Is it better to be out on Facebook?
Sexuality to most of us is a fairly private affair. Many gay people prefer, even today, to stay in the closet. We wondered if it’s easiest to stay in when you’re on your favourite social network. Lesbian Dating Agency commissioned an article on the subject, asking gay women whether they thought it was better to be out on Facebook or keep your sexuality private online. Read the article Coming Out on Facebook here.
Did you known that the last months of the year (Oct, Nov, Dec) are the most popular for women to fall pregnant? That means that July is the most popular month for births, August coming in a runner-up.
It’s speculated that as the colder weather sets in, and our natural hibernating instincts kick in, we stay at home more, go to bed earlier and the conditions are right for frolics! Whereas in the summertime the hot weather keeps us out of doors and partying all night.
It’s also claimed that sperm is produced at lower volumes during the hot summer months, and rallies in the cooler weather. Finally we tend to plan our births to coincide with holidays and time off and good weather. So that’s why the baby-bump is a familiar site in the summer months!
Sing Date logo
There are many strange concepts in the world of dating. Every week a new site is launched with a new angle. There are sites for goths, emos, smokers, non-smokers, greens, farmers, intellectuals, chavs and more. Now a new TV programme aims to combine the world of online dating with the world of X Factor/The Voice.
The contributors upload a clip of themselves singing their favourite song and the picker selects three of the eight people who have uploaded clips. These three then upload, again from home, a clip of themselves singing the second part of a duet that the picker has recorded the first part to. The picker then watches the duets back once they are cut together and choose a final winner to go on the ‘date’ with – this date is in the TV Studios that is set up as a recording studio and they record together the duet.
<sarcasm>We’re sure that your perfect singing partner is your perfect life partner. I mean look at the history of the concept: Ike and Tina Turner, Sonny and Cher, Fleetwood Mac, Abba. The history of pop music is littered with great examples of how love and lungs go together perfectly.</sarcasm>
Still we’ll be watching to see if it works! If you want a try go here: https://princesstv.wufoo.eu/forms/sing-date-application-form/ or call Princess TV on 020 7985 1808. UK only.
If you use Facebook you’re probably familiar with the ubiquitious Tesco Value Valentine’s Cards spoof. Classic stuff. But it seems this year Asda have taken the idea and run with it by producing a real value range of Valentine’s Cards.
Actually we’re not sure if this a joke, a spoof, an ironic dig at Tesco, or real. We suspect it is all of the above in part.
But you know what, we’re not sure if we actually care whether it’s real or not because we love it. Post-modern, ironic, smart, and kinda stylish. Want one next Valentine’s day. Just as long as is it’s not all we get.
Plenty of Twitterings and social media concern is being raised at the new Channel 4 programme called “The Undateables”. The programme follows the lives of people with several different conditions such as epilepsy, cerebral palsy and blindness.
With its deliberately provocative title it’s causing people to ask themselves some uncomfortable questions about our perceptions on who is entitled to love.
“You never see the facially disfigured guy get the girl” says Justin – who has a form of neurofibramatosis that causes a facial “disfigurement” (I used quotation marks there because I am uncomforable with describing a fellow human being as disfigured).
This programme is part of a long “trend” in UK TV where seemingly impossible-to-match people are subject to fly-on-the-wall docs.
There is a legitimate concern over how we perceive people with disabilities and how so often they’re written off when it comes to our own expectations of their love lives.
On the one hand it can be construed as titillation – satisfying the able-bodied population’s curiosity over “the other” – pumping up our smugness.
On the other hand there’s the view that programmes like “Undateables” help society to break down it prejudices and see life from other perspective. And maybe bring love into the lives of some of the contestants too – which can’t be a bad thing.
Judge for yourself – the programme is available to watch again at http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-undateables
Girls Around Me is (or was) an app which could aggregate data from Foursquare, merge it with Facebook and thus provide a real-time image of femeals in your local vicinity. The data was gathered from publicly available sources where the women had posted voluntarily.
So you have a sitch where complete strangers can view and maybe even stalk women from the comfort of their mobiles. Full access to photos was available too.
Whoah! Stalkers charter!
Anyway the app has been withdrawn voluntarily from the iStore because Foursquare revoked the developer’s licence to use their data. Apparently Foursquare’s terms and conditions didn’t allow this kind of data aggregation.
Foursquare has been front and center in the debate on online privacy. Aggregation services are not allowed, thus supposedly preventing the app from being used to show who’s out so you can burgle their house or whatever. More contraversy now from another developer aggregating Foursquare data in ways it wasn’t intended for.
DatingGuide.netDatingGuide.net is a new and exciting project, where we aim to post relevant, informed and informative comment on the dating scene in the UK and around the world.
Since we last blogged on the subject in 2006 the dating marketplace has grown tremendously and changed almost out of all recognition.
Sure the basic features are still there on most dating sites. Features such as signup, search and discovery, private messaging, profiles and photos. These are key features common to all sites. We’ll be unearthing new and innovative features on up-and-coming dating sites as well as the established players.
Some of the main changes have been:
Amid the frenetic change going on in the technology of dating it’s sometimes easy to forget the fact that at heart this game is all about people. Real folks with hopes and dreams and life-plans. Online dating can be a roller-coaster ride for the emotions. We won’t forget about the human side of dating.
We’ll be posting our site reviews here and we won’t hesitate to recommend great new and established sites as well as diss naff ones without fear or favour. Onwards and upwards!
