Posts Tagged ‘dating news’
Leaked Dating Idol Contest Teaser
Monday, July 14th, 2008
Problems with Online Dating Services
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008There can be a variety of problems when utilizing online dating sites.
- Some sites expect members to sign up “blind,” meaning that users have no preview of the profiles they will get to see. On other services, some profiles are not actually real people, but “bait” that has been placed there by the site owners to attract new paying members. Some users spam sites with “fake” profiles that are in reality advertisements to other services, such as prostitution, multi-level marketing, or other personals websites. A majority of dating sites keep profiles online for months or even years since the last time the person has logged in, thereby making it seem as though they have more available members than they actually do. Many sites offer the option to sort search results based on activity, however.
- Most members are enticed to join dating websites with free or low-priced “trial” memberships advertised on many other websites. These trial memberships lack many of the features of the full membership, including the ability to contact other members or reply to e-mail from other members. On sites which require credit card information to join at all, these trial memberships may automatically become full memberships at the end of the trial period and charge the full monthly fee, without any additional action from the member, regardless of whether the member has actually used the services or not. For paying members, it is often unclear whether a potential contact has a full subscription and whether he or she will be able to reply at all.
- Some members have expressed complaints about the billing practices of certain dating sites. In some cases, trial memberships that were canceled within the trial period were automatically re-billed even after canceling. To avoid these potential problems, some users have advised using a virtual credit card number which is offered by several credit card companies.
- Even when members’ profiles are “real”, there is still an inherent lack of trust with other members. Many members misrepresent themselves by telling flattering ‘white lies’ about their height, weight, age, or by using old and misleading photos. Members can, of course, ask for an up-to-date photograph before meeting others. Matrimonials Sites are a variant of online dating sites, and these are geared towards meeting people for the purpose of getting married. Gross misrepresentation is less likely on these sites than on ‘casual dating’ sites. Casual dating sites are often geared more towards short term (and implicitly sexual) relationships.
- Online predators find online dating sites especially attractive, because such sites give them an unending supply of new targets of opportunity for Internet fraud. A recent study, led by Dr. Paige Padgett from the University of Texas Health Science Center, found that there was a false degree of safety assumed by women looking for love on the internet, exposing them to stalking, fraud, and sexual violence.[12] Some online dating sites conduct background checks on their members in an attempt to avoid problems of this nature.
- On any given dating site, the sex ratio is commonly unbalanced.
- Disreputable sites such as Quechup may harvest users’ personal information and contacts for use in e-mail spam.
Microsoft Eyeing Online Dating Marketplace
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008A patent filed by Microsoft shows that the company is interested in getting into the online dating service industry. The patent outlines plans for a photo-based online dating services where matches are created by looks. The way it works is that a person uploads a picture of a man or woman that he/she finds attractive. Microsoft’s system then finds matches based on facial elements from the photo. In addition, the system will allow people to view a photograph and rate various aspects of it like the persons hair, nose, mouth, and face dimensions. The ratings are then used to help identify matches based on the users look preferences.
From the patent:
“The image-based search eases the challenge of textually describing physical attributes. The search includes comparing a query image provided by the user to a plurality of stored images of faces stored in a stored image database, and determining a similarity of the query image to the plurality of stored images. One or more resultant images of faces, selected from among the stored images, are displayed to the user based on the determined similarity of the stored images to the query image. The resultant images are displayed based at least in part on one or more facial features.”
Many Men and Women Lie in Their Online Dating Profiles
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008According to a new study, many people tell “little white lies” on their online dating profiles, lying about things like age, height, and weight.
Using a new method that measured the actual difference between profile information and reality, the study revealed that men systematically overestimated their height, while women more commonly underestimated their weight.
“Surprisingly, age-related deception was minimal and did not differ by gender,” said Jeffrey Hancock, an assistant professor of communication at Cornell University and lead author of the study. The study will be published in the April 2007 issue of Proceedings of Computer/Human Interaction.
According to the study:
» About 52.6 percent of the men in the study lied about their height, as did 39 percent of the women.
» Slightly more women lied about their weight (64.1 percent) than did men (60.5 percent).
» When it came to age, 24.3 percent of the men were untruthful, compared with 13.1 percent of the women.
For the study, a “lie” was defined as follows:
» For height, the discrepancy between what was said in the profile and reality had to be greater than half an inch.
» For weight, the deviation between what was said in the profile and reality had to be greater than five pounds.
» For age, there had to be a difference of a year between what was said in the profile and reality.
The results showed that a higher percentage of participants lied about their weight than either their height or age. For nearly two-thirds of the participants the difference between posted weight and actual weight was incorrect by five pounds or more.
Hancock says that social research abounds on how men and women use different strategies for finding love. In general, men seek youth and physical attractiveness in a partner, while women look for men who can provide as well as indicators of social status, such as level of education and career. The pattern of lies — frequent but slight — suggest that deception in online dating profiles is strategic.
“Participants balanced the tension between appearing as attractive as possible, while also being perceived as honest,” said Hancock.
Many online dating services are now changing the way they handle the issue of weight, asking for a general body type (i.e. thin, athletting, a little overweight, etc.) instead of an actual weight. According to Hancock, however, the basic tension of trying to appear as attractive as possible without having a deception detected still applies.