In real life, we often meet new people through family and friends. Social media already facilitates these connections. If you set your privacy settings on Facebook to be available to “friends of friends” then you’re likely to find folks who hang in similar circles as yourself. It’s one thing to have interests in common or to like the same bands, but if you’re both friends with someone, there’s a common ground that’s more specific than a bunch of data points. You likely share a similar worldview or social class or what-have-you. The same cohort.

Same with Twitter. You can now see the people that you both follow. And it stands to reason that if you both enjoy reading similar tweets, you have some indefinable thread that connects you intellectually or socially.

Compare this with online dating. You’re basically starting at zero when you sign up at an online dating site. You’re isolated from your network, and it’s just you amidst a sea of seekers. You can search for a date using any number of variables, but in the real world, some of the most important variables are the people that you’re close to. This social graph is much more valuable as a tool than demographic info and a list of interests. After all, our friendships and families are often the glue that holds relationships together.

Yes, our primary relationships do not function in a vacuum. Just as it takes a village to raise a family, why isn’t it the case that it takes one to keep two people together? And why only depend on them after you have met someone?

Comment below: What are your thoughts? Do Facebook and Twitter supplant the need for traditional online dating sites?

HerWay believes that when a woman makes the first move, a face-to-face connection is more likely, as women know what they want in a man. Also, she feels more empowered because she is not being bombarded with emails and feeling obligated to respond to men to tell them why she’s not interested.

From the perspective of evolutionary biology, this approach to online dating does make sense – to an extent. After all, it is the female who must be selective, because she is the one who must bear and raise offspring, so she is looking for a mate with the best possible genes. Yet instead of appraising the men who approach her, on HerWay she looks for those traits that she finds most attractive.

It’s not all that different than looking for a sperm donor: Ivy League education, over six feet tall, earns six figures. But unlike at a clinic, she has to take the risk that the guy doesn’t reciprocate the attraction.

I would think that all the usual issues about appearing appealing on an online dating site will still apply for the woman (having the right photo, etc.) but she’s just saving herself a lot of time and headache by having to weed through hundreds of messages and winks.

This site has the potential to bring up some interesting questions when the gender roles are reversed:

• How does a woman go about expressing her interest?
• How does a man let a woman know that he’s not all that interested?
• Given the self-selection process, is this site going to attract assertive women and passive/receptive men?

Comment below: What do you think of this approach to online dating?

The founder of OkCupid recently posted “Why You Should Never Pay for an Online Dating Site” on his blog. And I loved this article. I thought it made so much sense. It uses numbers to explain why Match.com is full of BS and actually doesn’t lead to a lot of relationships or marriages; he argues that people not finding love keeps sites like this in business.

I knew he had a point, so I had to ask myself … Why do I keep paying for online dating?

And I realized that, just like many times a girl wants to be taken to dinner before she takes off her pants, I like that a guy has to pay to show his interest.

Now, at the risk of sounding like a gold-digging narcissistic biatch, let me explain: I’m a cute 24-year-old girl. From what I know about online dating through personal experience and from talking to other guys my age who use it, I know that I have a huge advantage. Most PYTs get tons of winks and e-mails from guys and they often get a little overwhelmed by the attention. But on Match.com, at least guys have to be a paid member to e-mail a girl … which cuts back on the attention slightly.

The other reason I prefer paid sites is because, like many PYTs, I’m kind of sick of guys just trying to hook up with me. I figure that a good way to meet guys who actually want a girlfriend is to use an online dating site. Now, this isn’t always the case – we’ve already seen that Match.com is a little more tailored to booty calls than eHarmony. But I assume that by paying to be on an online dating site, a guy is a little more interested in actually going out with the girl he meets there. Sure, he might see the $30/month fee as cheaper and more efficient than seeking out booty calls at the bar each weekend. But I just worry that if I go on a free site, I’ll get bombarded with e-mails from guys who aren’t seeking anything more than a one-night stand. There are a lot of creeps out there, and for me, the fact that guys have to pay to subscribe has been my filter of choice.

And it’s not like I’m just saying I want a guy who is willing to drop cash. I’m dropping cash to be there, too! But I only drop cash when I have the time and energy to invest in dating, when I really do want to meet someone. And I hope that the guys who whip out their plastic have used the same thought process. Because the only time I can see myself using a free site is if I just want to hit it and quit it. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that guys might feel the same.

Comment below: How do you feel about free online dating sites?

Our friends over at BadOnlineDates want to hear your worst dating stories. And they’re holding a contest with prizes – a $50 gift card, a “Worst Date Ever” T-shirt – to motivate you to participate! All you need to do is register an account with them and blog about it by June 1. Read the full details.

Be sure to tell them we sent you!

We talk about online dating here so much that it seems like the norm. And truthfully, it is becoming much more common. But often, we forget that there are still some people who are entirely, completely, wholeheartedly against it – even if they still choose to partake in it. For every person who, when asked, will tell you nonchalantly that she met her significant other online, there are plenty of others who will stumble their way through a vague story about meeting through friends.

If you haven’t already figured out your answer to the “How did you two meet?” question, now might be the time to start thinking about it – because it will, undoubtedly, come up. The first thing you need to do is sit down with the other party in your relationship and decide together what you want to say. This prevents those awkward moments when people meet your new guy or gal for the first time and one of you blurts out, “Match.com,” while the other stammers, “at a party,” when asked how you got together. Take it from someone who knows – it can be a bit disarming when a family member asks how you met, and your boyfriend shrugs and says, “online,” while you stare at him open-mouthed because you hadn’t even thought about how you’d answer the question yet.

If you are both modern, tech-embracing folks and really take no issue with telling the truth about how you met, at least let each other know this ahead of time, before anyone even asks. If one or both of you isn’t, then figure out if you’ll be able to make yourselves OK with it, or if you need to get your “story” straight before the interrogations start. (Hint: You’ll probably know from the start if your SO is OK with admitting to online dating. If he has “We’ll say we met in a bar” or “Can we pretend we met at Starbucks?” as his dating headline, chances are he won’t be cool with throwing around the fact that you met on the Internet.)

Your friends and family will want to know all the little details about your first rendezvous, so be prepared – but not too prepared. Unless you both have amazing memories and can lie with the ease of con artists, it’s best not to create an elaborate tale. One of you will likely say you met on a Saturday night at a party, and the other will say it was a Friday and a friend introduced you at a bar. Once your story gets twisted like that, people will probably catch on and you’ll have to own up to the truth. Keep it vague, but not so vague that it sounds like something out of a romantic comedy.

So should you or shouldn’t you tell the truth about how you met? Ultimately, it’s up to you and what you both agree on. Just know that intricately woven stories can get tricky to tell over and over again, and that in this day and age especially, honesty is usually the best policy.

Related:

• Overcome your resistance to online dating
• Full Disclosure in Online Dating
• How to Represent Yourself Honestly Online

Fast forward to this millennium, and we have a proliferation of online dating sites, all with profile pages. Some people think they can be casual with regards to what they put in their dating profiles. Wrong. If you are serious about attracting a mate – or just a date – you should craft these things as carefully as you would a resume for a potential employer. Let’s take a look at some common pitfalls and what you can do to avoid them.

Screen names

Some sites have you set up a screen name. Unlike chat rooms, where you are anonymous for as long as you like, your screen name is associated with your picture. Choosing the wrong name can have unfortunate consequences. Try for neutral rather than clever, since you might not be as clever as you think. Names like HarveyWallBanger, Magic Hands and The Tongue not only fail to impress but also set up the impression that you are looking for just one thing. Maybe you are, but do you want to be that obvious?

Pictures

Again, the theme is to set up the best impression you can. Pictures of you shirtless, in your bathing suit – or worse yet, nearly naked – may not impress people as much as you think. Keep your toys out of the pic as well. Pictures of you next to your car, on your motorcycle or in your boat give the impression that your toy is the most important thing in your life. This is hardly the message you want to send out, is it? Likewise for pics that include other people in your life. Keep your best buddy, your child, your coworkers or someone of the opposite sex out of the picture unless you want to send the message that your potential date is going to be playing second fiddle to other people in your life. And don’t use a picture that obviously clips out a person that shared a picture frame with you. It just makes people wonder if they will receive the same treatment from you. Use something current, not your prom picture from ten years ago. People want to see what you look like now. Last but not least, don’t even think of not putting up a picture. It just makes people wonder what you are trying to hide.

Text

Some sites ask you questions, others leave it up to you. Some are a combination of both. Unless you are clever at turning a phrase, just keep it simple. To avoid are things typical of your gender. Most men have an interest in sports, so reinforcing that only makes a woman wonder if she would end up a sports widow … again. For women, phrases like “hanging out with my peeps” just has a guy wondering if you’d dish about the whole date with a bunch of people he doesn’t know. You will of course, but do you really want him to know that?

That should cover the basics, to keep you from bombing out before you start out, but if I missed something, share it with us. What turns you off in online dating profiles?

Related:

• 10 Profile Pics to Never Upload
• 10 Do’s and Don’ts for Picking Your Online Dating Profile Picture
• Should you hire someone to craft your online dating profile and emails?

Online dating sites are in on the trend, too. We no longer have to know what we’re looking for … they’ll tell us. You think it’s creepy when iTunes knows exactly what album you’ll love? Well how creepy is it when a Web site knows what guy you’ll love?

Match.com asks you questions about your interests and what you are looking for in a mate, and then offers recommendations based on that. If you’re not satisfied with your matches, you can simply browse for people whom you might be interested in, even if you aren’t a perfect “match.” Chemistry.com takes it a step further by having you take an intense personality test – and then shows you your perfect match based on your personality. The Match questionnaire is more about daily interests and activities, while Chemistry focuses on the big picture stuff. They want to know who you are … so then they can tell you who you want.

eHarmony is so committed to customer service and doing things for you that they actually … do things for you. Through “guided communication” (which is optional but they strongly recommend it), users don’t e-mail potential love interests directly. They request to begin communication. Then eHarm will start the conversation. I can’t shoot off a message that says, “Hey Jeffrey, noticed you like astrology … me too.” I have to answer eHarmony’s question. “Well, Jeffrey, if my house was burning down, here are the five things I’d save…” And then he has to respond – not with a response to my question, but with an answer to an entirely different question… “I do believe in life after death, Rachel, and here’s why…”

Sure, it’s nice to discuss the “big” stuff, but it seems a little ridiculous to have to let the company guide the conversation for five rounds before you can finally just say, “So what was your major in college?” or “Hey, want to get a drink?” (This might be why eHarmony is less good for looking for booty calls than other dating sites.) Yes, I’m looking for love online, but can’t I do some of the work myself?

New site Pickv.com is all about doing the work for you, simply based on what you like. This site connects you with people based on movies, music, books, TV shows, and food. Seeking out people who like the same things as you do seems inherently narcissistic, like the old SNL skit “Me Harmony” showed. Everyone was matched up with themselves in drag. “At Me Harmony, we guarantee someone who is exactly like you … with different sexual organs.”

The obvious problem with this is that just because someone loves noodle bars as much as you do doesn’t mean you’ll have anything else in common. And we all know that sometimes opposites attract. It also makes first date conversations awkward. Do we have to talk about noodle bars? Do we have to go to a noodle bar?

While it’s flattering that a dating site knows so much about you that they can tell you exactly which guys you want to date, there comes a point when there’s a thrill in discovering a little quirk or bit of chemistry on your own. Sure, you know he likes dogs, but when you realize on your first date that you both have a secret desire to raise a gaggle of pugs, that’s exciting. If the dating site has already told you this, you might wonder if he actually is into you … or if he’s just more turned on by how much you have in common.

While it’s nice to have that kind of commitment from a dating site, we have to wonder if it’s really necessary. It’s like the difference between being set up on a blind date or having your pushy mother come along on the blind date and interrupt every few minutes to say, “Jeffrey! Jeffrey! Tell her about your greatest accomplishment!” Matchmaking is great … but meddling might be going too far.

Related:

• Online Dating and Media Consumption: A Peek at Pickv
• Addicted to Online Dating?
• One Size Does Not Fit All: Choosing the Online Dating Site That’s Best for You

When you sign up, you specify your age, your gender, the gender(s) you’re looking for, your zip, and your favorite movie (with a neat autofill feature!). And then you literally just add your favorite movies, TV shows, books, musical artists and foods. Pickv has a tremendous database of media items (based on the open source Freebase and Wikipedia) so that when you start typing out a fav, the search box will provide you choices.

To complete your profile, you also upload photos, complete some demographic information, and write something about yourself. (The service is definitely in “alpha, because when I clicked on the “Write Something About Yourself” link, I got this page.)

When you click on My Matches, you see a table of profiles, each with username, a photo, and three of their top favorite media items. When you click on a profile, you can browse all their favorite media items. (I guess if you’re both into the Dave Matthews Band and Taco Bell, you’d make a great couple?) Whenever you see a movie, TV show, etc. on someone’s profile that you like, you can add it to your favorites, and it will show up on your profile. (“I forgot that I love Lost, so now I can share that with potential matches!”)

If you’re interested in someone, you can send a Flirt or a Message. or you can Save their profile to your Favorite Users. And when you click on the Favorites tab, you can see the most popular movies, TV shows, etc. among all pickv members. (52 people favorited Fight Club.)

The site is totally free. It looks like they monetize it as an Amazon affiliate. When you browse favorite movies, TV shows, musical artists, books and foods, you can search for them on Amazon. I can see shopping for Lost on Amazon, but when I look at favorite foods, do I really want to browse Amazon for sushi?

The Verdict

I’m a big consumer of media, but I fail to see how I can base a relationship on what I buy. Because that’s really what media is – entertainment produced to get us to open our wallets. Yes, some of it is “art,” but a lot of it is just eye or brain candy that distracts us from our troubles and gives us something to talk about (a common ground, which is all the more difficult to find in this fractured, long tail-serving media landscape).

My wife and I enjoy watching Showtime series on Netflix, but I have to be talked into watching her nature documentaries, and she could care less about Kick-Ass. Does this mean we’re not compatible? Is it grounds for divorce because I prefer the Foo Fighters over Cesaria Evora?

Yes, it is important to have something in common with a potential mate. As pickv’s press release states, “According to a research study at the University of New Hampshire, people who liked the movie The English Patient or the music of James Taylor showed traits of compassion, generosity, devotion and helping.” And I’m sure people who are into horror movies and death metal also have similar personality traits.

I think media choices are a window into one’s values and personality. If, in the real world, you met someone at a small concert or a book reading, you could guess that you two resonated on some level. But I think pickv’s emphasis on media caters to our laziest impulses. If it’s too much work to write an articulate About Me section, then you can just pick your favorite bands and movies.

I’m currently reading a book about frugal living as a response to environmental destruction and the depletion of oil reserves. If you make the choice to enjoy leisure time without turning to Hollywood or the big five record companies to “take care of” you, that doesn’t make you less interesting, but it does make it harder to pin you down based on products you spend your money on.

But then again, I’m sure there’s a dating site for that, too.

Remember to save the long stories, explanations and history for real life meetings. Like with anything on the internet, most users are only likely to read the first couple paragraphs of a profile or watch the first 30 seconds of a personal video. Be thoughtful about what you say up front. Get the important details – like your areas of interest, goals and ambitions – out quickly or they might not ever be read. Don’t think of your profile as you, but rather as a sleek, edited representation of yourself. You need to impress quickly in order to be competitive, even in the online dating world, and you can save the gory details for a real life encounter.

The same rules definitely apply when sending a message or an e-mail to a potential lover, friend or date. Obviously make sure to show an interest in something the person said previously or posted in their profile, but don’t drone on and on about yourself. Each message or e-mail should be thought of as part of a conversation – just say enough so that the conversation can continue, no need to write a novel. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the days of the long love letters is over. Even these days, soldiers overseas look forward to Skype chats with their loved ones as opposed to letters that take weeks to arrive. So there’s no reason for you to send a 12-paragraph e-mail to someone you’re trying to date. Remember, a little bit of mystery goes a long way. Save the intense conversational topics for a first or second date, not a first or second message. Unless you’re a novel writer, your life story will be a lot more interesting coming through a face-to-face chat or broken down into several back and forth messages.

Essentially, the key to the internet is to remember that the shorter, the better – and this rule applies to the online dating world as much as anywhere else. When it comes to personal interactions, people may have longer attention spans, but the medium of the internet substantially shortens people’s attention spans, so limit yourself to a short witty repartee, a quick piece of a conversation saying just enough to leave them wanting more. After all, isn’t the point of flirting online just to make sure you get to test your skills in person?

Related: Online Dating: Schedule to Meet in Person Sooner, Not Later

This situation actually comes up a lot more than people realize, and not just out on the weekends. With online dating becoming the norm, it’s easy to spot people from the site everywhere you go – at the bar, work, the gym, the grocery store – even if your only interaction with them has been viewing their profiles. So what should you do? Say something? Run the other way? Pretend you haven’t seen them? It all depends on the situation and how much interaction you’ve actually had with him or her on the site.

You’ve Checked Out Each Other’s Profiles

This one isn’t really a big deal. Yes, if you recognize each other, it can be awkward, but honestly, it’s similar to recognizing someone from a friend’s Facebook pictures. Sure, you kind of know who the other person is, but you’ve never actually spoken – so ignoring his or her presence isn’t really offensive. Now, if it’s someone you end up seeing on a regular basis – say, you work together – it’s ok to acknowledge that you’ve seen each other on the site. You can even joke around about it. However, from personal experience, I’ll tell you that actually trying to date someone from work that you’ve seen on Match is just asking for awkward.

One of You Has Emailed or Winked at the Other – With No Response

I give you full permission to duck, hide, and/or leave the premises. If he or she has contacted you and you ignored it, then it’s fine to avoid the situation, since it’s a bit like you actually rejected his advances in person. If you winked at her and she never responded, then it’s even more acceptable to head in the other direction if you have a real-life run-in. No one wants to be reminded of his or her rejection – especially when it comes to online dating.

You’ve Both Expressed Interest or Are Planning to Meet

This one is up to you. If you would rather wait for the actual date, then it’s not a big deal to say nothing to the person. After all, if you’re out on the weekend, you do have the excuse that you were worried it wasn’t actually him or that you didn’t see her. But in this case, it’s not that strange to approach someone and meet ahead of time. It might even help you figure out if a date would be a waste of your time. If you recognize someone you see on a regular basis, then it actually might be a little awkward to not say something. If and when you do end up actually meeting, it will be really obvious that both of you were avoiding saying anything before. Plus, if you connected on Match, why haven’t you already connected in real life?

Related posts:

• Why No One Writes You Back on Match: Single Ladies Edition
• Ultimate Smackdown: Match versus eHarmony
• Online Dating: Schedule to Meet in Person Sooner, not Later