick URLs that don’t sound so, um… vulgar?

Assisted Serendipity is an app that does just that. It monitors your favorite places via the app Foursquare, and whenever the ratio of men to womes “tips” in your favor, you receive a text letting you know. According to its creator, Lenny Rachitsky,

So many successful relationships are based on a serendipitous event that it’s clear that dating sites need to be fostering opportunities for “enhanced meetups” as much as possible. We are coming to rely on matching engines and recommendations engines to expose us to new people and new ideas, but these services cater to what we tell them we (think we) need. It turns out that we we rarely know what we actually need, or what will actually make us happy. We need serendipity to break us out of our bubbles. I see a service like Assisted Serendipity being just the beginning of a trend towards mobile/social/location based services helping you discover new ideas and new people.

We like the idea, but we wonder what kind of people it could attract. Would you really want to meet a guy who only showed up to a bar cause he heard he had a good change bagging a chick? Or a girl who desperately showed up to a bar hoping she was the most attractive of the 3 women inside?

We’re leaning towards “cool” for the Assisted Serendipity mobile app. We’ll just have to try it ourselves first!

What do you think? Would you try Assisted Serendipity, or would you be okay with someone approaching you using it?

I’m always torn on the idea of seniors dating online. On one hand, it’s great, because often times older generations don’t have the same venues to meet other singles as younger adults do. We tend to meet at bars, coffee shops, work, etc, whereas the older crowd doesn’t have as many options unless they want to join a senior singles group, which I can imagine is rather depressing. So online dating sites create a convenient place where they can meet similarly aged and experienced singles who are looking for companionship.

On the other hand, I do think it must be somewhat more dangerous for an older man or woman to trust those that they meet online. They might not understand that there are scammers out there who will turn into the exact person they are looking for, convince them they are meant to be, and then take them for all they are worth before leaving them alone and penniless. Hopefully, with new rules regarding stricter criminal database filtering and predator awareness, older generations will feel safer online and can trust that the people they are talking to are real, genuine singles looking for the same thing they are.

Perhaps the newly launched OurTime.com will fill that role: After the news that a woman was sexually assaulted by a man she met on Match, we’re sure its parent company will work extra hard to ensure all members on its new site are legitimate. We first introduced OurTime when we learned that People Media had acquired the brand back in April, and are now hearing that the launch was as successful as any site could be. According to Newswire, OurTime launched with a database of over a million singles over the age of 50, making it the largest senior dating site online today.

IAC claims that research on their other sites showed some significant differences between the way over-50 singles date compared to their younger counterparts:

• Those surveyed are more interested in companionship and long-term relationships than in marriage, in contrast to younger groups;
• At the same time, women in this group are more traditional in their thinking when it comes to online dating – they prefer to be asked out rather than make the first move; and
• Singles over 50 tend to be considerably happier than their younger counterparts and, on the whole, experience less stress about their personal lives.

It seems like IAC has done their homework, and that, coupled with a hopefully stringent approval process, could open up the doors to make online dating the best way for older singles to meet!

With a tagline like “The best way to find a girlfriend is to already have one,” you might think that Cloud Girlfriend was just  dating advice site featuring attractive, smart girls, dispensing advice via video from a – hold on, writing that idea down.

But no – Cloud Girlfriend is a place for “virtual fake dating,” which sounds REALLY repetitive if you ask me. According to co-founder David Fuhrimen,

“We allow people to define their ideal self, find their perfect girlfriend or boyfriend and connect and interact as if that person existed. It can help in learning how to manage a real relationship, and they then take it into the real world.”

So basically, you create a fake you and flirt with a fake someone else that another person created, like Second Life. So how is this a dating site? According to TechCrunch, the founders believe that the users will eventually reveal their true selves, and a potential match could occur.

Part of me wants to believe that this could work. In high school I was an avid Sims player, and sure, my characters would often have many of the same traits as me, and I would usually have them married to a real life boy I liked. However, the main differences were two huge factors: a) I was not 5’7 with DD boobs, and oh yeah IT WASN’T REAL LIFE. I have heard of people meeting on Second Life and creating fulfilling and lifelong relationships. However, in this case, as a dating site, I’m not sure that people won’t take some MASSIVE liberties with their profiles, so much so that when they “eventually reveal their true selves,” the other person is, well, repulsed.

What do you think? Would you ever date using a dating service like Second Life? Or do you find it just plain weird?

I have long since unsubscribed from most daily deal sites. As time has gone on, the deals have gone from great to good to why the hell would I want 50% off Scorpions women’s football? (not kidding). I even heard a rumor that one small company in New York went out of business because they underestimated the response from a Groupon. However, the daily deal e-mail idea has spawned and spread to other arenas, including online dating!

According to Mashable, Inbox Cupid is a new dating site which sends its users a potential match every day. Its members sign up and specify what they’re looking for (man seeks woman, etc), and then they can just sit back and let the dating site send them potential matches everyday. They can choose then to hit “Inbox Me,” to send the single guy or gal a message (and it’s then that InboxCupid charges them $1, not bad!).

The more adventurous option, of course, is to sign up to be a featured dater, whose profile arrives in the other users inboxes. It’s then that you fill out a questionnaire, which asks fun, interesting, and sometimes sexy questions so that other members can get a good look at your personality.

InboxCupid is currently operating in the early stages and is only available in Minneapolis. Its creator, Kareem Ahmed, says that he looks forward to adding more cities as soon as interest (specifically 1000 members) rises in other areas.

What do you think? Would you be interested in a daily match website?

People Media, the group behind the popular SeniorPeopleMeet and SeniorsMeet.com, have a new brand called OurTime.com, which claims it is the place for singles over 50 to meet based on their idea of a good time, whether they’re looking for marriage, friendship, or “something in between.”

Furthermore, the group says that when you join OurTime, your profile will automatically be shown on other  People Media  network sites for no additional charge. We wonder if the older singles who join the site will fully understand what this means for their privacy.

Would you want your profile shown on various sites, or would you rather it only be on the one you initially signed up for?

img @ studioaccessballroom.com

Every time I think that there are absolutely no more possible niche dating sites left, something comes along and reminds me that the universe, and dating sites by association, are infinite. This one, however, might get more of a foothold than other dating sites — YouAndMeArePure.com, a site that connects virgins to other virgins, so that they don’t have to worry about meeting someone on a mainstream site and then having to awkwardly admit that they’ve never slept with anyone.

In theory, the members of the site could be open about their belief systems and reasons for remaining chaste until marriage, however, we see a few issues in the concept:

a) The site name is grammatically incorrect.

b) Since virginity tests happen to be illegal in most countries, nothing prevents wolves (or cougars) in sheep’s clothing from infiltrating the herd.

c) They have a SecondLife “Virgin Park,” which if you ask us, is basically some combination of a Dateline NBC special and a creepy 1 AM Cinemax soft core flick.

Check out the site at YouAndMeArePure.com, or read the full article at TheHuffingtonPost.

Matchmaker.com is a mature site for serious singles aged 35+,  ready to be involved in a long term relationship. The site itself has been around since 1996, but has its roots all the way back to 1986, when it was a bulletin board system! Talk about experience in the dating industry, huh?

Like Date.com, it offers a dating toolbar so you will always be up to date on your matches, even if you aren’t directly on the page. It uses keywords searches, which are very important when you are searching for people with similar hobbies and principles, and offers a paid option to have your profile show up higher on search results. If you are serious about finding love, this is the feature for you!

Matchmaker.com has put in the hours to show that they are reliable and trustworthy. If you are a 35+ single looking to take the next step in the dating world, check out Matchmaker.com and let them help you find The One!