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 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?

So it’s with a bit of a sigh that I announce Jack Black’s recent venture: an NBC sitcom about online dating. Now, I’d like to hope that it will be honest, funny, and realistic in its handling of a very new subject matter, but my hopes aren’t super high for this one. The synopsis:

The show, which sounds a bit like Dharma & Greg redux, revolves around two sweet but colossally unfit young people who meet online and fall into a sudden, uncontrollable bout of true love, much to the disapproval of most everyone in their lives.

Eh? Maybe? POSSIBLY? It could be amazing and totally blow my expectations out of the water. I’ll let you know when it hits the small screen. Until then, DON’T MESS THIS UP, JACK BLACK. This could be the show that leads millions of singles to the online dating world. Don’t ruin this for us.

Image and story via TVology

A British dating site is coming under fire recently, for supposedly misleading its members into believing they were on an all-vegetarian dating site, when really the site shared a database with a regular dating site full of flesh-eating monsters (or should I say, non-vegetarians).

VeggieDates.com, a site that is admittedly brights green and plastered with photos of people eating salads, claims that they never explicitly stated the site was only for vegetarians, just “healthy singles.” From Gawker and the NY Post:

Veggiedates “acknowledged” that the site shared a common database [with other dating sites], and that “meat eaters comprised a majority of its users.”

Incredibly, the site contends it never implied membership was restricted “only” to vegetarians.

“A member could indicate they were vegetarian or not by ticking a box in their dating profile,” the site said in a statement.

Apparently VeggieDates.com forgot one important detail: any vegetarian who would sign up SPECIFICALLY for a vegetarian dating site, is PROBABLY pretty staunch in their beliefs. Like, throw blood on a lady wearing fur staunch, or ‘freak the hell out if they went on a date with an omnivore’ staunch. Your bad, VeggieDates. Maybe next time use a stock image of someone having a salmon and quinoa dinner if you’re looking for healthy, well-adjusted members.

It’s usually apparent when you find yourself at a new online dating site what their “niche” is – their “schtick” if you will. When you find yourself at Match, you know they are looking to get people married, at OnlineBootyCall, for people to hook up, and at AshleyMadison, for people to cheat on their husbands. However, when I found myself checking out the new dating site OnlineDatingPub.com, I had no clue what the theme was.

It is about the most generic looking front page I’ve seen in my time in this business, and is woefully incomplete – its “blog” has one post, its FAQ directs you to e-mail them, and their video, events, and music pages are silent. Seems like a strange way to launch, doesn’t it? Not to mention that 3/4 of their “members” on the front page don’t even have photos.

The press release surrounding their launch is pretty vanilla as well -

It has many latest features like playing online games and uploading of videos and music by members besides online text and video chatting. The sign up process is very simple and user friendly. Website is fully compatible with mobile devices. It offers speed online dating to its gold members. Members can also post their classified ads for free.

That could have been written about basically ANY WEBSITE ON EARTH.

This review is probably coming off rude, condescending, and judgmental, considering the site only just launched this week. Maybe I just need to give the site time to gain its footing. However, I stand by my opinion that a theme must be found in order for this site to succeed. For crying out loud, the word “pub” is in your name and your website IS PINK?! HAVE THEY EVER EVEN SEEN A PUB?

In the celebrity relationship department, no one is off limits. Not the lowest of low (re: Spencer and Heidi), and not the most perfect of duos. Take Beyonce and Jay-Z, for example. The high-power couple who are so good at keeping a low-profile are expecting their first child together, and while the world rejoiced at the birth of the First Child of Hip Hop Royalty, the gossip mags could not let the story go unblemished.

So it makes sense that today they are reporting that his child with Beyonce is NOT his first. According to RadarOnline, Jay-Z has a secret son in Trinidad that he fathered with model Shenelle Scott. The story was broken by Shenelle’s ex’s father (so it obviously is 95% false) to Star Magazine, and he claims that although the singer/rapper does not see the child, he pays child support and gave Shenelle a million dollars to keep the story under wraps.

The story continues, saying that while Beyonce was livid to hear the news, she is determined to stand by her man.

What do you think? Do you believe Jay-Z has another child? How would you react if your husband had a secret child he never told you about?

According to PR Newswire, IAC -owned Match.com has announced a purchase of 20% stake in the Chinese online matchmaking site Zhenai.com for an undisclosed amount.

Via the source:

Launched in 2005 by CEO Dr. Song Li, Zhenai provides integrated Internet and telephone matchmaking services to Chinese singles looking for long-term relationships. Zhenai is said to boast a user base of over 30 million registered members.

An interesting combination of an online dating site and telephone based matchmaking that connects members to over 1,000 professional matchmakers. “We are thrilled to have the global leader in online dating join us as a strategic investor,” said Zhenai founder and CEO Dr. Li. “We look forward to leveraging their vast knowledge in this arena to continue to innovate and develop new services to meet the growing demand for online personals in China.”

Read more at the press release.