Is Facebook About to Crack Online Matchmaking?

Here’s a good article from Wired on how Facebook is leveraging our friends to give a good predictor at potential romantic relationships. Click through for the full read.

For a long time, social scientists have believed that embeddedness—the number of mutual friends you share with someone—is the best indicator of how close you are to that person, romantically or otherwise. That seems to make a certain intuitive sense: After all, if you know a lot of people in common, aren’t you more likely to know someone well? Not so fast. As Kleinberg and Backstrom learned, a more accurate barometer of a relationship status is not how many people you have in common, it’s what kinds of friends you have in common.

This idea, dubbed “dispersion” by the researchers, is a measure of how many overlapping social circles a friend touches in your network. An easy way to think of it is this: Pick out a colleague and you’ll likely have dozens of friends in common with that person on Facebook, the majority of whom also work with you. You share a lot of people in common, but is this person your closest friend? Probably not. Rather, the people you’re closest to likely share friends who span across your different social spheres—work, school and family—regardless of the total number of mutual friends. The degree to which you share friends across many spheres yields far better predictions about the nature of your real-world relationships.

via Facebook Inches Closer to Figuring Out the Formula for Love | Wired Design | Wired.com.

For the older Hopefuls out there, an age equation

From the very excellent web comic xkcd.

 

TEDEd and OKCupid – Behind the Numbers

When two people join a dating website, they are matched according to shared interests and how they answer a number of personal questions. But how do sites calculate the likelihood of a successful relationship? Christian Rudder, one of the founders of popular dating site OKCupid, details the algorithm behind ‘hitting it off.’

Lesson by Christian Rudder, animation by TED-Ed.

Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad?

Here’s a good article on why romantic comedies have gotten so bad. Apparently there aren’t enough taboos when it comes to love and relationships anymore.

A few years ago, A. O. Scott of The New York Times suggested that for explanation we need look no further than the names just mentioned and others like them: the downslope from Katharine Hepburn to Katherine Heigl is simply too steep, and “the few remaining stars who show the kind of audacity and charisma that great romantic comedy requires tend to be busy with other things.”

This is certainly true, but it in turn begs the question of why today’s genuine stars (with all due respect to Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey) no longer bother to find the time for romantic comedy. Will Smith, for instance, displayed tremendous chops in Hitch—but apart from that toe-dip, he’s stayed clear of the water. And this generation’s most obvious fit, George Clooney, has modeled his career on that of Cary Grant in almost every way save his profound reticence to explore the genre that made the latter an icon.

No, there’s more at work here than the vagaries of stars or studios. It’s not just them; it’s us.

Among the most fundamental obligations of romantic comedy is that there must be an obstacle to nuptial bliss for the budding couple to overcome. And, put simply, such obstacles are getting harder and harder to come by. They used to lie thick on the ground: parental disapproval, difference in social class, a promise made to another. But society has spent decades busily uprooting any impediment to the marriage of true minds. Love is increasingly presumed—perhaps in Hollywood most of all—to transcend class, profession, faith, age, race, gender, and (on occasion) marital status.

via Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad? – Christopher Orr – The Atlantic.

Free eBook from Charlie Nox on Online Dating Profiles

This is a great little (free with registration) ebook that offers tons of practical advice on setting up effective online dating profiles.

I have a free ebook that’s out and ready to download just in time for SXSW!

Just visit http://charlienox.com/sxsw/ to get The Babe Hack – An Expert’s Guide to Writing the World’s Best Online Dating Profile.

This 90 page full color guide will show men AND women how to write a dating profile that will get you noticed, express who you really are, attract the kind of people you want to attract, and lead to quality real life dates.

 

via Charlie Nox | For Guys Who Refuse to Choose Between Being Nice and Getting Laid.

Indie Rock Cruise… With a Dating Game?

Bruiser Dating Game

It was no coincidence that the Bruise Cruise festival fell on the weekend of Valentine’s Day! For our second year, Bruise Cruise took the reigns as love boat and embraced the role as matchmaker with our very own dating game. See More

via bruisecruisefestival.com

Wow!

Are Diamonds Really a Girl’s Best Friend?

The diamond invention—the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem—is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade. Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only in a few riverbeds in India and in the jungles of Brazil, and the entire world production of gem diamonds amounted to a few pounds a year. In 1870, however, huge diamond mines were discovered near the Orange River, in South Africa, where diamonds were soon being scooped out by the ton. Suddenly, the market was deluged with diamonds. The British financiers who had organized the South African mines quickly realized that their investment was endangered; diamonds had little intrinsic value—and their price depended almost entirely on their scarcity. The financiers feared that when new mines were developed in South Africa, diamonds would become at best only semiprecious gems.

The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa. As De Beers took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it assumed many forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond Trading Company. In Israel, it was known as “The Syndicate.” In Europe, it was called the “C.S.O.” — initials referring to the Central Selling Organization, which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company. And in black Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with names like Diamond Development Corporation and Mining Services, Inc. At its height — for most of this century — it not only either directly owned or controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa but also owned diamond trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland.

De Beers proved to be the most successful cartel arrangement in the annals of modern commerce. While other commodities, such as gold, silver, copper, rubber, and grains, fluctuated wildly in response to economic conditions, diamonds have continued, with few exceptions, to advance upward in price every year since the Depression. Indeed, the cartel seemed so superbly in control of prices — and unassailable — that, in the late 1970s, even speculators began buying diamonds as a guard against the vagaries of inflation and recession.

via theatlantic.com

Apparently not. According to this article, we all have been subjected to the collective willpower of a diamond cartel and brilliant advertising campaign over the last 100+ years.

Again, when deciding to propose to your significant other – you don’t need a ring if the moment is right.

Image via Flickr user ilovebutter

6 Epic Jumbotron Marriage Proposal Failures

 

 

 

 

 

via commercialintegrator.com

Always know the answer before you ask. I repeat, always know the answer before you ask. Also, it may make more sense to share this moment just between the two of you.

When online dating and social media collide

“I found that dating was the best personal development tool — the feedback is strong — people are either interested or they are not. It’s a clear indication of how you’re showing up. You can’t ignore it – you stop dating or you grow,” he said. “The game is the ritual of courting, and in a game, if you don’t have rules, you can’t have fun,” he added.

The game of courtship has changed for singles who are increasingly plugged into several social networking sites, but are the rules different? With hundreds of millions of users using Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and now Google+ each month, how do singles navigate dating and meeting potential dates on social networks?

Both locally and around the country, people who have dated someone they met on Twitter or Facebook say the social networks are good ways to get a more complete picture of the object of their affections, for better or worse.

via statesman.com

Photo via Flickr user Dominik Brygier Photography

5 Things Single Women Hate To Hear

1) What’s Said: MAYBE YOU’RE NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH.

What’s Heard: “This can come off sounding like you’re passing judgment on effort,” says Anderson. “It’s better to encourage a single person to explore new relationships to the extent they are comfortable and to extend themselves in ways that feel natural and not forced.”

2) What’s Said: WEAR MORE MAKEUP.

What’s Heard: More than implying that the search for Mr. Right is as easy as brushing a spot of color onto the cheeks, this comment offends further by actually attacking a person’s core identity. “A woman presents herself according to what she defines as meaningful. Whether her style is glamorous belle or au naturelle, every woman should be allowed to be herself. There’s a man out there who is going to be attracted to her style, whatever it is. If she’s presenting herself as anyone other than who she really is, that’s false advertising and that’s going to backfire.”

via yourtango.com

Click through for the full list. Some common sense things, but worth a read in case you don’t know.

Photo from Flickr user littleprincessdiaries