Any Website Can Be a Dating Site

(CNN) -- Recently, a reader dropped the following query into our inbox:

“This may be a stupid question, but recently a friend told me he’s heard of people using Facebook as a dating service. My FB friends and I (admittedly middle-aged) can’t figure out how you “meet” people on Facebook. I (and most of my friends) are FB friends with people we actually know. How would one use Facebook as a dating site?”

- Flummoxed by Facebook Flirting

Oh, Flummoxed! There are no stupid questions -- only painfully, painfully stupid people. But I digress.... .

Social media flirting is a phenom that has been around since the message board/chatroom days, when starry-eyed 13-year-olds and rheumy-eyed 61-year-olds traded “A/S/L?"s with optimistic abandon.

A quick survey of my social followers -- on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram -- revealed that, among my socially savvy circle of folks, people have dated/married suitors they met on MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, MyYearBook, Yahoo Messenger and Usenet, to name a few.

In fact, this past week, the story of how one couple met on Words With Friends swept the blogosphere: Megan Lawless and Jasper Jasperse started playing the smartphone-based word game and were pitted against each other randomly. After talking via the game’s “Chat” feature and later communicating on Skype and e-mail, the pair met in person, and, eventually married -- Jasperse moving from his native Netherlands to Chicago to be with his bride.

While all of this may seem weird/creepy/slightly sad to anyone who didn’t grow up a digital native, consider this: Americans now spend about a quarter of their online time using social networks. If you’re giving your monitor the old glassy eyeball instead of tipping back highballs at your local TV-plastered sports bar, that’s likely where you’re going to make connections.

However, the actual process of meeting people via social media is still rather, well, creepy. (Less creepy than back in the days of message boards and AOL chatrooms, but creepy all the same.)

Assuming that you are not, in fact, a weirdo who collects spleens (we give you guys so much leeway on this factor), here are some tips on how to make any social media site a dating site without being a creep.

Don’t:

Compliment incessantly: You know that dude who staggers up to you at the bar, breathes whiskey into your face and murmurs, “Hey lady, you got mad cleavage, yo.” He’s creepy, right? He’s even kind of creepy when he goes a less aggressive route and compliments something benign, like your eyes ("You have lovely orbs... May I have them?”). Why? Because he’s stating his intentions off the bat, and our society -- addled by years and years of romantic comedy-viewage -- prefers a bit of a chase.

When engaging with people via social media, talking about their appearance/demeanor/eyeballs is even more unsettling than at the bar, because you don’t know the person in question and you can’t see their face in the flesh. Instead of going directly for flattery, start up a conversation with the object of your desire, thereby charming them with your wit and whimsy rather than empty poesy (or straight-up sexual harassment).

Come to think of it, that’s probably good advice for comporting yourself at ye olde sports bar as well.

Repeat yourself: If your hoped-for intended doesn’t reply to the first five tweets you send him about your shared love of fossils and tesseracts, cease and desist with your wooing. He doesn’t like you. Here’s a tissue.

Erase your face: No one wants to date a picture of a donut. When choosing your avatar, make sure to show your face, or, at the very least, link to a website featuring a picture of your mug. If you’re sensitive about your big-ass nose or your shiny head, just chill out. Ugly people get married, too -- I see their progeny on the subway daily.

Exhibit your courtship: Some initial public bantering is fine -- via Twitter, Facebook Walls, etc -- but if you carry on your heavy flirting ("OMG! I love the shape of your broken nose! You look like a matador!”) in a public forum, you risk annoying your friends and followers or, worse, embarrassing your potential date -- especially if you ask out said potential date publicly.

Have we learned nothing from that dude who asked that girl to marry him on the JumboTron? Twitter allows you to DM people, Facebook boasts private messages and even Tumblr has an internal messaging service called Fan Mail now -- there’s no excuse for blithely PDA’ing the hell out of your swain.

Play phantom: We’re assuming that you actually want to meet the object of your late-night Google stalking, so when it comes to digital flirting -- bring it offline ASAP. We’re also assuming that said person wants to meet you (we’re trusting you again here, guys -- hopefully you possess the social skills to recognize interest, unlike that aforementioned dude in the sports bar).

So why not ask them to hang in person? Or, better yet, in the presence of tons and tons of friends who can waylay a possible kidnapping/murder scenario.

Has Facebook Changed the Dating World?

In a society that is driven by gadgets, money and social networking sites, it is no wonder that Facebook has become a part of everyday life. The ability to share news and photographs at the click of a button from the comfort of your own home is certainly appealing. Sure, Facebook makes communicating easy and sure, Facebook allows you to stay in touch with people you would otherwise never see, but using these sites to date over the internet? Is that really what the world has come to? Gone are the days where one had to actually drive to someone’s house and knock on their front door if they wanted to see them.

Technology, including Facebook, has made us lazy and stolen our social skills. It is so easy to make a flippant request over the net when you’re not talking to someone face-to-face; heaven forbid if we actually had to pick up a landline phone to ask someone to the movies so that they could hear the sincerity, or lack of it, in our voice. Social networking sites such as Facebook have made it too easy to organise dates with people that we know, and people we don’t. Honestly, how well can you know someone that you meet over the internet? So what if they’ve made a couple of jokes, made you laugh and seem genuinely nice? A lecherous old man could be sitting behind the computer screen!

What we also need to realise is that the internet gives people fake courage. Some people might be able to ask their monitor out for dinner, but if it came to asking you out to your face, they would most probably flee. As a seventeen year-old female, I can honestly say I’ve seen my fair share of dates organised through technology. Sadly, the majority of these dates end the same way. Through an e-mail, an SMS, or simply a line on your Facebook wall where it is visible to everyone.

The teenagers of today have become cowardly, and when I say teenagers, I mean both male and females. People who wouldn’t normally talk are communicating online, and what good is it doing? Does this mean the relationship will remain solely online or via mobile phones? If you’ve never spoken a word to their face before, what happens when you see them down the street? They might be you’re number one friend online, but what do you say when you actually see them? To me, these unexpected, casual meetings in real life will be, at the minimum, extremely awkward.

And no, I’m not being naA?ve or narrow-minded. I’ve heard the love stories where the average, single girl meets her prince charming online and they live happily ever after. I’ve heard the people who claim they would never have met their soul mates had Facebook not been created. I know their stories, but how often does this actually happen? We all know the answer. Not much. Not much at all. Out of all the Facebook members and people who have a social networking account, these fairytales occur maybe one in a million cases, maybe less. Either way, the badly ended relationships far outweigh these magic, romantic stories.

Facebook is a great way to communicate; I honestly believe that. But when dating is involved, a little, old-fashioned bravery in terms of face-to-face communication would not go astray. I mean, really, how can you honestly know who you are talking to online? You can’t truly know a person simply from interacting with them online, not even in this day and age. We’re all waiting for our fairytale. We all want our very own happy ending. But Prince Charming, if you really are out there, please just give me a call. I’d rather hear you’re voice.

Get a Cloud Girlfriend

By Sara Yin

More details have come in about Cloud Girlfriend, a California-based startup with an incredulous premise: it will match you to your ideal girlfriend for an Internet-only relationship.

According to co-founder David Fuhriman (left), the site that launches on April 26 will not be like the one described in March.

For starters, the service will be free (“unlike your last date,” the slogan says.) So are additional cloud girlfriends.

“What we are creating blurs the lines between reality and imagination,” Fuhriman said in a statement. “We allow people to define their ideal self, find their perfect girlfriend or boyfriend and connect and interact as if that person existed. We will fulfill the 4 steps on the landing page, but not create any fake accounts.”

The four steps outlined at Cloud Girlfriend are: 1. Define your perfect girlfriend. Step 2: We bring her into existence. Step 3: Connect and interact with her publicly on your favorite social network Step 4: Enjoy a public long distance relationship with your perfect girl.

Fuhriman said that besides being a “fun game for people to play” it will also teach people how to manage relationships.

“Like the saying goes, ’Practice makes perfect.’ The site can help people come together and practice managing a real relationship- and then take it into the real world.” (Un-ironic question: what world is this man living in?)

The founders behind Cloud Girlfriend are still talking to Facebook to make sure they comply with its terms and conditions, but the app has no intention of using fake Facebook profiles. Instead, a real woman will communicate with you through your cloud girlfriend’s profile. Users can choose from a library of photos to determine what his or her cloud girlfriend looks like.

So even though you know that your hot, witty, smart, rich new girlfriend on Facebook is faker than fake, your Facebook friends may not know the difference.

Sign up at Cloud Girlfriend for an invite to the launch.

Social Gaming Meets Dating

The dating game has gotten more social with sites such as Zoosk incorporating Facebook-like features. But why not tap into one of the most popular aspects of Facebook — social games — to make dating more fun? That’s the idea of CupidsPlay, a new startup based in Bellevue, Wash. looking to leverage the power of games to bring potential matches together.

The site, which is officially launching Wednesday, is designed to use social games as a bridge to help singles break the ice. It’s an idea that’s still largely untapped, but it makes sense. Social games have a lot of engagement, are very viral and boast a good balance of genders, which is necessary for any dating site.

“If you look at the demographics of social games, it’s 54 percent female, 56 percent single and 74 percent said they’ve met new people in games,” said Founder and CEO Philip Yuen. “It’s really perfect for meeting new people.”

CupidsPlay is launching with about a dozen casual titles, including familiar genres like farming and restaurant-themed games. Users create profiles and identify the kind of people they’re looking for. As they play games, they publish their progress and requests for help, which other potential matches can see. A player can then choose to engage another person or help him or her out by buying them a virtual good.

Yuen said the goal is to enlist social and Flash game makers to build their games atop CupidsPlay, so CupidsPlay is making it easy for Facebook developers to port their games to the site. Developers can also run cross-platform titles on both Facebook and CupidsPlay. The attraction for developers is added distribution and the potential of making more money via sales of virtual goods. Yuen said the site will be free, but users will be able to buy virtual goods to help them progress in games or share as gifts for others. He expects members will not be shy about buying goods to help potential matches level up. CupidsPlay is not taking a cut of the virtual good sales yet though that could change in the future.

Yuen created CupidsPlay last year following three years at Amazon ( s amzn), which bought his mobile payment start-up TextPayMe. CupidsPlay closed half a million in seed funding two weeks ago from Clearstone Venture Partners and Yuen’s old boss, Amazon VP of Product Michael George. Yuen said the company will look to add more games, including more synchronous real-time titles instead of single-player social games as well as a video chat service. He said CupidsPlay will also eventually expand to mobile platforms as well.

The dating world is crowded with a lot of established players getting competition from more social and mobile-minded upstarts. We’re seeing more companies look at group-dating ideas to help bring people together. But with social gaming already a huge hit, it’s not a bad idea to integrate dating into the mix. Yuen said people still struggle to strike up conversations with other singles based on their dating profiles. Building conversations around games can be more fun and casual for gamers.

“When I look at profile and look at eye color and age and then have to think of something witty to say, it’s not very natural or effective,” said Yuen. “But when you want to talk to this girl or guy and they need help in leveling up, you can use that as a catalyst to start conversations.”

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Five Tips for Dating a Blogger

Bloggers are a rare breed, indeed. The die-hard blogger spends every waking (and sleeping) moment consumed with blogging, social media and metrics. Therefore, everything you’ve learned to-date about how to keep a man happy, like the old adage “the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”, has to be tossed out and it’s time to create a new arsenal. Understanding what makes a blogger tick will get you there, but first, take this little quiz to see how deep in you are.

Blogger Intensity Quiz:

Are the words page views, clicks, pickups and for the win used in high frequency?

Is his BlackBerry in hand, or very close by, at all times?

Is he able to post a picture to Facebook, or send a Tweet, before you can even blink an eye?

Is he constantly thinking of story ideas and testing headlines out loud?

Does he break into hashtags at any moment?

If you answered yes to three or more questions, you’ve got a die-hard on your hands. Don’t panic. You don’t have to dive into the deep end of the blogosphere to survive live happily together but, immersing yourself just a little bit will go a long way. Here are five tricks for the new arsenal.

1. Speak the language: Consolidate your communication to 140 character sound bites. Men already have an upper limit on how many words they can absorb at any given time, a trait that is only heightened for someone who lives in a world of 140 character @replies, DM’s and status updates. It actually wouldn’t be the worst habit to get into, given our female tendency to wordiness, plus it’s good training for your own tweets. For maximum impact, launch with attention grabbing headlines. “The REAL TRUTH behind ...”, or “What you DIDN’T KNOW about ...”, have proven to be particularly effective.

2. Present things in lists: Lists are a very effective tool since the blogger lives and breathes by the Top 5 and Top 10 tips, ways, reasons, etc ... Trust me, he’ll melt the second you propose “The top 5 restaurant choices for dinner tonight”, or whisper “The Top 5 reasons I love you” in his ear.

3. Master social media messaging: If you really want to rock his world, ditch voice in favor of text and social media messaging. DM’s, @replies, Facebook messages and chat all rule above the phone. Bonus: simultaneously message him across multiple platforms, pay back will be sweet.

4. Respect the Mayorship: Do yourself a favor and let him be the first to check in on Foursquare when you’re out and about. Although he’ll say he wants you to check in first so you’ll show up in his twitter stream and people will see you together (<3 <3), the almighty mayorship is the holy grail, don’t deprive him.

5. Find Twitter religion: Twitter is by far the most sacred of the social media platforms for a blogger, so this is the place you’ll really want to jump in. Some easy rules: RT his stuff, don’t compete for first twitpic and, most importantly, familiarize yourself with the twitter lexicon, aka hashtags.

Adopting some blogger-esque tendencies will pay off in spades. First, he’s always easy to reach, which makes communication a breeze any time, anywhere. Second, it’s admittedly a lot of fun, particularly if you go all and out share pics and videos socially as well. Third, and most important of all, you’ll make your blogger very happy and I don’t have to translate what that means ... get creative!

I Think My Ex Is Dating My Best Friend

By Jann Blackstone-Ford and Sharyl Jupe

Q: While looking at Facebook, I just found out that my so-called best friend is “with” my ex. I can see photos of them having a great time together at a party last weekend that I could not go to. I’m sick. It’s only been weeks and my friends all know how our breakup has hurt me. I can’t believe my absolute best friend has betrayed me in this way. What’s good ex-etiquette for dating your best friend’s ex?

A: “Don’t date your best friend’s ex” is one of the unwritten rules of good ex-etiquette, but we all know it happens and it’s often the end of a beautiful friendship. Sometimes “friends” don’t even wait until your ex is an ex, so from that standpoint it sounds like you are ahead of the game.

Be careful that you’re not jumping to conclusions: Even though you’ve seen provocative pictures on Facebook, it’s easy to take pictures that suggest something is going on when it really isn’t. If there’s kissing and groping, then that’s an issue to scream about, but if it’s just suggestive mugging for the camera, although “uncool” in concept, it may not be what it seems.

There’s a red flag here, though. If days have gone by, it’s sketchy that a best friend hasn’t told you she saw your ex at the party. To us, that could mean one of two things: Either they are fooling around and she’s afraid to say something, or they aren’t fooling around and the mugging was so insignificant she didn’t think it was important to mention.

But, knowing women the way we do, we think if your best friend saw your ex at a party it wouldn’t be uncommon for her to go as far as call you on the phone in the bathroom to tell you he’s there. Or, at least call the next morning with a, “Guess who I saw last night?”

So, based on that, it’s time to have a conversation with your friend — not your ex — about what’s going on. That’s the relationship you want to salvage, so that’s who you talk to. Don’t use this as an excuse to talk to your ex — he’s your past. Before you ask your friend the question, figure out what it means to you if the answer is yes. Do you really care if they’re seeing each other? If you do, consider using the Ten Rules of Good Ex-etiquette for Dating as your guide. They can be found on the Bonus Families website and include, “Be true to yourself,” “stay calm when confronted (or confronting someone else),” and “set clear boundaries.”

Finally, you have to ask yourself how good a friend she really is if she’s dating someone you’re still in love with so soon after your breakup. If she put the pictures on Facebook, she wanted you to see them.

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Are You Interested?

By Brett Pulley

With the rise of the Internet, people began looking for love on websites such as Match.com and EHarmony.com. With the growing popularity of social networks, they’re turning to services like AreYouInterested.com.

The dating application, available on Facebook and Apple Inc.’s iPhone, lets users see beyond the personal details of potential mates to their social circles, including friends and family. AreYouInterested.com is adding more than 50,000 users a day, according to New York-based parent SNAP Interactive Inc., compared with the 20,000 new daily users Match.com reports.

AreYouInterested.com is now the largest Facebook dating application, with more than 13 million average monthly users, according to research firm AppData.com. Its popularity may cut into the growth of Match.com, part of IAC/InterActiveCorp, and EHarmony.com Inc., whose Facebook programs have 72,712 and 8,607 average monthly users respectively.

“Those traditional online dating companies don’t have a large app presence like us,” Snap Chief Executive Officer Cliff Lerner said in an interview. “Our growth, as well as the growth of a couple competitors, has come out of nowhere.”

Match.com has greater appeal for serious daters and a stronger long-term business, though it may not be signing up as many new users, said Gregory R. Blatt, CEO of IAC. Founded in 1995, the dating site collects pages of data from users to help them find appropriate mates, with a large engineering team to refine its site and algorithms.

“AreYouInterested is a flirty, fun little app,” Blatt said in an interview. “They have a few people working in a garage. We’ve got hundreds of engineers maximizing our business. You need huge degrees of sophistication, huge amounts of data behind it, and a huge community.”

AreYouInterested vs. Match.com

IAC’s Match business, which includes other dating websites such as Chemistry.com and SeniorPeopleMeet.com, had revenue of $292.4 million in the first nine months of the year, up 13 percent from a year earlier. Blatt ran the business until he took over the CEO role this month from Barry Diller, the billionaire who built and controls New York-based IAC.

Snap, traded over-the-counter, had $3.9 million in revenue in the first nine months, up 65 percent. Lerner and his brother, natives of Long Island, New York, founded the company with $750,000 from friends and family. Cliff, 32, had worked as an equities analyst at Lehman Brothers Inc; Darrell, 36, ran a fantasy-sports company. Snap has 17 employees and, for the record, operates from an office building in Midtown Manhattan.

Digital Teddy Bears

Snap Interactive rose 30 cents, or 150 percent, to 50 cents at 3:59 p.m. New York time in over-the-counter trading. The shares have increased 233 percent this year. IAC fell 26 cents to $29.71 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading and has gained 45 percent this year.

The brothers first started a dating website called IamFreeTonight.com in 2006, and shifted their focus after the initial success of their social-networking products.

AreYouInterested.com is a software application, or app, that users can load onto their Facebook page or iPhone with a half-dozen mouse clicks. It lets you click through photos of potential matches, and exchange messages or virtual gifts of digital roses or teddy bears.

One reason dating apps on Facebook are popular is that they give romance-seekers insight into potential partners through the social-networking site’s existing information, according to Darrell Lerner, Snap’s co-founder. People who meet on AreYouInterested.com can become Facebook friends and learn about each other before they ever agree to an actual date, he said. They typically can see another person’s Facebook posts and photos or videos of them and their friends.

‘More Comfortable’

“A lot of people on dating websites don’t put up legitimate information,” Darrell Lerner said in an interview. “Because we’re an app on Facebook, every user is legitimate. Before people go out with someone, they look them up on Facebook, they add them as a friend, and they see who their friends are. They get a better representation of the person, and it makes them more comfortable.”

IAC’s dating sites have 1.8 million subscribers, who pay $24.95 a month or $99 for a year. The websites had 6.5 million unique visitors in November, up from 60 percent from a year earlier, according to the market-research firm ComScore Inc. Operating profit for the group rose 25 percent over the first nine months to $77.3 million.

“Never has Match experienced the kind of growth it’s experienced in 2010,” Blatt said.

The company is working to introduce new Facebook apps that will compete with AreYouInterested.com, he said.

More Mobile

On Facebook, other competitors also exceed Match.com in number of users. Zoosk.com, backed by Canaan Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and ATA Ventures, has 6.1 million average monthly users for its Facebook app, according to AppData.com.

Snap plans to expand the AreYouInterested.com brand beyond Facebook, particularly on mobile devices, Cliff Lerner said.

“We believe there are big growth opportunities around mobile as web usage continues to increase rapidly and there are exciting opportunities around location-based features for dating apps,” he said.

One online dater, a 26-year-old event planner in Manhattan, said she had joined a couple dating websites before she recently registered for AreYouInterested.com through the Facebook application.

“For people in their 20s and 30s on Facebook, dating is a big aspect of our lives, and a lot of people use Facebook as a dating thing anyway,” said Adi, who declined to give her last name for privacy reasons. “There’s something to be said for a dating website that’s linked in with the most popular social network. It makes it feel more real.”

How Facebook Changed Dating As We Know It

Since its arrival years ago – at a time when most of the Carroll student body was in high school – Facebook has managed to ingrain itself into our daily existence, and change the ways we look at both our friendships and romantic relationships. It’s hard to imagine a time where we didn’t hear the words “poke”, “creep”, or “Facebook official” in everyday conversation. And like it or not, the popular social network site is here to stay.

Mashable.com, one of the internet’s leading news sources for all things social media, examined the ways Facebook has changed dating and came up with some key points that college students can likely agree on. The first, it gives the user a chance to obsess – more than usual – about their significant other (or potential significant other). Did they write on my wall? Will he or she poke me back? They didn’t put me in their profile picture, what gives? These anxieties can lead to Facebook stalking (better known as “creeping”), and a blow to the confidence level of the user.

Another downside Facebook has made to the dating world is the ability to constantly see what your ex-partner is up to – whether you like it or not. It’s hard enough to get back on your feet after a breakup, but having to look at posts in your NewsFeed seeing that he or she is so happy to be single again, or with their latest main squeeze, can be rough. The easiest way to bypass this is simply to defriend your ex, but if you can’t bring yourself to do that, another option is blocking their posts from showing up in your NewsFeed.

Keep in mind that when something is “Facebook official”, everyone can see that. And that includes when you break up. Breaking up on the social networking site is awkward and uncomfortable – having all your friends and classmates see that you are suddenly single – and running the risk of someone “liking” your newly-single ex’s changed relationship status – can be slightly overwhelming. The best thing to do in this situation is to stay classy – avoid any depressing statuses or digs at your ex. Keep the drama to a minimum and you can keep the peanut gallery from chiming in.

Finally – remember to utilize those privacy settings and use common sense while on the site. Just because Facebook has become such a commonplace thing in our lives shouldn’t mean you let your guard down. Practice safe behavior on Facebook – and all social network sites – so you won’t have anything to haunt you later.