/24-7PressRelease/ - BEVERLY HILLS, CA, April 15, 2006 - When I found out there was an Internet Dating Conference in Miami Beach, Fla., I imagined a geeky lovefest — as if there were a scheduling mistake and a speed dating event had to share the same meeting room with the Star Trek convention.
It would be a mix of people with names like LoveStarHotness500 and DarthVaderStud17 wearing signs with their age, height and weight. And they'd repeat trite lines from their profiles: "I enjoy walking on the beach, dancing all night long with friends or just staying home and watching Battlestar Galactica."
To my disappointment, when I showed up in Miami Beach for the convention, there weren't any lovesick people wearing Spock ears. Instead, I found hundreds of modern-day Cupids — the people who run dating Web sites, speed dating companies, self-help services and matchmaking businesses.
These people are the future of dating.
I know. I know. Internet dating, blah, blah, blah. You've heard it all before.
But this actually is sort of important. Technology is gaining increasing control over dating, love and sex. If it already hasn't taken over your love life, it certainly will take over your kids' lives.
Someone had to find out about this convergence of romance, technology and capitalism. That's why I left the snow to go down to 75-degree Miami Beach — I really should get hazard pay for this job — to find out the real story.
Back in the day, family members, friends and clergy did the matchmaking. In America in 2006, matchmakers are simply moneymakers. They are mostly male entrepreneurs and their goal is to bring together people — and make a boat-load of cash while doing it, of course.
"There is a huge societal problem. People aren't finding the right matches. Marriages are failing," said Mark Brooks, editor of OnlinePerson-
alsWatch.com. "In some sense, we have a chance to change that."
Dating companies really do believe their duty is to help people find happiness in a partner (or partners). A litany of new services on display at the conference is trying to adapt to the changing world of dating and accommodate for the everlasting differences between the sexes.
Women have a fear about being murdered by their online date (and men fear their date will be heavier than advertised), so there were six companies at the conference specializing in background checks and profile verification.
There was one company there from the professional pick-up community, an expanding world of gurus who run seminars and sell e-books to teach men how to pick up women.
The gurus' newest business is seminars for women. But the women don't learn how to pick up men. Instead, they learn how to keep men. Despite technological developments, men are still more interested in getting a woman, or lots of women, ASAP. But women care more about holding onto one good man.
John Gray, author of the biggest-selling relationship book in the history of the world, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus," was at the conference to deliver shocking news: "Men and women still don't understand each other."
On Internet dating sites, men "go through the site just looking at the pictures" and ignore women who don't look like supermodels. Women, meanwhile, are interested in what men have to say. Unfortunately, men write short, empty profiles.
Gray said online dating companies must help users so men lower their standards for beauty — "there's only so many people who are going to get a supermodel" — and women start looking for "someone interesting" instead of a soulmate.
But the conference wasn't all about boring dating. There also was a lot of sex talk. More sites, like AdultFriendFinder.com and IWantYou.com (the site with the best name in the biz), now deal with the sex side of dating.
"No one talks about these groups, but they're there," noted Brooks, who knows more about online dating than anyone in the world.
"We're in the business of love, but by default we're in the sex business."
So what will dating look like in 10 years?
According to Brooks, we will be carrying Star Trek devices with speech recognition capabilities that will allow searches for nearby dates anytime, anywhere.
LoveStarHotness500 and DarthVaderStud17 are going to just love that one.
DatingServices-Online is the trusted website providing online dating services to like-minded people all over the world. For further information, please contact by email at _webmaster@datingservices-online.net_
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