I haven't really paid much attention to the concept before, but as the nature of dating changes under the pressure of technology in society, virtual dating seems to be gaining more of a foothold.

Virtual dating caught my attention when I found out that the dating site Weopia has begun offering virtual dating as an intermediate step between finding someone on the site and going out on a flesh-and-blood date.

What makes Weopia different from emailing or IMing before a first date is how it guides you through the virtual date, helping you to get to know each other. There are videos, conversation ideas, and questions to talk about, all of which you can experience together using voice and text chat (all done via Skype). If a date's going well, you can talk and discuss plans for a real-life, offline date. If it's going poorly, one click ends the date.

VentureBeat describes the experiences as eHarmony meets World of Warcraft.

Of course, virtual worlds have always had this kind of relationship component. Second Life's relationship component has made news on a few occasions. Back in 2008 a guy in the UK left his wife for a woman he met in Second Life (Daily Mail, CNN) and in 2009 another woman in the UK asked for a divorce after catching her husband in a gay affair in Second Life (H Post).

And then there are sites (like IMVU) where virtual dating seems to be the only point.

Weopia's move to offer virtual dating as a step toward physical world dating simple serves to further blur the line between virtual worlds and the flesh-and-blood world. Whether that's good or bad I'll leave to my reads...

© tobias.munich


You can say the way of Dating in the United States has changed since I was a boy. Of course, when I was a boy, Jimmy Carter was President. But change is picking up speed...

High school is still high school. But once you leave high school and enter the grown up world, the way you meet potential dating partners has changed. A lot.

It's clear that the standard approach to dating has become the dating website. You put up your profile at an Internet site and wait. You look at other people's profiles and maybe start a conversation.

Picking a dating site to put yourself on can be a chore. There are sites that change for their services and sites that are free. There are sites where you can find a partner for life and sites where you can find a date for next Friday. There are sites where you can meet a nice Presbyterian doctor and sites where you can meet dyslexic redheads with Irish ancestry. You get the idea.

I said that change is speeding up. The basic dating web site has been around for a while. But now you can use your Blackberry or your iPhone to find a date. You can even go to town without a date and use Facebook or Twitter's geotagging functions to find someone who's not to far away and interesting in finding a date. I don't think I could dress up and take my Droid into town in hopes of finding a date. But it works for some people...

Youggle.com Launches The Dating Weblog

PRWEB -- Mar 29 -- Youggle.comhas launched; includes a virtual speaking host which guides users though the total sign up stage. Free 1 month introductory full membership trial period. PRESS RELEASE @ PR WEB Mark Brooks: Fill in the blanks... cat in xxxx's chance. First there was Google, then Youggle.com. Gotta love it. "I'll bet Google is drafting the lawsuit documents as we speak." (Thanks to Glenn Millar for the heads up on this one) Youggle's [...] Read More


EasyDate Launches BeNaughty.com The Dating Weblog

PRESS RELEASE - July 20 - July 20 - EasyDate, announces a new web site for flirty people around the world. www.benaughty.com is now live, giving singles the opportunity to chat, flirt and meet like-minded people who find long-term oriented sites too formal and marriage-oriented. All visitors can join EasyDate's new website for free. This site accepts international sign-ups from all singles. FULL ARTICLE @ PR INSIDEMark Brooks: The updated [...] Read More


Mowave Launches GAY.COM Mobile on O2 UK The Dating Weblog

PR WEB -- Oct 10 -- Mobile content provider Mowave announces the launch of the GAY.COMcommunity mobile portal on 02's upcoming i-mode content menu in the UK, adding to the GAY.COM services Mowave currently operates on Vodafone Live! and Orange. The combined three services will reach an estimated 75% of UK wireless content consumers; making the GAY.COM mobile brand the largest combined online and mobile gay content service in the country. Mowave intends to launch [...] Read More


MyNuMo Launches Promotional Tool The Mobile Technology Weblog

MyNuMo, a mobile content community site that allows members to post and sell their own mobile content online, has launched a promotional tool called NuMoMatic. The tool automatically creates an embeddable Flash object (shown here is NuMoMatic showing my content) that displays a member's content, and includes links back so viewers can buy the content from sites other than MyNuMo. I heard about this launch a few days ago but haven't [...] Read More


Orange Pixel Launches YoKiYo! The Mobile Technology Weblog

Orange Pixel have announced the launch of YoKiYo!, a new platform puzzle game for mobile handsets.Princess LiYu needs the help of Yo Ki-Yo! and guess who can help him? Because of a little problem with maintenance, a wall to the treasure room of princess LiYu received some damage and left a big hole in the wall. Now many of the magic coins have been scattered through out the Magic kingdom, and they [...] Read More

© Elsie esq.


A number of sources (Mashable, Reuters, The San Francisco Chronicle) are reporting that eHarmony has settled (yet again) in a California lawsuit claiming anti-Gay descrimination at its dating website.

eHarmony first settled a class action lawsuit on the Gay issue in California in 2008 by agreeing to run a dating website for Gays. It called the site Compatable Partners. But the site was never acknowledged at or linked to from the heterosexual eHarmony site. And bisexuals had to pay subscriber fees at both sites if they wanted to look for both heterosexual and same-sex relationships. So a second class action suit was filed.

The settlement still has to be approved by a judge. That could happen on February 3rd. If the judge approves the settlement, eHarmony will link its Gay and its heterosexual dating sites. Gays will have access to both sites for one fee and eHarmony will pay out about half a million dollars to the 150 or so plantiffs in the suit. eHarmony will admit no wrong doing or liability under the settlement.

It seems like half the blogosphere has commented on this study by OkCupid on what makes a good profile picture. But I guess I'll point it out anyway, just in case you've been living in a cave for the last few days...

OkCupid is a site run by a bunch of Ivy League geeks who like to crunch numbers and mine data. They look at profiel success and then analyze the profile picture. Was it taken indoors or outdoors? Does it make eye contact? Does it show any skin? The study seems to show that the answer is different for men than for women.