The Dating Digital Podcast

Just a quick post to get the show up in the feed. Hint: It's about Facebook. Show Notes for episode 15 below… DDP Ep. 015 Show Notes [and CONTEST announcement!! - see the end of this post for details] On DDP episode numero quince we talk about… Happy St Patty’s day! Whether you’re Irish....or just pretending to be. We salute you, clinking beer bottles included. Facebook. It’s a topic of concern for new relationships as well as well-established ones - do you want your new flame to see your photos of you all happy and lovey-dovey with you ex? An online presence is increasingly important, and Facebook is a great tool for being able to verify that the person you are chatting with online has friends and photos and all that on Facebook - maybe you even have mutual friends! Facebook can also complicate things in terms of how much you share with someone you’ve just started to date... and what happens if you break up. At what point is it appropriate to change your FB relationship status to reflect your non-single status, when you start a new relationship? This needs to be a conversation that you have with the other person, to avoid misunderstanding. We are curious about what other people think about when/if it’s appropriate to change your relationships status on your FB profile, so we put together a super quick little poll to get your opinions - you can click HERE or look at the next oldest blog post for that. ETA: Sorry! The poll is now closed! LINKS DU JOUR We talk about the most flirtatious cities in the US as detailed by The Atlantic magazine, with Miami at the top and more than half the top ten being coastal cities, which we thought was pretty interesting. NYMag reports on a new dating site, Findyourfacemate.com, which matches you with people who look like you - weird! Facial recognition software will match you with other users who have similar major facial features, and then you can filter your matches by values and personality, just like many other dating sites. We’re not convinced we’d like to date someone who looks like us! We also mention a fun informal collection of pick up lines on a blog called BGoodScience which is worth checking out - they got each gender to rank their favorite pick up lines and then vote on each other’s choices. Joel talks about some of the new premium features introduced on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid - some previously free options are gone and you have to pay for them, which is too bad. On Plenty of fish you are no longer able to view when someone recieves, reads or deletes your message. On OKcupid, you are no longer allowed to search for matches with the following search filters are now only available to those with A+ Memberships. These include Body type, Attractiveness, Dating Persona, and Questions Answered. MESSAGES Anna M. wrote in to give us a link to a collection of "10 True Online Dating Horror Stories", so you can check that out - it's pretty funny! ------------------- Angela S. wrote in from Ottawa about a recent date where she was totally unimpressed by the guy: he didn’t dress up, couldn’t string together a conversation, and ogled the girl at the next table. Needless to say, when he tried to kiss her goodnight, Angela was not interested! ------------------- Rose in Halifax sent us a message about her experience with her last boyfriend with regard to Facebook. When they broke up, he posted very publicly to his network about the situation and misrepresented lots of details so that he got sympathy from his friends, basically trying to make Rose feel terrible. Now that she’s with her new partner, she doesn’t share her relationship status on her wall and they keep their communications private. This is definitely a case of one jerk changing his ex’s online information-sharing habits because he reacted so poorly to the whole situation! ------------------- Thanks to everyone who wrote in, we love hearing from you! CONTEST!!

As we rise from the ashes of our bout with the flu, we're faced with another problem, digital dating burnout. It's been weeks, maybe even months and you're just not getting anywhere with your online dating site. Maybe your dating world hands you an Etch A Sketch moment and you just can't find the motivation to dive back into online dating. What to do? We break it down. Letters from new listeners and new online daters and a handful of online news to make up for the missed week await in DDP episode 14! - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed Show Notes for episode 14 below… DDP Ep. 14 Show Notes On DDP episode numero catorce we talk about… An upcoming contest!! Stay tuned for that, we mention it at the very end of ep 14. And... Getting over the flu/colds! Ugh, that was horrible, and now we’re back. Online dating can be like a roller coaster, with the accompanying highs and lows. You might have gone out on a string of first dates without finding anyone you want to go on a second date with. Or you might have had no responses to your thoughtful, sincere messages for two months. Or you might have had the stars suddenly align, and have four dates lined up this week, only to find yourself too exhausted to enjoy it all. Have you experienced digital dating burnout? We talk about when it might be time to take a break, take some time to yourself, and regroup. There are usually  mechanisms on different dating websites to hide or suspend your profile - make use of these if you need a break! If you’re feeling exhausted with the whole process and aren’t totally into it, chances are that someone who contacts you will feel that, and not follow up with you, when you might have clicked better if you just had the chance to get your mojo back together. Lara talks about her experience a couple of years ago doing some online dating over the summer when she had more free time and it was a great time of year to be meeting lots of new people. Then it seemed like a good idea to take a break during the school year, returning to online dating with a whole new profile the following summer on a different site. Four months on, eight months off, four months on... and the whole experience felt worthwhile rather than exhausting. Don’t force yourself to get back online too soon because the people you are interacting with online will probably sense it. Joel agrees, mentioning that after he has taken a break from online dating, he finds that he drifts back to it when he’s ready, rather than consciously forcing himself to go back. LINKS DU JOUR Lara spotted an article from The Atlantic about computer dating in the 1960s - can you imaging not having any visual image of what your potential match looks like - or waiting weeks to hear back from the computer matching service??! Lara also gives Facebook a rare shoutout for adjusting their relationship categories to include ‘domestic partnership’ and ‘civil union’ in addition to statuses like ‘single’ and ‘married’. Good work getting with the times, FB. In a weird connection to FB relationship status settings, BreakUpNotifier.com will track your friends and alert you when someone you’ve been hiding a crush from because they’re taken suddenly becomes single - so you can pursue (stalk) them! Joel summarizes a cool short LifeHacker article that takes OKCupid data and identifies three questions that cut straight to the heart of how compatible you are with another person. We also got a tip from Donald via Twitter with a fun infographic about the perils of online dating, so check that out! And Joel talks about an Arkansas woman who was swindled out of $250K by an online dating scammer. If someone asks you for money, please think twice about the situation, especially if you’ve never met them! If something feels at all sketchy, IT IS!!   MESSAGES We heard from Chad in Santa Barbara, California,

It turns out that Valentine's Day is on a few minds these days. This episode of DDP, with the help of some new Twitter followers, we break the "holiday" down to basics. How much is Cupid worth? We'll let you know. Plus, we have an announcement about a guest spot on the LoveBytes Podcast and an email from LoveBytes co-host Kirk. Strap yourself in (or strap yourself down) V-day is coming and we've got you covered.   - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed Show Notes for episode 13 below…   DDP Ep. 013 Show Notes On DDP episode numero trece we talk about… Lara’s feeling the winter blahs and trying to kick a lingering cold, plus she has been getting out to swing dance lessons for the last month, which is super fun. Joel has been productive and is feeling pretty on top of things, which is great. The Canada Games just launched in Halifax so there will be lots of sporting and music events going on in town for the next two weeks, which is pretty exciting. It’s that time of year - Valentine’s Day. Joel feels like within the circles he moves in people are taking it pretty easy this year, keeping things low key. We talk about clichés and how we’ve celebrated or not celebrated V-Day in the past. Joel remembers one year when he really went out of his way to be super sweet to a girlfriend, and scored points with her mom along the way. Lara wonders if V-Day when you’re in a new relationship is kind of like a first date all over again - you want it to be unique and not corny - give it some thought and show that you’ve been paying attention. LINKS DU JOUR Match.com purchased OkCupid, so we discuss that and what some of the possible repercussions might be. Will either site change their business model now that they’re more intimately involved? We were recently invited to talk about online dating with the crew over at the LoveBytes podcast for a joint episode, so you can listen to that over on their website. We got together on Skype and chatted about our experiences with online dating and many of the things we touch on with the Dating Digital Podcast. Let us know if you have a chance to listen! MESSAGES We heard from Donald over who pointed us to more information on the OkCupid acquisition by Match.com - the price of love is apparently $50 million. Yowza! ------------------- We also hear from Lisa via Twitter who mentioned that her colleagues at Ketchum Public Relations in Toronto put together a list of tips for Valentine’s Day as a fun team building exercise, and she wanted to share that with our listeners. The main focus of the piece is to be yourself and plan ahead. It’s a fun read, the main points being Put a little effort into it Know your audience Make it personal There’s a time and a place (don’t break up with someone on V-Day!) Don’t try too hard Check out the site for more details. ------------------- We also had an email from Kirk in Utah from the LoveBytes podcast, who tells a funny anecdote about a Valentine’s Day fight he witnessed on a college campus a few years ago -- apparently a certain young man had told one lady friend he had to cram for an exam, and then used that time instead to entertain a second lady friend. How did it end? Listen to the podcast to find out! ------------------- NEXT EPISODE - post-Valentine's & dating burnout Our next episode will be in a couple of weeks.  Send us your post Valentine’s day stories so we can hear about your successes - or disasters! We’re also thinking of talking about dating burnout - what do you do when you start to lose steam after all this work setting up profiles and sending out messages to people who you may never hear back from, or who you don’t click with when you meet in person? Tips and questions are welcome - what concerns do you have on this topic? Any great techniques that have helped you stay in the game? You can write us, find us on Twitter (@ddpodcast, @joelduggan,

Lara and Joel chat with Claudia Habib, a professional event planner and wedding planner about her experience organizing speed dating and similar events here in Halifax. The conversation is a bit more local than our normal fare, but no doubt anyone interested in speed dating will find it interesting. Don't forget our next episode is going to be our first Valentine's Day episode! We want to hear your thoughts and stories about Valentine's Day. So, send those emails and voicemails our way and we'll be sure to include them in the show. Here's how to email the show. Thanks so much for stopping by Claudia! Simply Weddings @ClaudiaHabib - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed Show Notes for episode 12 below… DDP Ep. 012 Show Notes On DDP episode numero doce we talk about… How nasty the weather has been! Like much of the east coast here in North America we’ve been in the middle of a series of storms. Lara got soaked on her way to an early morning meeting, while Joel slept through it. Ha! And we have a special guest, Claudia, who is an event planner in Halifax. In the past Claudia was involved in organizing speed dating events locally, so we talk about how those went in the past, some of the obstacles and some of the good points. How can you get a balanced gender ration? What’s the best day of the week or time of day? What’s the right price point for an event, and how can you get people to commit so that  you know how many people to plan for? Is there a season that’s better than others for speed dating events? If you have any ideas for how these kind of events can be successful, let us know! Claudia has some great experience behind her as an event planner, and she specialises in weddings so if you have any special events coming up in your life, feel free to follow her business on Twitter as @SimplyWeddNS or check out her website, Simply Weddings. NEXT EPISODE - Valentine’s Day! Our next episode will be in a couple of weeks.  We’re planning to talk about Valentine’s day experiences, so send us stories! The good, the bad, the never-again-to-be-mentioned (except on the podcast, we can keep it anonymous!!) How would you describe the perfect Valentine’s date? Do you prefer to celebrate by burning your ex in effigy? Dish!! You can write us, find us on Twitter (@ddpodcast, @joelduggan,@larakillian), send us an mp3 voicemail, all the traditional stuff. Send your email to: datingdigital-at-gmail-dot-com. Leave us a review in the iTunes store, and check out Joel’s comic at StarcrossedOnline. Thanks for listening!

In the first episode of DDP after the holiday break we've got lots of great listener email to talk about. We have an important message to share about meeting new people online, an email from Jenn O. about her overseas speed dating experience (A primer for our next show.) and a great question from Adam F. about the seemingly psychic connection that can sometimes happen between two people in an intimate relationship. We also field a few pending questions about ourselves and the experiences that we bring to the podcast as well as set the primer for upcoming episodes on speed dating and Valentines Day! Keep those great emails coming! - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed Show Notes for episode 11 below… DDP Ep. 011 Show Notes On DDP episode numero once we talk about… Our recording space, our holidays, and taking it easy over the break. Plus fun holiday parties and actually meeting a few listeners in person! NEWS Be safe when meeting someone you met online! From local police this week Lara read a story about two incidents recently where a man who met someone online and planned to meet in person for the first time was robbed after picking up the date and driving to a secluded area. The date had friends waiting who robbed the driver of the vehicle - scary!  Point is, be really careful when you’re meeting someone you’ve met online, meet in a public place, don’t pick them up or let them pick you up... yikes. And in less frightening news, a story from Newsweek, “The Curse of Cute”, about a survey of male OK Cupid users that shows that being beautiful isn’t always an advantage - women often get more attention and more time is spent on their profiles when they’re not conventionally pretty. Having a big nose or unusual chin might actually make you stand out. Interesting! Joel mentions that whenever he sees a really gorgeous picture of a woman online, warning bells go off and he suspects they might not be a real person. MESSAGES Craig T writes from Raleigh, North Carolina, to ask us a bit about ourselves - how old we are, whether we’re married, and whether we’ve ever dated each other. You’ll have to listen to hear our answers! Craig also wonders about the way we talk about meeting tons of people online and then ignoring some of them - we really don’t mean to sound like we have the luxury of being too pick - and both of us have been ignored online plenty of times. We’re planning to post more info and pics of ourselves on the site, so stay tuned for a bit more information here as well. ------------------------------- We’re planning to talk about speed dating in the next episode. Before the holidays, we got a message from Jenn O. who tried speed dating while she was living in England a few years ago. She went with a group of twenty something girlfriends who thought it would be a blast - and it was a good time. In the scenario that Jenn was part of, the girls were sitting around tables at a pub and the guys moved between tables. There were 5 minutes per person and a buzzer would signal time to move on. Everyone kept track of anyone they were interested in on a sheet of paper. Jenn was looking for someone who could laugh easily and had some interesting things to talk about. She was turned off by guys with a set script or speech. If at the end of the evening you had checked someone on your list and they had checked you, the next day you got a text message from the organizers so you could follow up. Jenn ended up meeting up with two of the guys she met that night, and though they ended up not being long term romantic relationships, one turned into a very good friend. Jenn points out that this kind of event requires an open mind and an outgoing personality, plus you shouldn’t take it all too seriously! Let us know what you think about speed dating! ------------------- We had a message from Scott P. for episode 10,

A short, solo update on some of the show topics we're looking at covering in upcoming episodes of DDP. From the holidays to Facebook to speed dating and maybe even a bit about your co-hosts. Stay tuned! - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed

In our tenth episode, Joel and guest host Laura chat about dating in and around the holidays. With all the holiday socializing going on, is it a time of plenty? Or are most people wrapped up in their own busy schedules? And what about New Years? No one...

In Part 2 of our talk about deal breakers, we focus on the online deal breakers that have us clicking to the next profile without another thought. Joel talks a bit about Starcrossed hitting the one year mark as an online comic and has a chance to respond to a male listener contributing some of his deal breakers. How do education, cussing and Big Macs factor into dating? Listen and find out. We had another fantastic response from our DDP listeners for this episode. If you write the show, please feel free to mention where you're writing from! It's great fun for us to find out who is listening to the show, and where you are listening from. Keep those emails comin'! - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed Tweet Show Notes for episode 9 below… DDP Ep. 009 Show Notes On DDP episode numero nueve we talk about… Lara’s been super busy as per usual, and Joel is celebrating the one year anniversary of his comic! He has fun plans for putting together a book of the comic and thinking about how to keep getting the word out about his art. Last week we talked about deal breakers when meeting someone for the first time in person. This week we talk about online deal breakers - what really doesn’t do it for you when you’re getting to know someone online, or even when you first just skim their profile - or even just first glance at their picture? Joel mentions some pet peeves to do with photos for online profiles - such as if a person doesn’t have one at all, or has five of pretty much the same photo, just taken seconds apart by a crummy built in laptop camera. He also points out that people who take the time to write that they’re looking for someone who will treat them well or who won’t be a jerk probably won’t avoid jerks by writing something like that. Mundane hobbies like shopping also tick Joel off - sitting on the couch or exercising your credit card are not hobbies! Lara reiterates her frustration with profiles that are poorly written. It’s so easy to check your grammar and spelling these days, and she’d prefer to go out with someone who pays attention to detail. Short messages with no substance are also pretty annoying. Try to make a connection, take the time to read the person’s profile before you write to them! It’s good to see not only some effort going into a first contact message online, but some effort put into the other person’s profile when you go to check them out after they’ve sent a message. EMAIL & COMMENTS We had lots of great email and comments on the blog! We heard from... Laura L., who writes that she is frustrated by people who are not honest on their profiles, and mentions someone she went out with who wrote on his profile that he didn’t have children, then revealed AFTER their first date that he’s divorced with a four year old. We talk about understanding that it may not be comfortable to put everything about your past social life on an online profile for people to read, but you do need to be thoughtful about not being misleading, and about bringing up important pieces of information (like children!) as soon as possible. Knowing yourself and what you can and cannot handle is important - if you absolutely cannot imagine being with someone who has kids, or if you have responsibility for a child, maybe it’s better to be absolutely clear about that on your own profile, to try to avoid disappointment and miscommunication. ------------------------- Andrea D. writes that she is very frustrated by guys who think it’s ok to flirt online and tell her they’d like to take her out, only to disappear completely rather than finalize a plan. Grrr! Both Lara and Joel have definitely been there. Unfortunately this happens often, and even though it should be easy to send a quick message saying that you can’t make it to a planned meeting, or are no longer interested in meeting at all,

We dig into deal breakers, the things that make you drop the hammer in those first few dates. From smoking and bad table manners to bad kissers and clueless PDA. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the show this week. We have enough content to do two shows on deal breakers. In Part 1 this week we discuss the deal breakers that happen when you're actually on a date. In Part 2 we're going to talk about online deal breakers. So if you've got a list of things that make you click

We talk about how we handle first dates, how online dating has changed the definition of a first date, and what seems to have become the default first date, meeting at a cafe. Lara discusses "the best" first date location in Halifax according to The Best Of article in The Coast and we have an in depth question in listener email about staying friends after dating. - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed Tweet Show Notes for episode 7 below… DDP Ep. 007 Show Notes On DDP episode numero siete we talk about… We’re both so busy, time’s flying as usual. Joel was waiting around for maintenance guys half the day and they showed up as he was getting ready to pack up and record this episode. Of course. It has been raining a bit and the fall weather is not nice right now. Today's topic is first dates. Do they cause anxiety? Are they the most fun time you’ve ever had? Joel says he doesn’t get too nervous when meeting someone from the online world, but maybe is a little more nervous if he has already met the person face to face, like at a party. So what’s the difference between meeting someone for the first time if you’ve only interacted online, or meeting up with someone you share acquaintances with? If you’ve met someone in person and you decide to go out, you already know there’s some mutual attraction. But if you meet someone you’ve only interacted with online, it’s more of a first meeting, and less of a first date. So where do you go on a first date? A cafe is an easy afternoon location, and it can turn into a walk after or a longer chat, if it’s going well. But it’s also easy to cut things short if you’re not enjoying yourself. If you’ve committed to dinner, you’re kind of stuck and it can be harder to make your escape if things aren’t going well! Lara feels like going to dinner is just too much, and a movie is a really bad idea. Leave some space for getting to know each other, but also the opportunity to get going if you’re not enjoying the encounter. Joel prefers a late afternoon coffee meeting for the first time when it’s still light out and things are casual. It’s important to feel safe and comfortable. Lara asks Joel if he would usually make a plan for a second date right away if things are going well during that first meeting. So we talk a bit about how we plan a next encounter... or let this first meeting stretch on into dinner if it’s going well! LINKS DU JOUR Lara was reading about “the Best Of” annual awards this week in The Coast, our local source for info about what’s going on around town, entertainment, music, all that good stuff. One of the categories was best place for a first date! We talk about how the winning locale is a large, generally crowded central casual rabbit warren of a restaurant/bar with poor service and bad lighting, so we’re not convinced about being able to find someone for the first time in there. Second place went to a more upscale martini bar in town, which is definitely nicer for a fancy drink, but not a great spot for dinner because they have a lot of low tables. Leaning over your food with your face down doesn’t exactly enable great conversation! Lara would have put the third place finisher, the waterfront, at that top of the list, because it’s just such a great place to wander for a chat. Not good for an entire first date, but a nice part of it perhaps in good weather. Another piece that caught Lara’s eye this week was a link via @Slate’s Twitter feed about speed dating. It summarizes a recently released 45 page study about how likely it is that you’ll get involved with or sleep with someone you meet in a speed dating setting! Neither of us has been to a speed dating event, but the research, published in the European Journal of Personality (PDF link), is kind of thought-provoking. Have you ever been speed dating? We’d love to hear about your experiences! We also play an intro to another podcast about dating,

We decide to save the real digital dating horror stories for another episode but we do have some tales of bad timing and happenstance to tide you over. Sick of seeing your ex on Facebook? They might actually be helping you out with that. Of course we dig into the mail bag -AND- laugh with Jared M. in our first voicemail! - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed Tweet Show Notes for episode 6 below… DDP Ep. 006 Show Notes On DDP episode numero seis we talk about… The fall has really arrived, temps have dropped! Lara attended the evening art festival in Halifax, Nocturne, and Joel has a shiny new microphone for us to record on. We didn’t get as many Halloween horror stories as we thought we might, so we’re saving one or two for next time, feel free to send yours in if you didn’t get around to it for this episode! So instead we talk about a couple of awkward or annoying situations we’ve found ourselves in. Joel shares a story from awhile back where he met one person for a casual first date and had a nice time, but didn’t hit it off. We’re calling her Wilma. A few days later he happened to have a coffee date with someone we’ll call Betty, who he hit it off with and wanted to see again. It was frustrating not hear back from Betty after a little while, but Joel found out later that Wilma and Betty were actually friends and had talked about their dates! The feelings were mutual in that Wilma didn’t feel a connection that would merit further dating, but Betty would have liked to see Joel again. Unfortunately Wilma felt it was weird that Joel had gone out on a casual date with each of them in a short time. Lara points out that it’s not unusual to have a couple of dates lined up, especially first dates, with different people, when the whole point is to meet new people you might be compatible with! If you have time, go for it! If you space out dates, you may miss out on meeting as many people as you could. It’s really too bad that Wilma was so uncomfortable with the situation. Lara says she doesn’t have any horror stories either, but talks about connecting awhile back with a guy online whose profile disappeared after they had been chatting for a few weeks. He resurfaced and they kept chatting. Finally a coffee date was arranged but the guy was a total no-show, which was annoying. As she was sitting there waiting for this guy, and waiting, and waiting, another guy comes in with a giant backpack. Lara kept looking up for the no-show guy and making eye contact with the other guy. Finally she ended up having coffee with the traveling man and having a great chat, making the best of that situation. Later and back online the first guy responded to Lara’s message about him missing their arranged coffee date by saying that he hadn’t been sure Lara was going to show. We chat about how easy it is these days to send someone a text or quick message saying you’re going to be late or can’t make it. Waiting for someone, especially someone you’re meeting for the first time, can be stressful enough! Frustrating! LINKS DU JOUR Joel talks about an article he saw on Mashable about Facebook’s possible attempts to show you less pictures of your ex in the “Photo Memories” section of your profile, which sounds like a good thing. The algorithm basically looks at tagged photos and if there is anything tagged with the name of someone you’ve been in a relationship with, but are no longer, it won’t show you that pic. But what if you never changed your relationship status? The algorithm won’t work. Curses! Lara saw this freaky site recently called I’mdatingmyself.com, where there are lots of pictures of couples, and one person’s face/features have been photoshopped onto the other person’s face - so both people in the pic actually have the same face! It’s amazing how feminine a guy’s features can look once they’re surrounded by long hair and some jewelry. We also play an intro to another podcast about dating,

You've found someone online you want to email... Now what!? In this episode of DDP we dive into the details of writing emails to someone who has caught your online eye. Lara shares a cool SMS trick for rescuing yourself from a bad date and we hear from a listener who cautions cretins that her city just ain't big enough for shenanigans. - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed Tweet Show Notes for episode 5 below… DDP Ep. 005 Show Notes On DDP episode numero cinco we talk about… What’s new with us? Joel saw the Social Network movie, Lara has plans to see it, and Joel has the new iPhone 4 (He’s in the process of checking out some of the apps available. We talk about breaking the ice online, and all the different ways sites have to help users make a first connection. You might be able to favourite someone, send a rose, wink at someone - showing someone that you’re interested without actually putting yourself out there. At what point do you want to make that first contact, or how do you react when someone first contacts you?  We talk about some of the mechanisms that prevent users from contacting each other as well. Joel prefers to get an email rather than messing around with winking or those sorts of things.  Next Joel wonders, when you receive a first message from someone, do you read the message first or go check out their profile first. We agree that we’d read the message first and get a sense about whether the person has made an effort, and then go check out their profile, probably before messaging them back. Lara asks, how long should a first message be? That’s a debatable point, but we both agree that messages can be too short - a phrase or simple ‘hey, what’s up?’ just doesn’t cut it. If you don’t have enough time to send a real message that shows you’ve actually read our profile, don’t  both sending a message at all! Joel shares a great example of a female user on one of the dating sites with a great way to screen messages - at the foot of her very well filled out profile she had a code phrase (pineapple peanut butter, for example!) and if that phrase wasn’t in the subject line of messages, she wouldn’t even bother to open them. Smart. No matter how that first contact happens, Lara says the whole point is to get a conversation started. If each person doesn’t make an effort to ask a question or offer something about themselves that the other person can respond to, the conversation will die pretty fast. There needs to be a back and forth element. Send us your thoughts about making that first contact, and any funny stories you have! EMAIL Veronica sent us a story about running into a guy she met on Plenty of Fish and had dated briefly in Halifax last year, but things hadn’t gone far because he lived in another city and was only in town for a short while. When she saw him again he looked extremely uncomfortable, but she stopped to talk with him anyway. Turns out he has lived in Halifax the entire time, and got married only a few weeks after they stopped dating! He also completely lied about his type of studies and job, as party of telling Veronica that he lived in another city. Veronica was pretty unimpressed with the deception there. Ick! Veronica shared another story about her friend Betty, who went out a few times with a guy she also met on Plenty of Fish, Joe. When Betty described Joe to Veronica, Veronica thought he sounded a lot like a guy she knows, named Paul. So Betty pulls up Joe’s profile, and Veronica recognized Paul! Paul was using a fake name as part of his online dating presence. Lara wonders at what point in a relationship do you tell someone you’ve been lying about your name this whole time? Not exactly trust-inspiring! Plus Halifax is way too small to try something like this, maybe it’s possible to pull it off in a bigger city? LINK DU JOUR Lara mentions a site she found that will send you a text automatically and possibly get you

How do you connect with someone in the sea of students? We talk about the role social media plays in student dating, how relatively small campus social circles can sometimes lead to unwanted dating overlap and our own experiences with dating in school. We have a few emails on the topic as well as a response to our discussion of match making and eHarmony on our last episode. - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed Tweet Show Notes for episode 4 below... DDP Ep. 004 Show Notes: On DDP episode numero cuatro we talk about... Lara hung out in Toronto last weekend, where the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has been going on, and she has been busy the last couple of weeks volunteering with the Atlantic Film Festival (AFF) here in Halifax. Joel has been super busy with his work, and noticing that the whole city is crawling with students now that the new academic year is beginning! So what’s it like to be in a city with a new influx of students? There might be some people you’d like to avoid after a bad date or two in previous years, and others you’d like to run into on a regular basis! The fall is a great time to feel optimistic about doing some dating as new people move into your city, or if you move to a new place as well. Lara talks about her very first experience with online dating on Match.com as an undergrad in Boston, when she enlisted a roommate to trail her for the evening as a safety mechanism. It is really exciting to be a student in a big city with new people everywhere. You can make connections at other universities and use online dating as a way to meet people you wouldn’t normally encounter in your daily routine. If you feel weird about asking a friend to tail you to a date, these days it’s even easier to make sure you feel safe in a situation, by asking a friend to call or text you during the date, of course. Joel didn’t do any online dating as an undergrad, but was at a smaller university where it would have been more awkward because of the small size of the community. In a place like that, chances are pretty high you might run into a bad date at a party the next weekend. Uncomfortable! Facebook has changed everything. Lara and Joel didn’t have FB as undergrads, but did have access to ICQ and then MSN Messenger for chatting online. Things have changed so much! We get slightly sidetracked talking about when FB launched (2004) and reviews of the brand new The Social Network Movie, opening October 1. Will you see it? These days you can probably connect within someone you encounter briefly, especially on campus, because you may find them through mutual networks online. We talk about the ease of finding someone online and following up with them if you don't get a phone number the first time. Joel and Lara have slightly different gender-based perspectives on how much information you might want to have available on FB, for example, that is visible to people outside your network. Listener email: Laura L. wrote about our topic from last week, and her experience in trying eHarmony.com after trying a couple of free sites. She found that the same people were on the paid site, and didn’t have more luck there, which is really interesting. With respect to today’s topic, Laura also comments that September is a good time to start online dating. New things are starting up, everyone’s full of energy, it can be a great time to meet people! So Laura encourages everyone to give it a shot this fall - you might have someone new to cuddle with come colder weather! Venessa M. commented on online dating and writes about the danger of running into someone on campus that you don’t want to - or in being set up with someone you already know! She had a friend who got set up on her first ever online date and then realized that she had previously been set up on a blind date with the same person - and rejected him! So it was really awkward.

How do you match up? Birds of a feather, like minds and... B.O.? On this episode of DDP we dig into online match making and how some of the different sites go about trying to put you in touch with a potential match. We also have some email in response to our last episode and a listener comment on a match making fail! - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed Tweet Show Notes for episode 3 below… DDP Ep. 003 Show Notes: On DDP episode numero tres we talk about...Hurricane Earl, which hit Canada’s Atlantic Provinces over the weekend (sorry, we couldn’t help ourselves!) How different sites match users: by vital stats (age, location, values, the basics) what kind of relationship/encounter you’re looking for Dating distance (is a whole other method of spatial measurement) We talk about matching dealbreakers for ourselves, like wanting to start a family or not, smokers v. nonsmokers, that sort of thing.OkCupid draws people in through quizzes - one of us thought that was a fun way to get matched, the other one didn’t really love the endless series of questions! Lara got drawn in through the “Are you a nerd, geek or a dork?” quiz (which is pretty fun!)We also mention echemistry.com, eharmony.com, and perfectmatch.com as examples of sites that have their own algorithms for matching users. Psychologist may be involved. NEWS Joel found a site that matches you by your DNA. Um, yikes. Where’s the romance? ScientificMatch.com Lara likes Alikewise.com, which matches you to users who’ve read the same books. What can she say, she’s a bookworm at heart. (We do get a little sidetracked talking about whether people are in fact still reading in this day and age!) She originally found out about Alikewise through Ruth Franklin at The New Republic, here. EMAIL Jared M. writes about an experience he had through the site Lavalife. As a shy person, he spent some time while living in Miramichi establishing a relationship with a girl on the site. Since she didn’t live nearby, it took a long time to plan a meeting. When finally Jared planned to stop by her house, he got lost and couldn’t find it! He was too nervous to go through with the meeting as planned and regretted it later. Oh, geography, how you get in the way. We talk about how tough this situation is, especially after sending messages back and forth for two months - but also how awkward it can be to meet someone at their home! Be safe out there, guys. Jenn O. writes about a really bad matching system. She had tried PlentyOfFish, and been disappointed by crappy profiles and people who weren’t taking things seriously. So she tried the more complicated system at eHarmony. She still found that there were profiles even on a paid site that were really low quality, even smutty. Basically, buyer beware. What a waste of time and money! Who are these people who take the time to build up a profile, get approved, find matches, and then fill it with trash?? Harrumph. NEXT TIME Back to school! Next episode or possibly the following one we’d like to talk about the experience of moving to a new city (possibly as a student) and dating. Do you have a story about starting university and going on a disastrous date or trying a new dating site in order to meet people? Email us (datingdigital AT gmail DOT com) with your thoughts or stories about being a student, moving to a new city, or your experience in general with trying to make connections in the world of online dating. Check us out on Twitter, and feel free to record a voicemail and send that to our gmail account as well. We’ll be back in 2-3 weeks with another episode and look forward to hearing from you in the meantime!

Dating profile pic dos, don'ts and oh-hell-nos. We talk about one of the most important features of your online dating profile, your picture! Join us for our two cents, as well as some emails from listeners talking about their experiences and recommendations for your profile pictures. - Direct MP3 Download - iTunes Subscription - RSS Feed Tweet Show Notes for episode 2 below… DDP Ep. 002 Show Notes: On DDP episode numero dos Joel and Lara talk about... Our thoughts on profile pictures: have more than one picture! make sure your pic isn’t taken from too far away pictures should be clear, from a good perspective thoughtful accessories - if a someone has a hat on in every shot it’s hard to tell what they really look like multiple pics of the same thing - eg 3 shots in a row taken from your webcam in the same shirt etc. smile! Why post a pic of yourself looking grumpy or too serious? clothing: should be appropriate for the activity (partial nudity means you’re likely to be contacted by a different crowd than if you have normal clothes on) what about pictures that show someone doing something they say they don’t do (eg smoking) cropping - be careful about only uploading the picture you intend to - you may think you’re able to crop out your friends in an image, but when users click on your thumbnail they may be able to see the entire shot, so take care Having more than one pic is a good idea, but if you don’t have many photos of yourself, what do you do? Joel recommends trawling your Facebook friends’ photo albums, snagging pictures you’re in, and cropping individual photos appropriately. Pictures are really important, but what else? NEWS Dr. Marina Adshade, Professor of Economics at Dalhousie Univeristy in Halifax and instructor of the course, The Economics of Sex and Love: “Do Women Really Value Income Over Looks in a Mate?” Gavin Clarke: “iPhone users get more sex than Android Fans" Listener email: Darryl B. writes about his first experience with online dating - he arranged to meet someone he’d made a connection with on an online dating site, only to be unable to recognize her because her profile pic didn’t look like her and was taken from the awkward “downshot” angle. It was really awkward and disappointing to be surprised that way! Thanks for sharing your story, Darryl! Anne M. writes about her pet peeves with profile pics - don’t use a mirror, and bathroom pics look terrible! Use a timer or get a friend to take a picture. Leave something to the imagination - keep your clothes on! Pictures should just be of you, or if there are several people, make sure to point out which one is you. A good picture needs to be clear and natural. Thanks for sharing your pet peeves, Anne! Email us (datingdigital AT gmail DOT com) with your thoughts or questions about profile pictures for your online profile, what you look for in other people’s online profiles, and stories about your experience with trying to make connections in the world of online dating. Check us out on Twitter (@ddpodcast), and feel free to record a voicemail and send that to our gmail account as well. We’ll be back in 2-3 weeks with another episode and look forward to hearing from you in the meantime!