Dating Site Blasts Rival in Ads

'Supermarkets of love' no better than bars for meeting people: Study

(NEWSER) - Online dating could help you find your perfect match—but your chances aren't any better than they'd be at a bar, a study suggests. You can't tell much about the people listed on sites like Match.com. Browsing such lists "overloads people and they end up shutting down," the psychology professor behind the study tells Reuters . It amounts to shopping at "supermarkets of love": When you have too many choices, you make bad decisions. More»

Do you know when you're being sold something?

(NEWSER) - You can tell when you’re watching a commercial, right? Not at all, writes NE Marsden , and that’s a huge problem. A new FTC measure seeks to expose the practice of paid consideration—“stealth advertising” is a better phrase—online by requiring bloggers and marketers to disclose remuneration, but that hasn’t worked too well on TV. You didn’t know producers have to disclose product placement on TV? Exactly. More»

From vampire lovers to geeks to punk rockers, a site for everyone

(NEWSER) - If the matches you’re finding on eHarmony are too vanilla, never fear: There’s a dating site out there for you, and Julie Gerstein of Lemondrop rounds up the quirkiest of the quirky:

• If you wear a lot of black: Find your “own personal Satan” at Gothic Match.
• If you really, really like your cat: Meet someone who understands at PURRsonals.com.
• If you are over-the-top obsessed with Ayn Rand: Yes, there’s a site for that. Check out the Atlasphere.

Twitterverse split on ethics of Sponsored Tweets

(NEWSER) - A new company is brokering deals between businesses and Twitterers who want to make a few extra bucks plugging products, Time reports. The founder of the website Sponsored Tweets says 7,000 enterprising Twitterers have signed up for the service in its first month. Twitterers get paid based on a range of considerations, including their number of followers. Companies look at the database of participants and make an offer. More»

(NEWSER) - Online dating sites are so packed with possible matches that they cause “cognitive overload” in seekers, leading to unconsidered choices, the MIT Technology Review reports. The lovelorn may say they want a wider variety of candidates, but they spend less time evaluating them, new research shows. “More search options lead to less selective processing by reducing users' cognitive resources, distracting them with irrelevant information,” the researchers say. That hampers the “ability to screen out inferior options.” More»