CyberDating Network's Blog ~ A Dating Blog
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See what's New, Behind The Scenes at CyberDating:
How we are embracing social networking and other time wasters.
March 16, 2010
OK, stop badgering me, I'll do it!
You can't read an article about promoting your website (dating or otherwise) without them telling you that you have to be involved in social networking. It seems that the toys such as Twitter, Youtube and Facebook that once simply entertained the masses, are now the most powerful marketing tools in cyber space. Go figure. I have always shunned such sites as time wasters and bandwidth hogs. They just get in the way of important stuff - like Online dating.
So, in spite of my personal opinions about social networking and it's value on the Web, we at the CyberDating Network have been forging ahead with our corporate presence. If you look back in our Blog posts (oh ya, blogging - another time waster), you can see we have been using Twitter for a while now to notify our singles of messages in their in boxes. But here's the big news. We now have a CyberDating channel on YouTube to showcase some of our more interesting profiles.
Granted, our CyberDating content is sparse today, but we have big plans. We may put up a few more videos. And, if the Internet marketing experts are right, we're going to get really famous because of it. Just watch us go...
P.S. Don't bother looking for us at Facebook. We run a totally free dating website and simply cannot afford the time - at least until we are forced into it ;)
CyberDating Tip: Writing introductory messages that will get you noticed?
March 10, 2010
Hey CyberDaters...
Yesterday a fairly new member deleted his CyberDating profile and he said the the reason was, "this site doesn't work... nobody replied to my messages".
Obviously we don't want our members going away dissatisfied, so I did some research to try to identify the problem. After checking our process logs to confirm that he had not encountered any software errors or usage problems, I looked at his profile and some of the introductory messages that he sent to other members. The problem was clear. His messages were just - to be polite - not good.
If you've been dating Online for more than a few days, you've seen what I am talking about. His message read simply : "Hi, I liked your profile. Send me an email if you are interested". It's no wonder he got no responses; they were not interested.
I'm not saying I am an expert in human behaviour, but I do know that people appreciate it when you make an effort to introduce yourself in personal terms. The email message that I quoted above, didn't give the impression that the author had even read the recipient's profile before sending off the message. The recipient my as well have been number two hundred among the impersonal messages that the guy sent that day.
My advice: read the person's profile and take note of a section of the profile that stands out as something that is important or relevant to you. Then in your reply, using your own words, summarize your impression of that thing that stood out. Try using the phrase "I liked the way you mentioned...". Be sure that you are being honest though, because you know the recipient is going to mention it in his/her response.
The only other advice for today is, keep it fairly short. If your first message is too long, the recipient is going to assume you cut and pasted it in. Shoot for three or four sentences of quality original content.
Cheers,
Tucker
Why don't you allow personal contact information in the singles ads?
February 14, 2010
One of our members recently asked our resident CyberDating Network pro: "Why, since it's a free site, can't I post my email address on my dating profile?"
There are two reasons for this.
The first is that if we allow email addresses on our dating personal ads, then we get a whole bunch of wasted traffic. Let me explain; spammers are always looking for places to steal email addresses and if they see that we have email addresses on our dating profiles, the spammers then send robots (automated website surfing programs) to read all of our profiles to gather the email addresses. With at least 60,000 dating personal ads on our site, that's a lot of wasted work for our servers and a ton of wasted bandwidth (Internet traffic).
The second reason is that once the spammers have gathered the email addresses from our site, then they send junk email to our members - often pretending to be affiliated with us. That means that our CyberDating members are inconvenienced by the extra junk email, and some of our members may stop accepting legitimate email messages from us, sending our messages to their junk mailboxes.
So, that's the deal... No contact information in your public dating profile. But, you can put it into your messages within our CyberDating Mailbox system.
Happy Valentines Day!
Tucker, The CyberDating Network
Searching for the perfect mate? Forget searching and browse.
February 10, 2010
You may have noticed that, in the last few weeks, that all of the dating profiles and search result pages in Cyberdating include "breadcrumb navigation". You cyber dating experts know that breadcrumb navigation is a way for a surfer to see the hierarchical structure of a website. But do you know why we added it as a feature in our dating site? It's all about finding the perfect mate...
We've found that searching for profiles is not necessarily the best way to find compatible singles on an online dating site - browsing is. You know how when you go to the video store to find a specific movie that you always see a dozen other interesting movies on the shelves next to it? Well that's what we mean by browsing. By looking at groups of singles profiles in the same category (same gender and location) we think you'll see many more really "dateable" singles. It takes the focus off of age, gender, height etc. and it puts the focus on the eligible singles in your area.
So, by adding the breadcrumb navigation on our dating site we are encouraging you to browse your way to more singles.
At Cyberdating, it's OK to say "Just Browsing!"
Tucker, The CyberDating Network
What did we ever do to you, Mr. Yahoo?
February 7, 2010
It appears that the folks at Yahoo, and most of the other free web mail services out there, think that we are spammers. I know! The nerve of them! Just because we offer a free service and we are in a business that has traditionally full of spammers and scammers, it doesn't mean that we do it.
In any case, if you are a member of one of the CyberDating Network of dating sites, please be sure to add us to your contact list (here are some instructions). If you don't, your email notifications will likely go to your spam mailbox.
Why should you care if your cyber dating notifications don't show up? It's because you won't get notified when you receive new messages in your Cyber Dating Inbox. I know lots of you check your Inbox regularly, but there are also plenty of our singles who are just too busy to check for new messages regularly. If the messages in your CyberDating mailbox get to be over 45 days old, we delete them.
That brings me to another related topic. People occasionally notice that their sent messages are not being read by the recipient and they ask us if the member is inactive or fake. The problem is that people are not getting their message notifications and they are forgetting to check their email. They are not dead - they're just dozing.
A couple of tips for creating an effective Cyber Dating Profile.
February 5, 2010
If you were to search the web for advice on how to write an effective online dating profile you'd find thousands of articles explaining the intricacies of how to write the "About Me" section of a singles ad, but the dating experts never give you advice about the more basic parts of the profile. So, here we go with the boring - but critically important stuff that will get your dating profile noticed.
The single most important field on the dating site signup form is your "location". Way too often people fill in the location field with something cute like "Secret" or "Small Town". What's wrong with that you ask. The problem is that much of the matching and searching software inside the dating site rely on your location to suggest compatible singles for you. If you want to meet someone in Toronto, tells us that you live in Toronto; then the datign site software can do it's job.
Also with regard to the location field on the dating site signup form, remember that if you live in a small town and if you want to find a love connection, you need to use the nearest "reasonably large" town. If you live in a very small town, nobody will ever find you because they are searching in larger towns or areas. Just be sure to clarify your location in the "About Me" section. You don't want someone to think you are lying about your location :(
More next time...
Tucker
Somebody recently asked if we review our dating profiles.
January 22, 2010
The short answer is yes - well sort of...
New singles ads are processed in two separate ways. The first is that the software on our servers does a bunch of work - before the profile is made public. The second step is done by a human some time after the profile hits the web.
The first process in activating a new dating profile, the one done by the servers, verifies that the profile is basically filled with useful information and that all of the manditory fields on the sign up form contain information. It also checks that the really important fields, like the person's email address, gender and location contain usable data. The first process also formats some of the information to make sure that things like the person's location does not contain funky characters like brackets that might confuse the searching programs later. We also automatically verify that, if the person entered a Twitter user name, that it is valid and that we can send tweets to that user.
We also programmatically search for offensive or spammy words and phrases and we either remove them or swap them with less offensive words. You'll notice that there is very little swearing on our dating sites because of this process.
Finally we send an email to the new registrant so that we can verify that his/her email address is usable.
Then once all of these steps are finished - usually within less than half a second - the new dating profile is added to our database and the new profile is available on the web for everyone to see.
The second process in processing a new dating profile is done by a human. In this process an operator quickly reads, or scans, the profile looking for problems or inappropriate information. As in the automated process the operator is looking for swearing, contact information, advertising, jibberish, spam and scammers. The operator verifies that any links in the singles ad go to PG rated sites and that the photo meets our standards.
Also, in an effort to weed out scammers, the operator compares portions of the new personal ad against a database of know scammers ads. We even check Google for duplicate profiles to make sure that a scammer has not just pasted in a profile from another site.
meets our standards.
The second process could be done any time after the profile was first submitted. Often an operator will review the new profile within a few minutes of being posted other times, when it is really busy or if there are other projects due, the operator will not get to a new profile for up to a day.
So, yes we do review our dating profiles. But no, we do not do any background checks of any kind on our singes. We don't have the resources to do that. We are a totally free dating site - after all.
Have a good one... Tucker
New Upgrades - making your life easier.
January 15, 2010
Hey CyberDating Singles!
A new year and another big software upgrade.
This week we have implemented a bunch of both visible and behind the scene upgrades to the Cyberdating network of sites.
The first and most visible is that we now have "Outboxes" so you can now see the messages that you sent as well as the ones that you received. Lots of people have requested this feature so I'm sure you'll put it to good use.
One of the most important "behind the scenes" upgrades is that we have split up our international database into several smaller ones so the folks in Africa and India are now able to browse their profiles much more quickly. This had an impact on the member Numbers of members in African countries, so if you are in Africa, check your email for details.
Well, back to work,
Tucker
"Gotcha" - that's what we are saying to several hundred dating scammers.
November 19, 2009
At CyberDating we have been really aggressively monitoring our new sign ups for fakes, scammers and spammers and it's really paying off. In the last two months we have identified over 500 dating scam profiles and moved them to our "Blacklist" - never to be bothered by them again. But that does not mean they won't be seen.
In an effort to help everyone to identify fake dating profiles, we have made our collection of banned ex-members public. Now, if you see a real profile that looks fishy, you can search the fakes to see if a known scammer has used the same email address, picture or text. Or, you can surf thru the scammers profiles just for fun. You'll be amazed at how many of them say they are "honest" and that their favorite movie is "Titanic"
You can Search Dating Scam Profiles.
Or, just jump right into the list... Fake Profile List.
As always, if you identify a fake profile that we missed, be sure to report it and we'll ban it too.
Happy scammer hunting :)
Tucker, The CyberDating Network
If you can't beat them... Tweat with them!
October 28, 2009
Ah, social networking. You may have read that social networking is killing the online dating industry; well here at CyberDating, we are embracing it. I guess it's not so much embracing those guys, but trying to play nice in the sandbox. Heck you are reading a blog (the first of the social networking venues) aren't you? Anyhow, here's the new news on the social networking front:
Now you can include your Twitter username in your profile so that CyberDating visitors can read your Tweets. A new link will appear in your profile and folks just have to click the link to hit your Twitter home page.
And, for those of you on-the-go, we now offer notification via Tweets when new messages arrive in your CyberDating Inbox. All you need to do is make sure that you give us your username and that you "Follow" us in Twitter - that tells Twitter that you are cool with us sending you direct Tweets. Each time a new message arrives, you'll get a direct message from us. How sweet is that?
Update your profile with your Twitter info now!
Thanks :)
Tucker
Say Cheese - Now quicker!
February 25, 2009
At long last my fine bloggers and dating website lovers, we have finally made it easier for you to post your picture on CyberDating.
After years of procrastinating, we have added the functionality for you to add your own photo to your personal ad. Previously you had to submit your photo which we manually processed. How Archaian - we manually cropped and resized every picture on the dating site (well, we actually used a macro in PhotoShop) and then uploaded them. We did this every week and you can bet that we always dreaded the day. Yes Karl deserves a cookie for his untold effort.
Anyhow, now, with the help of a little javascript that we found on the web, we have made it easy for you to upload and crop your photo in two simple steps. No more waiting - enjoy the instant gratification... try it here Post your Picture.
Party on People,
Tucker
Take a Step to the Right - East that is.
Wednesday August 20, 2008
I don't know how we did it but we've become really popular with East Indians. It's not like we went looking for them but they found us, and so we say, "welcome aboard".
In reality we have had so much interest from Indian singles and Pakistani singles that we have build a complete website just for them. It's called Indian.cyberdating.net and it has thousands of singles. Of course, since it is part of the CyberDating Network, it offers all of the features that our other sites have and it's free.
Again welcome and we hope you'll enjoy our site(s).
Cheers,
Tucker
Want to see more of our CyberDating Network Blog? Check out our older dating blog entries.
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