According to EntertainmentWise, she’s gotten some advice on how to get back in the dating game from her pal Jennifer Aniston – by online dating! Sources say Aniston had used online dating to get her groove back after her very public break ups (with Brad Pitt and Vince Vaughn, we imagine), and suggested that Moore do the same. We’re sure that Moore would have a fantastic time using online dating and would have no problem getting the pick of the litter!

However, it may be unnecessary, as the mag also claims Demi might already be dating a California National Guard member named Blake Corl-Baietti. We’ll let you know if he hear any rumors of Demi joining the online dating game!

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:

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

Of the dozens of podcasts, radio shows, and call in TV shows on the air today, it comes a surprise to me that no advice show has tackled the confusing world of online dating. Yet the first one (that I’ve heard of) is here in the form of an internet radio show by online dating site PlanetLoveMatch, who have begun to broadcast their new talk show PlanetLoveMatch Radio, from their website and LATalkLive.com every Thursday night from 7 to 9 pm.

The show features two hosts, Josh and Jen, who share their own dating stories and mishaps each week for their listeners, who will likely be young(ish) singles interested in the world of online dating. PlanetLoveMatch Radio will also regular guests, from comedians to actors and matchmakers who will share anecdotes and advice on love, sex, dating and relationships. While entertaining and light-hearted, the show also aims to advise its listeners on safety and privacy in online dating, two aspects that have been dangers to online daters in the past.

We wish PlanetLoveMatch radio luck, although we sure wish we’d thought of it first… ;)

Story via DigitalJournal

img via allny

This is one of those stories that is deserving of the Twitter trend “#SMH,” or shaking my head – that incredulous feeling you get that leaves you so shocked and appalled you can only shake your head in disbelief. According to Business Insider, a young woman in Manhattan who was having a hard time keeping up with her bills decided to use a popular dating site to her advantage: by letting men take her on dates and buy her dinner.

According to the article, her $45k salary wasn’t cutting it and it became nearly impossible to pay her credit card bills and nearly $1500 a month rent in the Murray Hill section of the city. Instead of say, downgrading her apartment to one that didn’t cost almost half her monthly income, she decided to sign up for the dating site Match.com and began letting men take her out for dinner. A lot.

The 23-year-old singleton “started eating out five nights a week using a rotation of different guys she met through the dating site,” with a simple rule of never going on more than 5 dates with the guys. Then, we presume, she dumped them like last week’s fashions and found new gentleman callers to feed her stomach (and clearly, her ego).

We can’t help but feel an overwhelming amount of rage for a woman who specifically went on a dating site to lead men on. While many of the guys she met probably felt strong feelings for her, and had hopes that the dating would progress to something more, this entitled you-know-what was going home with a full stomach and a cold cold heart.

We sure hope that wherever she is, she’s feeling at least a tinge of guilt for abusing the system so viciously. And to any other women considering this evil tactic – #SMH.

It is one of online dating’s biggest pitfalls that it is unable to 100% detect those heartless individuals who join dating sites for the sole purpose of scamming unsuspecting singles out of money. For the most part, dating site staff only have “warning signs” and “red flags” that help them weed out scammers, but of course, those aren’t fool proof. Especially as those scammers become smarter and more sneaky, patrolling becomes more and more difficult.

So brings us to the sad story (that we’ve heard so many times before), of a widow Esther Ortiz-Rodeghero, who joined an online dating site to try and find love after her husband passed away. She met a man who claimed to be named Wayne Jackson, a soldier and widower who was, like Esther, looking for a new love in a lonely world. The two e-mailed nearly every day and talked of spending their lives together. Then, things took a nosedive. Via ABC News:

 “Wayne” began asking for money – first, a few hundred dollars to help his son, then thousands to launch a business, one he said the two of them would share and run together.

Ortiz-Rodeghero complied, sending money all over the world, she told ABC.

She cleaned out her personal savings, her husband’s life insurance and 401K. When she ran out of cash, she took out loans.

It wasn’t until Ortiz-Rodeghero sent her online companion money for a plane ticket to come see her in Castle Rock, Colo., and he never showed up, that she realized she was the victim of a scam.

This sad story ended with Ortiz-Rodeghero out $500,000 and a newfound promise to never use online dating again. Unfortunately, had she been more careful – not let her emotions get in the way of common sense, she may have bypassed this scammer and found true love online. For those like Esther, we hope they will remember the cardinal rule of online dating: NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, give money to someone you’ve only met online (and be very discerning even if you’ve met in person). You don’t want to be left with nothing because you had stars in yours eyes.

For more tips for ensuring you don’t get scammed online, check out some tips here.

img via inquisitr

We all remember where we were when a 25-year-old Ashton and 40-year-old Demi first got together… well, we all remember how we felt then, at least. Probably a mix of “you go girl!” and “really?!” and “PUBLICITY STUUUUNT!” However, as their relationship progressed, we all started to think, huh, maybe they really do like each other. And then they got married, and then they got boring, and then we all forgot about them.

Fast forward six years, and reports surfaced that on the eve of their sixth wedding anniversary, Ashton had a fling with a 22-year-old woman in Las Vegas named Sara Leal. Kutcher denied the incident, but rumors of a split began swirling, ending with an announcement by Demi Moore yesterday that indeed, the two would divorce.

The 49-year-old Moore says she’s ending her marriage “with great sadness and a heavy heart.”

Demi says, “as a woman, a mother, and a wife, certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life.”

The tone of the announcement seems to confirm that infidelity was indeed the cause of the split, although of course we can’t be sure until she gets interviewed by Vogue or something in the coming months. We at DatePro are left wondering if the split solidifies the idea that cougar/cub relationships are better left as casual, fun flings, and not attempts at anything long term, or if, as always, this is one case that not be called the rule.

What do you think? Is infidelity bound to happen in relationships where the age difference is so stark? Or was this relationship, like any, its own entity that cannot be used to judge the others? Let us know in the comments!

We all know that when making an online dating profile, or heck, even just making a Facebook profile, we tend to use the most attractive photos of ourselves we can find. Why wouldn’t we? However, according to a new study, men who do this with their dating profiles may be doing it in vain, because some research claims women can pick out an attractive man just based on how he describes himself in his written profile!

Psychologist and Villanova University Associate Professor Rebecca J. Brand asked 50 women to judge 100 online dating profiles for men between the ages of 22 and 25 from an online dating site. The catch? The women were shown the men’s photos and written profiles separately, then asked to judge the profile’s author or the man in the photo on traits like confidence, sense of humor, masculinity and overall attractiveness.

Interestingly, the women didn’t even need the photos to figure out who were the attractive guys! The researchers believe this has to do with the amount of confidence that attractive men have over average-looking guys. This confidence, the researchers say, may be the trait that draws women to them in the first place!

However, it leads me to wonder which came first: the confidence or the looks? Are women drawn to looks that inspire confidence, or vice versa? The most likely answer is that our society values looks over any other personality trait and therefore those who are good-looking find it easier to be confident in themselves, but I do wonder if it’s possible to have enough confidence that women are, erm… “tricked” into believing you are better looking than you are!

What do you think? Are attractive people just more confident, naturally? Or can enough confidence be the attractive trait in itself?

via shutterstock

I don’t know about you, but I am one of those people who gets a little, erm, irritated when my dinner or night-out companions are constantly on their phones. It makes me feel like I’m watching someone with so little attention span or patience that they can’t wait to get home to take care of internet business. However, the amount of people that feel such a connection to their smart phones is growing, as a recent poll showed that 80% of singles prefer using mobile dating apps over websites.

The 50,000 person poll by SnapInteractive (the minds behind AreYouInterested.com) showed that 4 out of 5 singles prefer mobile apps over strictly-computer based sites like eHarmony or Match.com. Pioneered by the gay hook-up app Grindr, many other companies are making the jump from online platforms to mobile apps.

Via DigitalTrends:

According to a recent article in the New York Times, mobile dating is becoming the preferred method to meeting potential dates among young people because the speed at which meetings occur is much faster than a traditional online dating site. Location is also used when finding a potential match and users of mobile dating applications are often scanning through multiple profiles to locate someone that’s both attractive and nearby

Luckily, most mobile dating apps are taking into consideration both the privacy and safety of this users, by blocking phone numbers and allowing members to message anonymously until both parties agree to meet. Although we were a bit apprehensive during the birth of mobile dating apps, we only hope that it brings more singles into the world of online dating… in a safe, healthy, and private way.

What do you think? Would you prefer to use a mobile dating app over a traditional dating site? Or do you feel that the older way is safer and more reliable?