A woman who was stabbed and beaten by a man she met through Match.com is suing the online dating site, alleging that it doesn't do enough screen out violent offenders and warn users of potential dangers.
No matter what site you use, online dating can be absolutely horrible. Sure, some people find their match on Match.com but more often than not, the people you meet are crazy, critical jerks who have you running for the door within minutes. Let's look at one horrible email from an online relationship gone sour.
Internet daters rejoice! Match.com will now be screening its customers against a national sex offenders database. The decision comes after a Los Angeles woman sued Match.com after being raped by a guy she met on the dating site. However, Match.com's president said that the "decision to use the registry was not in direct response to the lawsuit," according to the Daily News.
To the women he dated via the Internet, Solomon Jesus Nasser was just your average, everyday multimillionaire Navy admiral with a doctorate from MIT. But in real life, Nasser was a scumbag who bilked $140K from women over three years.
Gary Kremen founded Match.com as a labor of love, but his personal fortune comes from buying the sex.com domain early. Now, Kremen has invested "an undisclosed amount" in CrowdSifter, a collaborative smut filter. You can read about it in our compliant mainstream media on November 13. Or you can read the press release CrowdSifter's publicist sent us this morning:
In the second quarter, IAC swung from a $94.6 million profit last year to a $421.6 million loss this year. Don't blame Jakob Lodwick! His former company, Vimeo, is nowhere near the top of IAC/InterActiveCorp's expense report for the past quarter. The real problem at Barry Diller's Internet empire is Cornerstone Brands, a rollup of catalog companies undermined by weak consumer spending in home and apparel retail. Cornerstone's losses led to a $300 million writedown in goodwill in IAC's second quarter. In addition, the soft real estate market cut revenue for home financing site LendingTree nearly in half.IAC is moving ahead with plans to spin off four of its divisions by the end of August: HSN (which includes Cornerstone), Ticketmaster, Tree.com (which includes LendingTree), and Interval Leisure Group, which operates vacation sites including ResortQuest Hawaii. That leaves IAC with Ask.com, Match.com and Citysearch. What's happening? Simple: Diller and company have learned that bundling a bunch of diverse online businesses together doesn't create the promised "synergy" of the Web 1.0 boom. Better to let each site fend for itself. Since IAC got rid of Expedia in 2005 (Barry Diller's still chairman of the board), the travel site's ups and downs have closely followed the travel market. That's the watercooler version. You can wonk out with the full details.
The 50-and-up set form one of the fastest growing demographics of those looking for love online. That nugget of hope, care of former Match.com CEO Jim Safka, comes tucked into Newsweek's Sex & the Single Boomer. While the Youngs, who've been barely weaned off of cruising Facebook for casual sex, may eyeroll at Web 1.0 matchmaking, and the Olds themselves scoff at the profitability of Web-based matchmaking, it looks they're going at it as sure as the kids today, with their Twitter hookups and their 150-mile-radius locally sourced organic condoms. The real difference? Baby boomers got over talking about it decades ago. (Photo via foundphotos)
When OKCupid, the site where Internet users too cool to date online date online, needed some fresh blood, founders Sam Yagan and Chris Coyne took a page from the sex business to stay afloat: dates on demand. Describing the premise of CrazyBlindDate.com, which matches users by location and a vague sense of mutual compatibility that has more to do with scheduling than anything, Yagan says:
Did you know Mark Zuckerberg is 27, not 23; went to Stanford, not Harvard; lives in San Francisco, not Palo Alto; and sold a financial research firm? That's the story that Match.com user TheDayDreamr would have you believe. He's used several pictures of the Facebook founder to decorate his profile. Since Zuckerberg's mug has been on magazine newsstands from coast to coast, it's hard to imagine what TheDayDreamr is thinking. He claims to be a "young, successful man" who "decided to retire" after selling his company. If he's so clever, wouldn't he have picked a handsomer face to borrow? The full, faked profile:
From the mailbag, regarding Ivy League alum and douchey online dater John Fitzgerald Page: "I talked to John Page for 3 hours last night. So I called him.....a couple of times (and yes that is all it took). I don't know where to go with the information I have now after talking to him for seriously 3 HOURS. I will send you a copy of my phone bill a) if ATT has put it up yet b) you tell me where to send it, to prove what I am saying.... What do I do with 3 hours of information from the most hated/loved/entertaining/douchey guy on the internet today?"
We can stop posting about Eric "I Can't Believe I'm Still Single, Even Though Every Other Sentient Life Form On Planet Earth Soooo Can" Schaeffer any time we want. Really. Okay, but before we take a vow of silence about Eric (who is also on the MySpace, in case you missed him on Nerve or Match) forever, we just have to share these latest tips. They're all thematically linked somehow. "How?" you're probably wondering. "I am racking my brain and I can't figure out what they're getting at based on that mysterious headline?!" Well, click on past the jump, little ones. But heed our warning: not safe for . . . just not safe. NOT SAFE.
Well, we knew it would happen eventually: our best efforts to never post about Eric Schaeffer again have been thwarted. The reason? We've started getting emails from women who've not only "winked" at Eric on Match and talked dirty with him on Nerve, they've actually met him in person (or they have a "friend" who has met him in person). So, uh, how'd it go?
