No sooner has dating land shed its undesirable cloak, however, than matchmaking sites are finding themselves coming under attack from some corners of the scientific world on two counts.

At the recent iDate Miami conference – the first of three meetings by the giants of online dating scheduled for this year – there was a heated panel discussion surrounding the merits of calculations and algorithms that were used to select potential partners based on information provided by the individual single when he/she signs up.

The doubt has been cast upon the relevance of how this information is used to couple the dating site members, especially when the volumes of singles looking to fall in love online are so immense. According to Julie Spira in a recent article she wrote for the Huffington Post, everyone now knows a couple who got together via on online dating site or another.

Furthermore, she went on to add in the article that, whilst attending a recent Super Bowl bash, two of the three couples she became engaged with were together thanks to two of the more niche dating sites, namely Jdate and Fitness Singles.

The crux of the current debate, as far as one can make out, is that the professors are now viewing matchmaking sites, who present a range of probable complimentary suitors to any given single based on the information they enter on their hit-list requirement, as a supermarket sweep rather than a way to find ‘the one’, which is how it all began. To be fair, I don’t think anyone in their wildest dreams, when dating sites started to go mainstream, ever hoped for a global $2bn turnover, but that’s where we are with it, now.

Of course, there is objection from those who claim to have dreamt up the strings of logic to produce the matches, both from the CEO’s trying to deflect harm from their brand and the dating site scientists who have achieved prominence on the back of algorithmic love.

There’s an absolute ton of stuff on this topic, so join me for the rest of the week when we’ll be dissecting the frogging life out of all the mumbo jumbo and see what it means for you, the dater.

Don’t know about you, but at the drop of this news you can almost hear the post-stigmata party being prematurely ended with a solitary parp of a trumpet. And hear that one technician laughing gutsily alone, the news not yet filtered through to her, as the scientists, still in their white coats , turn silently as one before being ushered back below ground into a sterile environment to start recoding the dating site so that people can have the same experience on their Smartphone as they do on a static online dating site. The laughter finally stops.

These CEOs will claim a small victory, though. And so they should – it has taken years to cast off the cloak it adorned at the public’s behest. Now more than ever, with ten percent of US citizens hitting dating sites every month, the impact of the medium they have developed patiently in their underground laboratories has changed the way the world dates forever.

CNBC in the US recently hosted Love at first byte – an insider view into the unseen world of online dating. What they discovered was not, as one would expect, a world of fluffy pink pillows and love hearts adorning every wall. Contrarily, the image portrayed envisions a chaotic place, a world of psychologists’ couches, main-frame computers, blackboards with lengthy equations chalked onto the slate, forever being rubbed out and perfected. And IT guys with a hand on the socket, awaiting the ‘turn in off and on again’ request that’s a short moment away.  Stephen King, stretched on one of the couches, soaking it all in before he turns the scenaro into another million+ best-seller.

It is these armies of boffins and IT technicians that have brought the world of online dating to the fore, piggybacking on the rise of hyper-connectivity in a world where everyone has at least two social media accounts, accessible from Android, Blackberry and iOS platforms. And now that the men in white coats have finally cracked it, brought their paymasters that tag of ‘social acceptance’ to the niche, technology has outpaced them.

If you can download an app, and there are many that, utilising GPS, can even ping you whilst you’re out and about to let you know that someone else from your dating site is in the vicinity, carrying a hand-held device or not having to put aside time that eats into your night to find someone is a far more productive way for the single masses to date than the alternative.

The party’s over for the time being for the dating site scientists, but you can bet that they’ll be back with something soon that’ll change the game, again. With $2bn – and growing – up for grabs, there’s a lot at stake for the men in the little white coats.

If you don’t have a lot of success dating it may not be down to all of the things you beat yourself up about after the event. Being sociable is a skill that only gets honed with practise. If you’ve met another single on your dating site and you know you ‘don’t get out much’, do something about it. Look to see what your friends are up to, get down to the café or bar just to get used to being in a social environment and participate.

People who spend a lot of time online dating and don’t have a great deal of success on their first date tend to read a lot about how to make dating a success (Et voilà – bon soir!). My guess is that, next to the laptop is a note book with about 200 bullet points that you believe you need to get through on your first date, if you’ve taken all of the online advice to heart.

Yes, the first date is about finding out about your potential partner but it is not an inquisition. Don’t forget, they want to find out about you, too. Don’t feel like you’re putting them under pressure – you’ll not only have them leaving for the exit, but that (hopefully) school ma’am inquisitor is not who you really are, is it? Get a general overview of what you want to find out, get the deal-breakers out of the way (date two is pointless, otherwise) and then just let the rest of it flow.

When the time does come around for you to impart a little of who you are, don’t be shy! Honesty is the best policy and if there’s stuff you like doing, let your partner know about it. But not heavy, personal information. That will have to wait until the relationship can support it and will have your partner making excuses if you lay it down too thickly on the first date. And that definitely includes exes!

Whilst you’ve been reading about other’s successes dating, you will no doubt have taken in several accounts of singles who have been remarkably proficient and go on first dates time and again, just because they love doing it. Whatever you do, do not start trying to measure up to those standards. Flirtatious people attract that lifestyle and it comes naturally to them. It comes back to what you want from the date, no one else.

Plan ahead, too. Choose an activity and location that’s a little off-beat. Off beat, not off the beaten track! Yes, make it quirky, that will be an ice breaker in itself. But stay close to where you’re familiar for the first few dates until you’re sure your partner’s trustworthy and, for safety’s sake, don’t invite them home for the same reasons until you’re absolutely sure of their integrity. Now, go get ‘em, tiger. And let your heart do the talking!

But put that same person in front of a web-cam or in a real, live date situation, and it’s as if their brain’s hit the vocal cord mute button. This is often an involuntary reaction, perhaps brought on by the pressure they feel to impress, they’re taken out of their comfort zone so their confidence is undermined or are just too darned scared of saying the wrong thing.

This happens to a lot of people (writers, mainly!); away from the safe distance that sets them at ease and lets (un)natural conversation flood out when rattling away on their dating site on a date, they are desperate in this induced silence to find that spark that ignites once they’ve logged on and settled into their dating persona.

With every passing moment they feel the pressure building more – what is wrong with them? Why can’t they find the words that got them to this stage, the first date, in the first place? Soon, that is their only goal, to not come across as shy or ignorant – inside, they are cringing and praying that the date is going well, although focus has been lost and all hope of regaining some sort of control of the situation, unless the other party takes charge, has disappeared on this occasion.

Will they get a second chance? Their brain is screaming to sort a second date, time to gather themselves and ‘do better next time; but that dating site fluency has deserted them and they cannot even ask for the opportunity, that they doubt will come about anyway. Another chance blown, and they’ll be left to rue the consequences, quite vociferously through their finger-tips, when they write the world what a schmuck they were on ‘that date’ they’d been building up to for an age.

But will it be any better next time around? They sigh, think probably not, then log back on to their dating site and start the whole process over again.

Does that story ring any bells?  Don’t fear – help is at hand. In the next article, we’ll look at how planning, mental clarity and not assuming anything can help you overcome this very real experience that many, many singles experience on their first date.

The exact figures (for 2009/2010) for those categories, for those who like to see the statistics in black and white, are as follows:
• 8% of married couples independently surveyed stated that they’d met in the boozer
• 4% had met whilst they were at church – that definitely rules the UK being part of the survey, then, as I doubt 4% of the population, let alone married couples, regularly attend the place of worship of their faith
• 17% met whilst online dating

Okay, all studies can prove whatever you want them to; the criteria for this particular study of 7,000 US citizens was that they were 18+ and had been married in the last five years, but there may well have been other qualifying criteria that’s not detailed. You’ve probably had a go at taking part in online surveys yourself.

For example, most surveys have qualifying questions before you can take part, such as age, income, sex – you know the drill. How often have you filled in the qualifying criteria and the next screen has said something along the lines of: “Sorry, but we have all of the qualifying information from your sector that we need.”

That’s pure BS. What it should say is: “Sorry, but your ‘band’ is unlikely to deliver the answers the people paying us a lot of money to host this survey are looking for and if we don’t deliver, they won’t get the ‘evidence’ they need, so won’t use us again. You’re out of here!”

No doubt there is a ‘qualifying’ question, such as ‘have you ever used paid dating sites?’, for this type of survey.  If your answer was in the affirmative, you’re past the gatekeeper; if negatory, the bouncer is apt to decline your entry with a ‘not tonight, sonny’.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, the answers of the dating site survey strongly suggest that meeting your future spouse is still a lot more likely through someone in your family or a friend (27%) or at work (or for childhood sweethearts, school) 38%. That last statistic is quite huge, actually.

Based on that assumption, for every ten married people you know at work, (almost) four of them met their husband/wife in a similar work situation. Well, guys and gals, if you’re single and have a job (in the UK, for youngsters using online dating as a way to meet their first serious partner, the former is definitely more guaranteed than being in employment, sad as is the case), it seems well worth putting your glad rags on to go to the office if you’re looking for a long-term relationship.

So many questions, but all worth asking. Especially as it has come to light that, even though the fairer sex trawl dating profile after dating profile on both paid and free dating sites alike, looking for the photo of their dream boat, that fella in your dreams represents the missing emotional link you yearn, yet are beginning to develop with an alpha male, rather than any physical attraction or need you may think you have. Although that’s not to say the physical craving isn’t intensified by this chemical courtship. Mmm, definitely one to ‘discuss:‘.

This is how the theory goes….

…you’re in the office at work, and there’s a guy who emits chemical signals, willy-nilly; you may not even be aware your feminine receptors are picking them up, but your brain is forming an attraction to him. This is something that not even the chemistry-type dating sites can put into their algorithms for you over the Internet.

It is then your psyche that is falling in love with this chappie, i.e. the angel who later appears in your dreams; he probably looks nothing like the guy at work’s profile, but the dream man is your brain’s interpretation of your true chemical match. The more your angel appeals to you romantically, the stronger the natural connection between your two personalities and sub-conscious physical make-up to suggest you’d be a successful couple.

The sad thing is, unless you can fine-tune your receptors or take note of any subtle emotional shift you feel when you’re in a man’s presence, you may never know who this perfect match for you is. If you’re having these types of dreams, please don’t go around the office tomorrow sniffing every man who comes near you – if your dream man sees you doing this, you may never get to grips with the physical aspect of dating.

To confuse the issue, it is perceived that the reaction of a man’s inherent chemicals with his choice of cologne may produce even stronger results than either he or his unwitting victim pick up on in a physical sense. Yet his psyche also gets stronger as it comes into the proximity and connects with the female chemicals that have the same affect on him, making the combined effect, to the naked eye at least, even more powerful.

Dating sites can offer a lot of ways for you to meet ‘the one’, but until you get up close and personal and let your bodies own receptors do their bit, the relationship could be missing something so corporeal, it will never fulfil the part of you that reacts to pure, base chemistry. It has been suggested that this could be the reason why there are so many affairs at work and that almost four out of ten US citizens married in the last five years met either at work or back in school.

If you’re looking for 100% satisfaction, close your eyes and let nature pick that man of your dreams for you. Psyche!

For the UK dating sites, we have the facility of asking our online partners to obtain an online passport through Trusted Faces / the Post Office®. A simplistic solution, whereby one creates an account with trusted faces, goes in person to the Post Office® to have their real face verified against the permanent photo they post on their Trusted Faces site and confirm the registration.  Job done.

Assuming that your dating site profile photograph looks something like your Trusted Faces photo, you can issue the interested party with a one-off ‘ticket’ to view the PO verified pic to end any argument. There is no worry about that interested party passing the ticket on to others as it expires once it has been used.

You may think that this is all a bit of a palaver and that there are not enough shady characters hiding beyond pictures of (always) beautiful people whose identity they have stolen from somewhere on the internet to bother. The following dating site secrets revealed by Kevin Connell may make you think otherwise:

1. Ten percent, statistically, of sex offenders use dating sites to source their victims; similarly, ten percent of all dating site profiles have been created by such a deviant.
2. Continuing with the ten percent theme, that’s the figure attributed to genuine, honest dating site profiles; nine out of ten people lie from everything from their physical make up to their criminal past.
3. Even as an option, rather than a compulsory measure, dating site owners are unwilling to insert a background check identification procedure, although there are many available. Membership numbers mean so much that they would rather jeopardise all of them than risk putting off a few by putting them through this extra, essential process.  We had one guy, John Syms, comment on our Online passport article stating that if these measures were implemented, he would use dating sites – I’m sure many more would feel the same and surpass the volumes choosing not to sign up because of the extra step!

There are millions of false dating profiles spattered across dating land, created by people who do not want their true identity revealed for a whole host of reasons, some legal, most not.

Laws that are in place are weak and are easily navigable by a determined criminal. Dating sites are fantastic places to meet people, to which hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers will testify. Just make sure when you meet your perfect partner online, they are indeed who they say they are.

The US criminal department’s cause for concern comes off the back of recent findings concerning the amount of fraudulent dating site profiles currently populating the world’s cyberspace chat rooms, forums and dating sites – the figures are just, well, scary. Yet still dating sites the world over, who have full exposure to the extent that scammers, perverts and sexual deviants are posing as decent love seekers, are just not willing to provide 100% full identity and background checks for its existing membership and new sign-ups in case it prevents genuine people looking for love online from registering to use their facilities.

Dateprotection.com is a website that fronts an organisation calling for greater online dating security on a global scale, headed up by its founder, Kevin Connell. His comments are constantly drowned out by the industry’s big game players and he, like the FBI, is calling for change on a grand scale that only the public can effect, as government authorities are either unable or unwilling to intervene.

The concept that Kevin is trying to get dating sites to accept is that all members have a right to be assured that the person they’re chatting with is genuine or at least provide an onsite means of allowing one of its members to verify any potential partner’s true identity themselves.

Currently, there are very few states in the US – the two ‘New’s – York and Jersey – that have any laws governing background checks for dating sites, although Connecticut and Illinois have also passed bills regulating them. The former only extend to paid facilities and they are not the most rigorous, asking only of the dating site owner to inform their members if they carry out criminal checks (not that they have to); in New York, there is the additional safeguard that online dating facilities must issue guidelines, many of which fall under the heading: ‘common sense’, advising its members of what to look out for and things not to do when actually meeting up offline someone they have met on site.

Singles should not feel pressurised into meeting anyone on their dating site who will not take appropriate lengths to independently verify their identification. As market leaders, Match.com and eHarmony have categorically stated that all of their membership undergo sex crime conviction checks. However, that test does not actually prove that the individual they are running the check on is the person who has actually signed up to the dating site.

Kevin Connell has revealed several secrets about the scale and industry insider knowledge of the scale of scam profiles; we will present them in our next article, along with what UK dating site members can do if they fancy someone on their site, but are unsure of their integrity.

There were the theoretical questions on the subject, such as: would you commit to someone you weren’t chemically attracted to? And there were the practical aspects for the genre, referring to limp libidos or just downright amateurish between the sheet experience transposing itself into the act. We’ll look at the theory side another day, but for this exercise, we’ll concentrate on the latter two physical aspects that could seriously jeopardise the longevity of an intimate association.

Would bad sex kill your relationship?

The jury were surprisingly split on this question with no runaway verdict either, in heterosexual or same sex relationships. However, the scenario of being with a lover who just didn’t do it for you between the sheets was slightly more of an issue for the women in both cases, according to the dating site survey.

Sorry, but here’s a bit of maths-exam stylee statistics to back that claim up.

Exactly half of straight women answered that a man who thought a G-spot may be a helping hand from a gay guy down the gym or similar asexual answer would be out the door before they got their slippers beneath the sofa. And 55% of lesbian women questioned said that if their partner was incapable of delivering the big O they would be out the door.  No excuse, really, is there?

Men were slightly less concerned, with only 44% of straight fellas saying they’d terminate proceedings if their partner turned out to be motionless and non experimental whilst they were making the grandest of gestures to satisfy their carnal cravings. And slightly more than half of gay men attested that bad sex was the be-all and end-all, with 52% reckoning they’d be on their way if their man didn’t measure up on that score.

Again, as in Darling, dirty sex doesn’t mean you don’t have to wash it, there is disparity between the age ranges taken to task over the questions.

From the mix of those surveyed, the answers point towards bad sex being more of a deal breaker to the older generation than the young. Whilst less than four in ten people in their twenties said that bad sex meant bye-bye, nearly half of those in the sixties couldn’t live without their regular supply of quality sexual attention.

Is this because, whilst you’re so young, any shortcomings and misdemeanours are overlooked in the hope that there is time to improve? Or could it be that, by the time you reach your sixties, you’ve either learnt all you’re ever going to about the art of making love and/or you know it but can no longer deliver the necessary because of physical or emotional limitations?

Whatever the underlying reason, the first step to not letting poor sex ruin a relationship that can be otherwise quite beautiful is to be able to talk freely about the matter, and not let it become a taboo subject, easier just not to talk about and lock away in a cupboard than face head on. Take the problem at hand in hand, coax it, love it, nurture it and see what grows as a result.

Enough time has passed, it seems, for the renowned doctors, therapists and dating sites scientists to have dissected this information, drawn their conclusions and put them together in some type of meaningful format for the US singles market.

With the US economy little better off than our own, it is fair to assume that the results will have some relevance to the UK dating scene – how much you will only be able to judge for yourself as we interpret the statistics and percentages proposed by the giant of global dating with perhaps just a nod of acknowledgment to the 5,000 US singles who took part in the gruelling 135 question survey.

So, now you know from whence the information was gleaned, let’s get stuck into the sub-categories. The scientists chosen each had relevant experience in their niche and in homage to the construction of the survey, those doctors and therapists and relation experts have all stuck to their own field in providing their summaries.

We start with an appraisal by Dr Justin Garcia, scientific advisor to the dating site for the last two years, of the aspects of your dating site profile and offline dating behaviour that is going to kill any relationship stone dead before it’s even inhaled its first romantic breath. In other words, the deal breakers. There are several, and some more relevant to singles in some age ranges of the dating site membership than to others.

Being of US origin, the results contain several percentages relating to the adjudged panel’s answers but I will do my best to refer to them only when necessary; that many figures in an article make the news look like a maths exam and only geeks like those. Apologies to all the geeks, but that’s just not on.

In the following articles, we’ll take on board what US singles will just not put up with in their partners; article 2 will get their views on hygiene, article 3 will be about communication and bedroom Olympics – yeah, like trying to get a man to talk after sex in the UK dating scene’s ever gonna happen. Link to article two, here; article three – if you want forget about the dirty bits and just get straight down to the, well, dirty bits, here on Sunday, along with parenthood and distance relationships. See you over the page.