By Juliet O

Yippee! Bring out the bells, the whistles, and the fancy trays of mouth-watering, calorie-laden sweets: the end-of-year holiday season has finally arrived! As this year (and decade) draws to a close, Zoosk wishes you the happiest holiday festivities and brightest spirits and cheer that this season has to offer.

Holidays bring with them a host of holly jolly things, from parties to paid vacation to presents, but our absolute favorite aspect of the holiday season will always be the unique excitement of holiday dating. The holiday merriment rubs off on even the most incorrigible Scrooge. Who doesn’t love an eggnog, peppermint schnapps, and mistletoe-fueled adrenaline rush?

But we know that desite the amazing rewards, holiday dating is not without its challenges. We want to make the entire process of dating during this time of year as easy on you as possible. We want you to stop stressing out and focus instead on enjoying yourself. To help our Zooskers navigate and cultivate their love lives during this special time of year, we’ve created the Singles Guide to Surviving the Holidays, a downloadable PDF that you can save on your desktop and read at your own convenience, that answers some of your most pressing questions about the rules of holiday dating.

Our guide includes holiday dating tips from relationship experts, gift-giving ideas for singles, holiday dating trends and much more. We surveyed thousands of Zooskers to find out what they really want this holiday. From what kind of gifts they wanted to what kind of date they wanted, we asked for the scoop.

Did you know that the majority — 68% — of Zooskers say that they’re looking for a long term relationship this holiday season? This guide gives you tips on how to meet someone this winter, and whether you’re just looking to land a holiday party date or if you’re on the market to establish something lasting, there are tidbits in this guide for every kind of dater.

We’ve also got expert advice from dating gurus like Rich Santos of Marie Claire, Julie Spira the best-selling author of The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online, and iVillage relationship columnist Sherry Amatenstein.

What holiday season is complete without a healthy dose of materialism? In our surveys, we asked Zooskers what kind of presents they hoped to receive from dating partners, and our Holiday Guide reveals their answers. We were pleasantly surprised to discover how completely unmaterialistic our user base is! Overwhelmingly, you guys responded that you were just hoping for a simple hug or kiss from your date this season.

Now that the question of what to get your partner is answered and filed away, you can focus on the more important thing: how to land said partner in the first place.

Since the week before Christmas marks the busiest time of year on our site, your chances of landing dates this month are statistically the highest of the year. This means that you should go out and work everything you’ve got. Flirt shamelessly. Message as many Zooskers as your greedy heart desires. The numbers show that people are looking for romance this month, so it doesn’t hurt to put yourself out there. If you’re still feeling shy, look in the mirror and repeat to yourself, “Live boldly.” Other people, we’re sure, are doing the same.

What are you waiting for? Go give yourself the best gift of all this holiday season: love.

For more facts and tidbits from our Singles Guide to Surviving the Holidays, download the guide here on our site! Good information is a shame to waste. Tell all your friends about it — heck, tell your date about it — and go out there and take advantage of the happiest time of the year!!!

What’s a testimonial? A testimonial is a short blurb from a friend or acquaintance that says something positive about you. We publish third party testimonials on Zoosk because testimonials are a great way to give potential matches more information about you from people who know you. It gives someone who looks at your profile the chance to hear something nice about you from a third party. Because this information is coming from a source who knows personally, it gives credibility to the fact that those great things they say about you are true. It’s uncouth to brag openly about yourself, so why not have one of your friends brag about you on your behalf?

If you’re wondering about how the get testimonials for your Date Card, read on for step-by-step instructions! Log into Zoosk and go to your Date Card tab. At the very bottom, below where you enter your favorite music, movies, and books, you’ll see bold text that says “Testimonials”. If you do not have any testimonials, the page will say, “You do not have any testimonials” and show a link that asks you to invite your friends to offer testimonials for you. Click this link to get testimonials! It will take you to the next page, screenshot below.

Clicking “Invite friends to get more testimonials!” will take you to a page that looks like the image above. You can invite people from your email networks, like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Windows Live, and AOL. All you need to do is enter your email login name and password and click “Continue.” Zoosk does not store any passwords. This feature uses the same technology that helps you locate contacts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social networking sites and doesn’t store any of your or your contacts’ information. Once you click continue, the screen will pull up a list of your contacts. You can choose specific contacts and send them a request. Your contacts do not have to be Zoosk or Facebook members.

You can also invite people straight from Facebook. On the same page there will be a link, highlighted in yellow, that says “Invite your Facebook friends to write testimonials for you”. Click that link and you will see your Facebook friends pop up on the next page. Simply choose which friends you’d like to get testimonials from.

If you would prefer not to upload your Facebook friends or to load your Gmail or Yahoo Mail contacts, or if you use a different email server that isn’t listed on the sidebar, you can invite  your friends to send their testimonials by directly typing in their email addresses into the system. We then automatically send testimonial invites to their inbox. Click the link that says “or type in your friends email addresses” and you will be directed to a page that looks like the screenshot below.

Put your emails in the blanks and click “Invite Now.” You’re done!

Once they’ve written a testimonial for you, you’ll get an email at the same address you use to log into Zoosk (if you use Zoosk as a FB application, this will be at the same email address you use to log into Facebook). This is the same email where you get all the other Zoosk notifications, like notices about messages and updates on our site. The email will look just like the screencap below.

The testimonial your friend submitted will be now on your Zoosk Date Card. It will be on the side bar, to the left of your personal information. See?

Doesn’t it look great? Now potential Zooskers will be able to read awesome tidbits and compliments about you from your friends. What better way to advertise what a great catch you are than to get a testimonial from someone who knows you already? Get a testimonial today!

By Juliet O

A widely accepted law of dating states that the longer you date, the more baggage you accumulate. Thinking back to your earliest relationships, don’t certain words come to mind, like naive, innocent, simple? Things were so uncomplicated way back when all you had to worry about regarding love was a curfew and what your parents were going to say. A first love is such a beautiful thing, because the first loves seem so innocent, unbridled, and pastoral. But the moment you get hurt for the first time, everything changes. After our first loves wane away, we develop shells and shields and build walls — we close ourselves up out of defense, and we don’t let anyone access those deep, vulnerable parts of ourselves quite that way ever ever again. And like a hermit crab that carries everything on its back, we start dragging our baggage along everywhere.

But baggage can also destroy relationships, especially when one tries to hoist their baggage on someone else. Say that your baggage is the memory of your ex. And you take that memory with you everywhere, including on dates with new people, and your ex becomes the ubiquitous elephant in the room? That can definitely damage your chances at a new relationship. Or what if your particular baggage is the jealousy that you developed as the result of getting hurt in the past? Hoisting that baggage on a new, unsuspecting partner cannot possibly be conducive to a future relationship. And when you act jealously toward people, and they leave you because they can’t take it anymore, you only become more jaded and more jealous. The danger of baggage is that it has a way of multiplying itself.

So how do we deal with this baggage issue? We all suffer from it, so what are some things we can do to alleviate the weight of all this emotional baggage we carry? How do we keep all the baggage at bay when getting to know someone knew — and then continue to keep it at bay as we grow relationships with new people?

The answer is: we have to make sure we’ve checked our emotional baggage before starting a new relationship. A new boyfriend or girlfriend can’t carry your bags or get rid of your demons for you. Embarking on a new relationship when you haven’t healed from old ones will just add fuel to the flame, and give you more baggage to carry down the line. We have to make a conscious effort to look on our past relationships and past history and heal all the wounds we’ve accumulated before stepping into a new relationship.

It’s important to remember that healing takes time. And healing isn’t easy. Getting rid of our baggage is often times more painful than merely carrying it along with us wherever we go, and it takes commitment and dedication to exorcise all that negativity from our lives. Find a path toward closure. If your baggage is due to a mistake you’ve made, ask for forgiveness. If your baggage is because of something that someone else did to you, try to find it in your heart to forgive. Our relationships with other people are the biggest cause of emotional baggage, but no matter how negative those relationships are, it’s important that we try to move on in a clear, positive manner. If closure cannot be found, then cut people out of your life that contribute to your emotional baggage. Cut painful relationships out, be they relationships with your exes, your frenemies, your acquaintances that add nothing positive to your life.

When dating new people, we should all adopt the basic philosophy: tabula rasa. This term, “tabula rasa,” means clean slate. This doesn’t mean that you have to treat every relationship like the first relationship you’ve ever had. Rather, this means that you should approach new relationships with all the wisdom and insight and learning that you’ve taken from past relationships — the positive forces — and relinquishing all the negative forces at the door, or to in all literalness check your baggage at the door.

For more dating tips and helpful dating advice, check out these articles as well:

Having a positive outlook will get you more dates
5 online dating fears and how to overcome them
Jealousy and how to prevent it
The importance of being earnest

photo credit: striatic

By Juliet O

You’ve put all that work in making a great Date Card, but you’re still not fully satisfied with the number of clicks you’re getting? You want to raise your page views, but don’t know what to do? It’s not you, don’t worry. But it’s not your Date Card, either. There are simple ways to get even more profile views and raise your chances of meeting the right person on Zoosk, by simply following some of our tips on promoting your online dating profile via social media tools.

Great online dating profiles shouldn’t just sit there waiting to be discovered. Take your online dating fate into your own ambitious, single-person hands! If you want love in this day and age, there is no shame on promoting yourself, within reason, to making finding it an easier process. There are definitely ways to raise your chances of having your profile fall across the path of the right person, on Zoosk and on the web. Here are our suggestions.

Post on Zoosk’s Community Pages

Our Community Pages are a great place to get valuable dating advice and voice your opinion on topics relevant to online dating. The pages are also a great place to have your profile seen by the dating community at large. By making yourself prominent on our boards and contributing great content to our community, you expose your profile in a positive way to the numerous Zooskers who visit them daily. Your comments on the boards are also added to your Zoosk status feed, which shows up on your Date Card and on the Zoosk front page that is seen by singles in your local area.

Fan Zoosk on Facebook and comment on our updates

Zoosk has a very active Facebook Fan community that is growing  by the day. Check out how many people comment or “like” each of our status updates! Join in on the discussion via our Facebook Fan page and meet other Zooskers via their virtual discussions. Invite your friends to join our Facebook community as well, and you might even get free coins from one of our Facebook fan contests! Keep an eye on our Fan Page in the future, to hear about Zoosk news, releases, dating advice and information, as well as future community contests and programs of interest to our beloved Zooskers.

Integrate Zoosk on Facebook

We are aware that not all people want to be public about their online dating lives. Our Facebook application allows you to adjust your privacy settings to hide all your Zoosk activity so that no one in your Facebook network has to know that you are involved in any manner with online dating. But for people who want to be a bit more public about Zoosk, you can install our Facebook application to your main FB page and let others know, via FB, that you are single and searching.

Tweet about online dating and follow us on Twitter

Another way to publicize your online dating profile is to use Twitter and “tweet” out about your involvement with Zoosk. Follow us on Twitter and tweet @Zoosk and we promise to send you a shout-out in return. Use #hashtags to talk about online dating like #zoosk or #onlinedating, write about your topics “@Zoosk,” and discover that Twitter is a great way to publicize your Zoosk Date Card to other  Zooskers on the site. You can also contact us on Twitter via a direct message or a Tweet if you have any questions or concerns about Zoosk. As we say, “Roses are red, violets are blue, you follow us, and we’ll follow you!”

Blog about online dating

Finally, blogging is a great way to let off some steam and write about your experiences. Who doesn’t have a personal blog these days? They can be so cathartic and therapeutic. There are so many online dating blogs and singles blogs that deal with issues like dating and romance, so why not join in on the dialogue and get your voice heard? The blogosphere is a great way to publicize your online dating profile, if you take the leap of faith and put yourself out there! Don’t worry, the web isn’t such a scary place. Embrace the future of love!

Photo credit: bobby-james

Mashable’s 3rd Annual OpenWeb Awards are open for user submitted nominations and votes. Last year, Zoosk won an OpenWeb Award for Best Dating and Romance site. This year, Dating and Romance is no longer a category, so Zoosk is up for overall Best Facebook Application! We’re excited for the opportunity to win this category, so help us out with your nominations and we will love you forever (and ever and ever).

How do you nominate Zoosk for Best Facebook Application? Simply go to the Best Facebook Application nomination landing page. Make sure you are logged into Mashable via your Facebook username and password (to vote, you must log in via Facebook Connect). Once you’re on the nominations landing page, type “Zoosk” into the field for “Best Facebook App”. Then hit “Submit”. You’re done. Beautiful.

Nominate us, and then tell your friends to nominate us. We love you dearly. Please love us back?

By Juliet O

Why do we search for love? I might as well ask you why the sun shines or why water is wet. We don’t always know why we search for love; we just do it. Perhaps the only answer to such a complex question is simply “because.” Most of us hope that one day we will find someone we love who will love us back, with whom we can grow with in an affectionate, positive relationship of the sort that fairy tales describe as “happily ever after”. We don’t really question why. We feel an almost subconscious drive, and in our search most of us encounter a lot of false alarms, dead ends, and failures before finding the person who makes all our struggles worth the effort.

I recently posed to our Zoosk community a question, “Why do you search for love? What are your personal reasons for continuing along the path towards relationship fulfillment?” The answers I received were a surprising and poignant study on the depths of the human heart. It seems that our community is a romantic bunch, and they’re looking for love because, in the words of one Zoosker, “I am looking for hope.” Here’s what some of our other Zooskers had to say. Get out your Kleenex.

“My life would not be as happy without love, and I know I need some kind of romantic love and intimacy to feel content, but other than that, I suppose I search because someday, I hope to really find the puzzle piece that I have yet to grasp my fingers around!” -Carly

“I myself am fine being alone but it’s instinctual to want to connect. Humans by nature are communal. Most of us just want to connect with others. We want to share our lives with someone because it brings purpose for our being.” -Brian

“Looking for love is more about finding someone worth sharing all of these wonderful and beautiful things in life with at a level that friends just can’t. Not to mention there’s nothing like coming home to the open arms of someone special when you think you’ve had more than you can take.” -Shannon

“‘I’m looking because life is too short to waste away. It’s best shared with someone special who fills in the gaps. Someone to share the little things and big things with. Someone to laugh and joke around with… someone who will for no reason smile and out of the blue rock your world just because it feels good. Someone to be himself and you be yourself. What more can you ask for??? Love is special and should be shared with that someone.” -Angelina_Ace95

“I’m looking for love because I want that special connection. I want to be some gal’s man and for her to be my gal.” -Jason

“My reasons are to have someone to connect with, especially emotionally and mentally. I do not think you can find that in this world a lot, but it’s rare also. I definitely miss every little thing about being in a serious relationship, the hugs and kisses, the falling asleep together, being your natural self around someone totally different from you, it’s an amazing feeling. The main thing is I want to have someone that I can be myself completely, and we both can receive what we want from the other person equally and respectfully. I want to be in love, that real love.” -Reana

“My reasons? In some way I’m not entirely sure… I guess it’s for that feeling of warmth of having another person around. I guess love to me is what happiness is. To see the one you love’s smile once more, there is nothing more wonderful than that. I would do anything, to have that feeling again. That is my reason to be here. In the hope of finding someone who would smile everyday for me.” -fight_for_freedom_12

“Taking a drive to admire fall color, or Christmas lights, or what have you without someone is just really not worth the bother. Cuddling is simply impossible without someone to share it with, I’ve had nobody to give a foot rub to since she left and it’s driving me nuts. I also miss having somebody around whose back needs scratching. Not having an outlet for this stuff is much harder than I anticipated, nobody to send camera phone pics of flowers or blue sky, nobody to share the little details of our days. It’s enough to make a guy take up blogging even if nobody reads it just to get it out!” -rollerdave

“Loneliness would have to be the most heartbreaking experience one can go through. I believe that it is a very slow and painful death. The desire to share and connect with another is intense. Essentially the longing to share a meal, conversation, laugh, drink, cuddle…perhaps more is a drive that rages in the pit of out subconscious whether we like it or not.” -pip_squeak

“Looking for my other half gives me insight into people, them and myself. It lets me see the bright and dark side of so many people, the grey areas and how they all tie together and work. In an odd way, it helps me see how bad habits or bad intentions can be used for good things.” -S H

“I have always dreamed of making a family, being a father, being a husband, etc. It’s been one of my long term goals since I was sixteen years old. I was never one for ‘casual flings’. That sort of thing always seemed like a waste of time, energy and emotion to me.” -Jes

“I look for love because its just one of those beautiful things you can’t replicate. You can’t force it and you can’t do it alone.” -Lascial

Everyone searches for love for different reasons. Some of us don’t want to be alone. Some of us want someone to share our experiences with. Some of us like the security of having someone there who will stand by us no matter what. Regardless of our reasons, the drive or desire for love is something that is innate to the human experience and is as complicated as the emotion of love itself.

Photo credit: aussiegall

By Juliet Ohai

First date jitters are the worst. Letting your nerves get the best of you can lead to a number of absolute first date blunders: talking too much, saying weird things, saying things you don’t mean, sweating profusely, blushing constantly, stammering, being creepy… the list goes on.

One of the absolute worst things that can happen to you as a result of first-date jitters is not saying anything at all. Contributing to the conversation is something you absolutely have to do if you go on a date, and if conversation halts to a stand-still, both parties need to facilitate conversation to keep it going. Saying yes to a date is like signing a contract, agreeing, “As long as you aren’t some sort of twisted, loathsome supervillain, I will do my best to talk to you for the duration of our date.” But talking — even rote, mundane, smalltalk — isn’t always easy, particularly if you’re nervous.

So we’ve come up with some talking points for you, to use as a prompt when conversation starts to dry up. Don’t get flustered! Remember, this date is in your hands. Remember these prompts, and never have a silent, awkward date ever again.

Day to day activities

• Ask your date what they did that day. Did they have a good day?
• How was work? Are you doing anything interesting or exciting at the office?
• Did your date do anything fun over the past week or weekend? Ask how their week went.

Personal history

• Where is your date originally from?
• Where did your date grow up?
• Where did your date go to college (if so)?
• How many brothers or sisters does your date have? Asking about family is always a good resort. Ask what it was like to grow up in the kind of family they grew up in.

Personal tastes

• Asking about music is always a good call when you run out of things to say. Ask what kind of music your date enjoys.
• Movies are safe talking territory. What was the last movie your date saw?
• Books are safe too. Has your date read a good book lately?
• What kind of food does your date enjoy? Talking about food is great because you might be able to casually slip in plans to have a second date. “Oh, you enjoy ____ food? I know a great place…”

Goals and passions

• Try to find what it is your date is passionate about. What are some of their interests? Do they have any passions/hobbies that they spend a lot of time working on?
• What are some goals they have for their life or career?

Local questions

• If you’re dating a person in your local area, it’s great to ask them some local questions, like where do they go for fun?
• What are some of your date’s favorite restaurants or bars? You can always ask, “Have you ever been to _____ yet?”
• What is your date’s neighborhood like, if they live in a different neighborhood than you?
• If you like the great outdoors, talk about fun outdoor activities available to you in your local area.

Random life questions

• Where has your date traveled and where would they want to go one day?
• If your date was stuck on a desert island, what 3 things would they bring?
• How would your date describe themselves in 3 words?
• What’s one thing your date has never done, but which they’d love to do one day?

Don’t ever let first date nerves take away your tongue. It’s okay if you don’t say much, but you can’t say nothing at all. So keep some of these prompts in mind next time you feel tongue-tied on a date!

photo credit: eyeliam

By Juliet O

“Take it slow” is probably the single best piece of relationship advice that people never seem to want to hear. Like relationships in real life, online relationships can also move way too fast. And I don’t have to remind you about the story of the turtle and the hare. There are many reasons to take things slowly on Zoosk, but the biggest reason is also the most obvious one: you don’t know this other Zoosker yet. And you should get to know them, before you meet in real life.

Reducing the speed at which you barrel toward love, marriage, and mortgage, actually makes dating more fun. Many people claim that the very best time to be in love is at the beginning of relationships, when all the euphoric, mesmerizing feelings of love are at their most intense. Why not prolong that intensity as long as possible? When poets write about love, they are almost never talking about comfortable long term relationships. They write about the dizzying feeling of falling in love with someone and the first stages of blossoming affection. Let the excitement of falling in love last as long as possible! There is simply no need to hurry. What’s the rush? If it’s meant to be, it will be.

A good rule of thumb: learn about your partner online first — exchange messages for a few days — before moving on to the phone. When you’re at the stage where you’re making phone calls, take time out of your day to really connect with one another on the phone. See how long you can talk on the phone. If you can’t even talk on the phone for a couple of hours, how are you going to make it through a two-hour dinner date?

Here are some good rules to follow during any phone date. Use the telephone as a screening device to judge if you really do want to meet this person in real life. It’s good to keep things at the phone stage for awhile before pushing forward to meeting in real life. Jason and Ang, our August success story of the month, is a great example of how this works. They chatted on the phone for almost a month before meeting in real life. Jason says, “We have been talking on the phone for around 3 weeks, sometimes 4-5 hours at a time.  Our conversations are very diverse, and quickly realized there may be something special here.”

And once you meet in person, it’s good to take things slow in real life, as you have been doing online. Even if you feel you know this other person from chatting with them online and on the phone, it’s a good idea to get to redo the getting-to-know process with them in real life, before becoming physically or emotionally intimate with someone you meet on Zoosk. First, there are the obvious safety concerns. But it’s also just good practice in dating to really learn about a person before inviting them into your heart. Your heart is a special place. Save it for the ones who truly matter!

So, we all agree that taking it slow is a good thing. But generally, it’s easier said than done. What are some easy tips to follow, when you feel things are moving too quickly and you want to take a step back?

1. Communicate.

Wanna cool the acceleration? Simply say so. You should always feel, in any relationship, like you can address your own needs. Should you feel that things are moving too quickly for your liking, you need to pipe up and say so. Any partner worth having will listen and immediately take your feelings into consideration.

2. Keep things light.

There are lots of reasons why you shouldn’t talk about getting serious too early in a relationship, the biggest being that you will probably scare the person away. People do not fall in love at the same pace. Someone always has to say “I love you” first. It’s also difficult to discern, in the beginning, if what you are feeling is really meaningful, or mere infatuation, and it’s always good to marinate in your feelings and reflect on them before taking things to a more serious place.

3. Live in the moment, not the future.

Enjoy the precious moments of your new relationship. Don’t worry about the future! The future will come, and when it arrives, you might even find yourself nostalgic for the past.

4. Never lose your head.

The term “head over heels” is an accurate one, in the sense that people do run the risk of losing their heads when walking, blindly, into a new relationship. Keep your head on straight. Try not to let your emotions control you. In any relationship, you are ultimately in control of your own actions, and to a degree, you can control your feelings as well. Be rational!

5. Don’t try to define anything too early.

Lastly, I don’t know about you, but I sincerely hate the “what are we” conversation. I don’t really believe that people need to know, when they are in the beginning of a relationship, if its going to work out in the long term. As long as you are enjoying yourself now, that should be all that matters. Try not to succumb to the need to define your relation early on. You’ll miss out on all the fun of the relationship if you spend your days worrying about what to call it! Trust!

photo credit: malias

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. The process of writing an online dating profile is essentially the same as the process of talking about yourself. And who doesn’t like talking about themselves? It’s easy. The hard part is finding someone willing to listen. On Zoosk, however, we are giving you the public license to say exactly what you want about yourself — and we are providing you with an entire pool of people who aren’t only willing but actually wanting to listen to what you have to say.

We are giving you a forum to to discuss your own psyches in intricate detail, and we want you to use this opportunity. Wisely.

Be a real person. Okay? Thanks.

The key to writing a good online dating profile is to be specific about who you are. We hate the kind of online dating profile that sounds as if the writer is tailoring his personality to what he thinks other people want to hear. Those sorts of generic, essentially meaningless profiles are exactly what don’t catch our eye. Imagine a profile that says, “I’m a nice caring person with a good heart. I am looking for an honest person who likes to have fun.” Seriously, what does that even mean? Everyone thinks they have ‘a good heart’ (even some really evil people). And of course you are looking for an ‘honest’ person. What else would you be looking for, a compulsive liar? And what is ‘fun’ precisely? Isn’t the concept of ‘fun’ different for different people? In the end, this profile says essentially nothing to me. Sure, it might attract some initial response, but that does nothing toward helping this person find real matches or create real connections with real people, because there’s nothing ‘real’ about this profile to begin with.

In the profile above, Zoosker alonewitheverybody takes time to lay out her personality. We see that she has fancy taste in films (Criterion Collection), listens to shoegaze, and openly admits that she likes critical theory. Some people won’t relate to her at all, but we like this kind of honesty, because she is obviously not trying to please everyone.

Here is an example of what not to do:

… no comment.

Ain’t no shame in filtering out the rejects!

We believe that an online dating profile should be an honest portrayal of your personality and act as a filter, nixing out all the unwanteds early on. If you look at the profile above, alonewitheverybody has no shame in saying exactly what it is that she is looking for; if the man isn’t hairy and doesn’t have tan ankles, she isn’t interested. It’s a little… strange… but at least she’s letting the dating pool know that pasty, hairless people need not apply!

It’s always a smart idea to say exactly what it is you do not want right away on your date card. Being forthright and upfront about your desires is not only good basic practice, but it also saves you and others precious time and energy to get this out right away and not have to deal with it later on. If you have deal breakers — like smoking, children, or cats — you should write those down in your profile right away. Otherwise you might be in for a sorry surprise — and some baby mama drama — later on. The more specific the better. Here’s an example from Zoosker Mike Martinez:

Anorexic supermodels need not apply, because this Zoosker wants a girl who is shorter than 5’5 whose weight is proportionate to her size. We think these sorts of specifics are really smart. Note that he also wrote that he wants a girl “between 25 and 30.” In a few short steps, he’s created age, height, and weight filters — and he notes that he prefers people who have matching political and religious views (another filter).

Channel your inner wordsmith

You don’t have to get all Shakespeare on us, but a little oratorical flair never hurts when attracting people to your date card. I like this excerpt from Zoosker Jessi‘s date card. “I love thunderstorms but I can’t live without sunshine. I find beauty in almost everything about this incredible world we live in… I like to swing at the park, play in the snow, and stomp in puddles.”

Take some time to write descriptively. You have no idea how far a tiny bit of eloquence can get you in the world of online dating. Do you like hiking? Don’t just say “I like to hike.” Aim just a bit higher and say something like, “I love the serenity of standing atop a huge mountain, watching the horizon expand before me.” Do you like walks on the beach? Say “There’s nothing more beautiful to me than a Caribbean beach at sunset, where the stars appear bigger and brighter than everywhere else on earth.” Do you hate life and people? Say “There is nothing more unbearable to me than the company of other people, in this meaningless existential wasteland we call living.” Whatever it is that you have to say, use descriptive language to spice it up.

A little charm goes a long way

If we had to write a list of things that we particularly find un-charming, we’d put offensive language, vulgarity, bad spelling, and bad grammar on the top. And somehow, these things occasionally find their way onto peoples’ online dating profiles — which makes us scratch our heads and wonder how on earth this could possibly happen.  Why would anyone want to date an offensive, vulgar person who has problems communicating effectively? Ask yourself, when editing your date card, “Would I date this person?”

There are some important red flags to avoid — angry rants about previous relationships, overboard negativity about your own life, too much disclosure about money or personal finances — when composing your online dating profile. A good rule in determining what kind of content to avoid is a simple reflection on the power of charm.

What kind of people are charming? Generally, they’re positive, friendly, and humble. Charming people have the undeniable ability to attract others to them. They are, simply put, fun to be around. We know each and every person has the ability to be charming. It isn’t particularly difficult. All it takes is a certain level of mindfulness and a little bit of effort. And charm will go a long way with your fellow Zooskers. Because charming people get dates. Lots of dates.

For more on how to compose date cards, check out the community forums for tips on how to create a great date card. And, as a one time special offer only, I’ll personally help the first five Zooskers who contact me on Facebook in editing and composing their own date cards. Let pimp them out!

photo credit: le vent le cri

100,000,000 Matches

On August 21st, we crossed 100 million conversation mark. In other words, since Zoosk’s birthday, we have enabled 100 million pairs to match and have conversations with each other through Zoosk. Some of these matches have turned into friendly flirts, some into dates, and some into relationships that will last for a long time. We have already received invitations to some of the weddings that have happened through Zoosk and know of Zoosk babies that are due soon . We always love to hear Zoosk stories, so please share yours.

8,000,000 Zooskers

About three weeks later, the number of users on Zoosk crossed 8 million which makes for a very big, happy family. These Zooskers are coming from almost all countries on the planet speaking many languages which makes for a very fun family reunion party.

We here at Zoosk have had a ton fun helping to grow this community to where it is today and we are very thankful to every single Zoosker for making the site a better place by their presence. But we are just getting started. Zoosk isn’t even one year old and these milestones, as impressive as they are, will only be the stepping stones for bigger things for the Zoosk community.

The interesting thing is that we didn’t even notice that we have crossed these milestones. Our team is super focused on making the experience better for our users everyday and these milestones are simply byproducts of making our users happier with Zoosk.

Happy Zoosking!