Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

DontDateHimGirl.com Set To Remove Postings Of Alleged Cheaters

EARTH TIMES - July 19 - DontDateHimGirl.com, the popular social network for women on the dating scene will remove its database of alleged cads from the site in August and replace it with a user-generated forum where users can post their opinions about anything from dating and love to sex and marriage. According to site creator Tasha Cunningham, the move from has been a long time in the making. “We had been thinking about ways to take the focus off of the guys and put it on to healing the women who’ve had their hearts broken,” said Cunningham. FULL ARTICLE @ EARTH TIMES

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DontDateHimGirl.com Partners With FamilyNetworkz.com

PRESS RELEASE -- May 16 -- “Many of our users are single mothers looking for ways to protect their kids online,” said Tasha Cunningham, creator of DontDateHimGirl.com. FamilyNetworkz.com is a private social network that provides families a safe place to gather online. Families can communicate directly with chat rooms, instant messaging, email and soon via webcam. FULL ARTICLE @ 1888 PRESS RELEASE

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What Single Girls Want For Christmas

PRESS RELEASE -- Dec 3 -- DontDateHimGirl surveyed its users and discovered that 69% of the nearly 600 women surveyed a guy with mental muscle. "I think women have finally figured out that a guy's looks are something that can change over time," said Sonia Torretto, a frequent contributor to DontDateHimGirl. FULL ARTICLE @ 1888 PRESS RELEASE   

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10 Ways To Recession-Proof Your Romance

PR WEB -- Sep 27 --

1. Show each other the money - "In romantic relationships, communication is key," said Tasha Cunningham, creator of DontDateHimGirl.com.
2. Share the pain - Talk to your significant other about any concerns, fears or thoughts you might have about your finances.
3. Give up the goods - Cut back on dinners out and cook together at home instead.
4. Go date-free and still have fun - Plan dates with your sweetheart that don't cost a thing.
5. Don't fight over money
6. Don't hide money from your partner
7. Book a lavish vacation
8. Challenge each other to save
9. Do things for a dollar - Check out a dollar movie theatre, or hit a dollar store together for fun.
10. Retrain your brains - Train yourself to cut back on the things you both love

FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

DontDateHimGirl.com Integrates Free Sex Offender Search

1888PRESS RELEASE -- Sep 26 -- DontDateHimGirl.com has implemented a new search interface on the site, created by PredatorBarrier.com, which will allow users to find out if the guy they're dating is a registered sex offender in the U.S. PredatorBarrier.com offers its services at no charge in the form of both traditional and mobile device portals. FULL ARTICLE @ 1888PRESS RELEASE

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Don'tDateHimGirl.com, Tasha Cunningham - CEO Interview

OPW INTERVIEW -- May 3 -- "This is 1 of the worst people to be involved with. He will lie cheat and deceive. He live off women and has no real education. Will claim someone else's baby but cannot take care of his own then brings another into the world." So goes the testimonial to Mr L.Simon on DontDateHimGirl.com. Here's what the CEO of DDHG has to say... - Mark Brooks

Tell me about DontDateHimGirl.com. What inspired you to create the site?
It began with a conversation that I had with some of my girlfriends in late 2005. We were talking about dating and sharing different bad date horror stories with each other. I thought that there had to be a way that women could get together to have that conversation on a larger scale, a global discussion of women sharing their dating stories.

Your site allows women to warn other women about bad dates. How do you know that the women who post aren't the crazy ones? Maybe she got vindictive because he just wasn't that into her. What if he is actually innocent of accusations? Do you feel any responsibility to protect the innocent?
That’s not for the owner of the website to decide. We provide the forum and free information and discussion occurs among the users, not among the website’s owners or administrators. In addition, it would be specifically impossible for any site to verify every third party posting. We get hundreds of postings a day. That’s why we allow men to fully participate in the discussion and freely post their side or say whatever they want to say uncensored. 

There was a Dr. Phil show featuring you and a man who claimed that the negative comments posted about him on DDHG were false. He filed a lawsuit. What ever became of that?
It was dismissed. We are protected by a Federal law called the Communication Decency Act, as is every social networking site out there. We are exempt from liability for third party comments posted on our websites. It’s pretty obvious that I did not make those comments about that guy, I don’t even know who he is.

In legal cases where websites such as Craigslist did not encourage offensive content and in fact took steps to discourage it, doesn't your site, by the nature of it, encourage words that could be libelous?
No, absolutely not. When you sign up for DontDateHimGirl.com and become a member, you have to read and agree to our terms of use, an iron clad policy that encourages people to post the truth. In fact, we explicitly state in our terms of use that users are not to post anything that could be considered defamatory, slanderous, and libelous. It is also explicitly stated throughout our site that we warn users not to post any identifying information such as social security numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, place of work or workplace addresses. Profanity is automatically filtered out and we have IP tracking, so if our site is being used for any purpose other then what its supposed to be used for, we’re able to track the user through their IP address. We put these measures in place specifically so that these kinds of things don’t happen. 

What would you personally do if someone posted negative and false information about you and the site owner refused to remove it?
There are outrageous things that are posted about me online. The Internet is basically like the Wild, Wild West of information. People think that they can just post whatever they want anonymously. So, I could spend my time running around trying to prove that all of the false statements about me on the Internet are untrue, or I could focus on things that mean something to me, like our DDHG Empower Fund, which allows us to donate part of our earnings to help with different women’s charities. We’re doing something with the Women’s Fund of Miami and the National Women’s Fund to help with domestic violence. 

Have you considered a section for people who want to rave about great dates?
Women are doing it now, whether it’s a friend or a brother, with the intent to fix him up. We’re starting to see that a lot of women put themselves there to be searchable as a way to connect with other women as friends.

DDHG is bursting with great topical content. What are the site's most popular features?
Profiles are strong, but our news section is very popular, because that’s part of the mission of the site. It’s not just to let these women share their negative experiences, but once they’re on the site they can learn how to make better decisions in their dating life. In the Don’t Date Him Girl community, they’ll find experts who can sympathize with their situation and advise them accordingly. It’s also a great place for men to learn how to improve their relationships with women. 

Tell me about your new Facebook application, Love Inspector.
We created the application to introduce ourselves to the Facebook audience, which we hadn’t really done before. The application is, what I like to call, a woman’s best friend, because it’s a daily dose of dating and love and relationships. Add it to your Facebook profile and receive the newest DDHG articles and advice (which link back to the site) every day. 

What does the future hold for DDHG?
We’re adding new contributors and growing our advice community. If you want to know what’s happening in the world of dating or get advice on a particular relationship problem - users can directly email our contributors with questions. Women write to us about how the site has helped them or how DDHG has touched their lives, so we’re thinking of adding a devoted testimonial section because we get so many.

What message would you most like to get out there?
I think, historically, because of the fact that men and women speak different languages in relationships; many women are lost as to how to effectively understand men. Women really need to assess their relationship goals before they even step into the dating world, and then take proactive steps to get there. The slogan of the site is Don’t Date Him, Girl, until you check him out first.

Inside A Man's Mind

BUSINESS WIRE -- Apr 28 -- DontDateHimGirl.com, one of the hottest women's websites on the Internet, kicks off its weeklong series 'Inside a Man's Mind ' What Guys Really Think About Love, Lust and Being Loyal'. 'Men and women speak totally different languages when it comes to love, dating and relationships,' said Tasha Cunningham, creator of DontDateHimGirl.com.

DontDateHimGirl.com found out that: 
73% of men keep secrets from their significant others
21% visit sexually-oriented websites at least once a day while in a relationship
56% fantasize about other women while in a relationship
8% have virtual sex online with a person they don't know personally at least once a week while in a relationship
FULL ARTICLE @ AD HOC NEWS

DontDateHimGirl.com Launches Facebook App

BUSINESS WIRE -- Mar 17 -- DontDateHimGirl.com has launched Love Inspector, a Facebook app to give users access to articles on everything from how to deal with a cheating man to finding ways to boost self-esteem after a break-up and other great DontDateHimGirl.com-branded content. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WIRE

Legislating Love Online: Some Good Advice

FIND LAW -- Sep 28 -- The federal government hasn't gotten into the business of regulating online dating but it does regulate international marriage brokers. There's 200 operating in the U.S. and each year several thousand American men meet their spouses through them. Some of the wives become victims of domestic violence. So congress passed a law, effective March 2006, requiring international marriage brokers to obtain criminal and background information from all of their members and disclose the information on their site. This law is a good idea. But it is one thing to move across the globe and get married, and entirely another to simply meet online and then to have a date. Congress has been right to stay out of the area of online dating so far, and the states may want to follow suit. New York is the only state that has a law specifically regulating online dating sites. But rather than attempting to ensure user safety, New York law targets fraud, regulating the quality and number of referrals the sites provide for a fee.

California, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and Texas introduced online dating legislation recently. Some states want to mandate warnings on internet dating sites stating that no background checks have been conducted on users. Warnings are a good idea - preventing any false sense of security on the part of users. Sites should adopt them as liability protection. Other states may require checks be conducted.  Criminal records vary from state to state, and from record to record, in their thoroughness, accuracy, and completeness. This poses a legal risk for the website. A user falsely branded a felon could sue for libel. (Communications Decency Act protections against libel liability don't apply to the author of a posting, only to its host; if the site authored "felon" notices, it could still be liable.) Conversely, a user who relied on an "all clear" result from the site, but then was assaulted or raped, could sue the site for a variety of torts including misrepresentation.

eBay users could be con artists or swindlers - yet eBay does not require a criminal background check. Instead, it relies largely on user feedback to police its marketplace. Some dating sites have used reputation in creative ways - either negatively, as with Dontdatehimgirl.com, or positively, as with sites where users get recommendations from exes with whom they are still friends.  FULL ARTICLE @ FIND LAW

Mark Brooks: At the end of the day, cheap background checks fall short and can lead to a false sense of security. Many felony convictions are talked down to misdemeanours which are far harder to identify. But these background checks are still better than nothing. Dating services still offer a vast improvement over blindly meeting someone at a bar. Referrals from friends are still the best and safest way to meet someone...but internet dating sites offer the best selection of people where you can get all the 'difficult questions' out of the way right up front. Wants kids, doesn't smoke, social drinker etc. Singles should engage their friends, go to some of their parties, get on PlentyofFish (hey, it's free), get on a couple of paid services, and if they're so inclined ( i.e. very horny) join a casual dating site before they jump into the sack with someone and make it serious when it shouldn't be.

Cheating Hearts Caught Online

NEWSFACTOR --  Mar 8 -- Welcome to the online antidote for a broken heart. Web sites such as www.DontDateHimGirl.com , www.WomanSavers.com (formerly www.ManHaters.com), and www.TrueDater.com have taken up the call to expose dating liars and cheats before they have a chance to make a fool of you.  FULL ARTICLE @ CRI ENGLISH

Insanity Reigns When Dating and Technology Collide

GANNETT NEWS SERVICE -- Jan 17 -- Through www.poddater.com, users of the new video iPod can download video profiles of singles. Women can get recommendations from other women about good guys at www.greatboyfriends.com, but they should probably cross-reference him first on www.dontdatehimgirl.com.  If you're superficial and shallow, there's www.dreammatches.com, a "dating service for beautiful people."  Those who want to stalk good-looking members of the opposite sex also can go to www.hotmaps.frozenbear.com, which combines the technology of Google mapping with the rating and dating site www.hotornot.com. Or try "Hot Or Not Hook-Up" at www.hotmatch.frozenbear.com. It's a really dumb thing to do, but it's totally addictive. There's a site for introverts and shy singles called www.shypassions.com.  The Toronto-based Ashley Madison Agency helps you cheat on your spouse.