I know the movie Must Love Dogs came out a while ago but I just caught it last night on HBO for the first time. It is an OK movie but while watching it all I could think about was: What was PerfectMatch thinking? Why would they want to be associated with this? Not because the movie was bad but because the portrayal of online dating was.

I understand the marketing and promotion idea behind getting your name out in a big screen flick with great actors like John Cusack and Diane Lane. Yet everybody in the movie is lying on his or her profiles or other people have set them up for them.

I thought PerfectMatch was similar to eHarmony or Chemistry.com but that is not what it looks like. You would think it was just like every other dating site out there after watching this movie. You surf through a bunch of profiles looking for someone to strike your fancy not that you are matched via some type of personality compatibility matching system.

Speaking of compatible none of her matches were. If I were PerfectMatch I wouldn’t have wanted to be portrayed in this way. Diane Lane’s character Sarah is signed up by her sister, so, hopefully the sister knows something about her. Otherwise where is the compatibility? Then when Sarah meets these people they are made up of every dating cliché out there. Like the guy who wants to date much younger or the weird guy who cries and can’t understand why he never gets any second dates. These are the matches she got from PerfectMatch. The ones she didn’t go out with were even worse.

Again I ask why would you want to associate yourself with this crappy portrayal of online dating. The only good thing about the movie was John Cusack’s character Jake and his assertion that two people should just put a lot of the small talk by the wayside and be open and honest with their dates. Giving each person a chance to learn about and get to know the real person. If they don’t like it then “you shake hands after dinner and never see each other again.”

Anyways that is my take on this. Have you seen Must Love Dogs? What did you think how online dating was portrayed? If you were PerfectMatch or any other online dating site would you have wanted to be attached to this? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

A First-Meeting™ is supposed to be an informal in person meeting. You setup a mutually agreed upon place and time to see if there is any chemistry. The suggested length of a First-Meeting™ is about 30 minutes or so. They say that should be long enough to gage whether or not there is any chemistry or not.

How to Initiate a First-Meeting™

You can attach a First-Meeting™ request to an email or you can just send the request from the email page for your match. Either way you then have to select your First-Meeting™ preferences.

The first question you have to answer is your availability: “What are the best days and times for you to go on a First-Meeting™?” You are given a grid of times by hour from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. for each day of the week. You click the chechbox for each time you are available. Once you answer this question and click next a pop up asks you to read some safety tips and click a box that you have read them.

On the next page you are asked: “What kinds of food do you like to eat on a date?” You once again click a bunch of boxes next to things like American, Italian, Pub Fare, Fast Food, Dessert and Coffee or any if they all look good.

Next you answer: “What are your favorite date activities?” You can choose from Meet for coffee, a drink, dinner, movie, for a party, sporting event, a walk or any.

Lastly you are asked: “What do you expect from your date?” Things to check off under this question are splitting the check, showing good manners, good conversation, knowing when the date is over and others.

After the Questions What Happens?

Once the other person has accepted and filled in their preferences, the system then offers up a suggested meeting place based on your answers. Something that fits the times for both of you and something that is roughly halfway between you based on zip code. Or you can select an alternative and suggest another time and place if you wish.

Once you have both agreed on a time and place when you go to the active matches page next to them you will see that a First-Meeting™ has been set. When you click the button next to it a box pops up with all the meeting information. It also gives you the opportunity to cancel should you need to.

It is a nice little idea for an online dating site to include a system for helping people to actually meet. Unfortunately this system is a little awkward to use. Most of the material on the Chemistry.com site talks about informal meetings at a coffee shop for 20 or 30 minutes yet the system asks you for all kinds of dating info preferences. It is not clear what they are for or how the system uses that information. The help with facilitating an in person meeting is great though. It is something that other online dating sites should look into adding to there offerings. They should just make it a bit more user friendly.

Once you have met when you log back into Chemistry.com you are asked to give the system some feedback. Mostly though you are deciding whether or not you want to keep in contact with the match. If you do the system lets both of you no what the other decided. I will post more about that in a future post.

Have you used Chemistry.com? Gone on a First-Meeting™? What did you think of the System? Let us know in the comments.

I received in my email inbox today an email from Match.com about their free guide on How to Find the Right Person in 90 Days. This is free to anyone who signs up. The guide is geared to help you find out about yourself so you can find the right person for you.

The twist is that they have added a new section to the guide for the Holiday season. They say:

Being single during the holidays can be difficult. In fact, as you watch happy couples snuggle up for warmth, share hot chocolate and give each other Eskimo kisses on a cold winter day, “difficult” can be a major understatement, according to more than a third of singles we recently polled. But it’s time to shake off that impulse to say, “Bah, humbug.” Why? Because we know a few fantastic facts that you don’t—and they can change your life.

The first part of the guide is comprised of seven tips to help you be more successful dating during the holiday season. The best of these tips is to stay positive and embrace the holidays. These kind of go together as a happy person is a more attractive person. If you are positive and have fun with the season you may have a better chance of meeting that special someone.

The next part is about pairing the season with your online dating. The idea is to holiday up your profile. Talk about what you like about the holidays and the things you like to do in the winter activity wise. Also they recommend posting some photos with a winter seasonal style, like you on the slopes if you love to ski.

The third part is a Q&A regarding some holiday dating essentials. Like I just met someone should I invite him or her over for the holidays? The answer being no, family introductions can be seen as a big step in a relationship. One or the other of you might get the wrong idea of where you think you are at in your budding relationship. Other items covered are gift giving, office parties and whether I should break it off now or wait till after the holidays?

The Holiday section of How to Find the Right Person in 90 Days has some good information and tips. It is more than just information for the online dater. It is for the single person, whether looking for love online or off. Many of the tips and suggestions are ways to meet someone offline. This section of the guide also includes a success story and closes with The 10 Best Ways to Meet Someone Right Now. Number six being the only one involving online dating.

If you haven’t already done so, you might want to consider registering and downloading How to Find the Right Person in 90 Days.

Yesterday was a couple of things I don’t like and today is the flipside. Here are a couple of things I do like about Chemistry.com. Once again these are in comparison to my experience using eHarmony. They are very similar in how they work.

1. The amount of matches you get at Chemistry.com is greater than at eHarmony. They use different criteria to create matches so a difference is to be expected. Yet the difference is huge. Chemistry.com has matched me with 62 different women in just over two weeks of being on the site. In the same time frame I have gotten around 10 matches at eHarmony.
2. I like Chemistry.com’s seeming focus on meeting the other person. The site is geared to get to email communication and with that comes the First-Meeting option that you can send to a match. This is a feature that helps you and a match put together a time and place that meets both of your schedules. The idea is a 20 to 30 minute meeting to see if there is any off website chemistry. The system can even help by suggesting places like coffee houses and the like that are equidistant from each you. A scheduling system that also helps pick a spot about halfway between you and your match is a good idea.

Have you been able to try Chemistry.com yet? What do you like about it?