
By Juliet O
There is arguably no worse feeling, in the entire universe, than a broken heart. At least — that’s what you trick yourself into believing when you are suffering at the end of an intense relationship. Whirlwind romances — with their highs, lows, and everything in between — leave you exhausted at the end of the journey. Exhausted, and bewildered. And a host of other adjectives: devastated, dysfunctional, jaded, temporarily insane.
It’s okay. We’ve all been there. In fact, I challenge anyone to find me an adult person (who isn’t a sociopath) who hasn’t at one point experienced the pains of being brokenhearted. It happens to each and every one of us, and when it happens, we are never really prepared for what is to follow. A lot goes on in the human heart. It’s a mysterious organ.
The next question then, when realizing that lovesickness happens to us all, is how something that feels so catastrophic be at the same time so terribly mundane. Because it is mundane, and it’s also horribly monotonous. You feel the exact same way (sad, bereft, lost, alone) for a really, really long time with hardly any positive emotional interruptions to lighten that dull blanket of gloom. How unfair, to feel exactly the same, for so long — and to feel as if you hardly have any control of it at all.
But the thing is, you do have control. At least, you have some control. And with effort, you can at least pull yourself out of your depressing doldrums into a more stable place, if you try. It isn’t easy to force yourself to ’snap out of it,’ but in the end, you’ll realize it’s for the best and thank us. If you are suffering from a broken heart and are trying to mend it with Zoosk, here are some tips that might help you.
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September 16, 2009

By Juliet O
Zooskers often write in our Community Forums asking for advice on love. The Zoosk Community is incredibly supportive of each other, and when a Zoosker seeks love advice on the forums, other Zooskers weigh in and offer their assistance. It’s a nice feeling, knowing that there is a community of people willing to help you work through your love and relationship problems.
As more and more questions arise on our forums, we’ve discovered certain similarities among the questions we’ve seen. Questions often fall into distinct camps. And questions tend to be finite. We get a lot of the same questions over and over again. That should be reassuring news! This means that — for each person out there who has love or relationship problems — there are other people in the world with the same problems. You are not alone! And we want to help too. You don’t have to take our advice, or even listen to what we have to say, but we want you — yes, you! — out there to know that we really do care.
We want to participate in the conversation. So, each week we’ll be taking a question from the Zoosk Community Forums and giving our take on the situation. Unofficial advice from official Zoosk. Here’s this week’s question, posed by Zoosker Jay. This is taken from our Broken Heart, Now What forum.
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September 4, 2009

By Juliet O
… Zoosk is introducing coins to our site! Why coins? Because we like shiny objects, and we like pirates, so it follows logically that our currency of choice on Zoosk would be gorgeous glistening gold doubloons.
Argg matey! So, with coins, (1) what are these pretty little babies, and (2) what can you spend them on? Currently, coins can be spent in 4 different ways, depending on if you’re a premium subscriber or a basic member on Zoosk. Peep this.
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August 31, 2009

By Juliet O
While most of you Zooskers probably couldn’t run a marathon with your legs, you sure know how to run them with your mouths. Your chat-alicious, loose-lipped, loud-mouthy, over-sharing, word-spitting ways have greatly endeared you to our hearts, and we applaud the fact that many of you have problems shutting the front door.
Our hyperactive community forums are one of the Zoosk features we’re most proud of, because the many voices on the forums come from YOU, the community, and the community is the life of Zoosk. It appears that the average Zoosker on our forums is chattier than an ADHD kid who just washed down all his Halloween candy with a 6-pack of Red Bull. You will get that talk on, and we find that to be a beautiful thing. On the forums, topics range from discerningly erudite (like intelligent reflections on the meaning of love) to unabashedly low-brow (like talking in detail about the female anatomy), and all these topics come together to form a mish mash, hodge podge, all-encompassing community board that accurately details all the multiplicity of things going through the collective mind of the Zoosk community, something we admire, foster, and want to actively engage. Today, we want to shine a spotlight on the community, because the community the shining light of Zoosk… and now we’re getting sentimental. Make it stop.
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August 25, 2009

By Juliet O
There aren’t many situations in life where it’s acceptable to talk at length about yourself to random strangers without pause or interjection. Even less socially acceptable is to start disclosing, unprovoked, your life story, what you’re looking for in a life partner, your ideal date, your music taste, and your favorite movies — in rapid succession — to people you don’t know and have never met. We know people who do that in real life. They are called “crazy people”.
Unless, that is, you are writing your Zoosk online dating profile – in which case talking about yourself is not only appropriate, but encouraged. And totally sane, we promise.
We recently showed you how to create a date card that doesn’t suck. Now, we’re going to take things a step further and give you tips on how to write — or in more poetic terms, “trick out” — your date cards. (more…)
August 21, 2009

Monday just went from blaaaahhh to YAYYYYY, ‘cuz Zoosk Desktop is here to help you keep the spirit of the weekend going all week long. What’s Zoosk Desktop, you might ask? We reply — in our most falsely modest voice — that we dared, we hustled, and here’s what we got: the very first downloadable desktop application ever introduced for a social online dating community. Or, in simpler terms, Zoosk Desktop is a ridiculously awesome new way to be on the prowl… rawr.
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August 17, 2009
In addition to offering the entire Zoosk community free premium membership on February 13 and 14, Zoosk opened its doors to over 200 people from the Bay Area’s tech community and the Zoosk community as well for Zoosk Lunch 2.0.
Friday the 13th may be unlucky for some, but the winks and flirts that we saw at Zoosk’s Lunch 2.0 on Friday put this superstition to rest faster than the speed of cupid’s arrow. (Cupid was also kind enough to make an appearance)
Described by many who attended as a “new kind of Lunch 2.0″, we perpetuated the Valentine’s Day theme by bringing the virtual trademark of Zoosk, the Date Card, to life as an actual Date Card that attendees could wear. Exchanging stickers to decorate the date card that were marked as flirts and winks, as well as reading the creative ways people chose to describe themselves, was an immediate ice breaker.
The goal was to be able to turn in your date card for a box of See’s Valentine’s chocolate by collecting at least 6 flirt or wink stickers. We found that by the end of the lunch it wasn’t even necessary to have chocolate as an incentive. In fact, thoughts of bon bons had been wiped from our memory as the crowd started dancing with the DJ! Networking, flirting, food, beer, and dancing…truly not bad ways to spend a lunch break!
This year The New York Times recently noted a National Retail Federation Survey that predicted that average consumer spending on Valentine’s Day would be lower than the two previous years. Zoosk knows that online resources provide cheaper alternatives that don’t cheapen the romance. Even the free-access social networking site, Facebook, is calling out its activity in matchmaking, highlighting Zoosk as an effective way to find a date for V-day!
Aaah Valentine’s Day with Zoosk, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…
February 23, 2009
Dave at Online Dating Insider did an interview with our very own Alex a couple of weeks ago. He has a post out today about the interview, his experience with Zoosk and why he thinks the new paradigm of social dating is here to stay. I love the fact that he actually went down to an extreme level of detail on viral growth and it’s inner workings using our internal lingo. Now, X-multiplier is officially introduced to the public world.
His post is fairly balanced at times criticizing us for a few features that we are missing at the moment. But Zooskers don’t be worried, they on their way and coming very quickly. Zoosk is just getting started to shake the online dating world.
March 28, 2008