Love Summit 2.0

Last week, Zoosk hosted our very first Love Summit 2.0 at SPiN NYC. A handful of journalists were invited to sip cocktails, nibble on appetizers, and contemplate love in the Internet Age, courtesy of Zoosk, and it was a fun, intimate affair.

We invited four experts on digital love — Dr. Robert Epstein of Scientific American, Julia Allison (columnist for Time Out New York and all around, 24/7 media personality), successful online dating coach (“eFlirtExpert”) Laurie Davis, and text message and mobile dating expert Debra Goldstein, author (with Olivia Baniuszewicz) of Flirtexting: How to Text Your Way into His Heart (a book which, according to its authors, is just as popular with single dudes as it is with single ladies).

The panel discussion was moderated by the delightful Paul Carr, a writer for TechCrunch and author of the (only mildly) hyperbolic Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions Of A New Media Whore.

From left to right: Dr. Robert Epstein, Julia Allison, Laurie Davis, Debra Goldstein, and Paul Carr. For more on our Love Summit — including tons of pics — read after the jump!

What we learned from Julia Allison (above, center): Hiding your ex from your Facebook status feed is a good decision that promotes your own mental health; no one likes to start off a day by stumbling onto pictures of the new girlfriend/boyfriend on your status feed. Also, women are more comfortable ‘putting themselves out there’ via the web than men are. In her experience, guys are far more reticent to sharing personal information on the web than their female counterparts.

What we learned from Laurie Davis (above, left): Lists are a great tool in building your online dating profile. People don’t have time to read lots of exposition, but they want to know the important points; if you can, try to make your profile ‘skimmable’. Spellcheck and grammar are the two most important tools in building your online profiles, and try to avoid excess slang or abbreviations. A useful saying is “if you don’t want to date, abbreviate”.

What we learned from Debra Goldstein (above): Wait to text someone back. Rapid fire responses are never a good idea because the rules of real-life dating still apply to the mobile/online world. According to Goldstein, guys like to pursue and girls like the chase, and a little mystery can be an all-around good thing. Regarding ex-texts, if you have the tendency to make embarrassing phone calls or send embarrassing texts when you’ve had too much to drink, get a friend to be the designated drunk dial/text receiver; rather than sending sure-to-be-ignored texts to the ex you’re still pining over, send a message to your friend, whose job it is to talk you out of it.

What we learned from Dr. Epstein (above, left): The concept of suitability is essential to relationships. Couples who are suitable for one another last, while couples who aren’t suited (but who nonetheless “love” one another) don’t. The idea here is that suitability is just as important as love when picking your partner, and it’s a good idea to ask yourself if the person you’re seeing is “right” for you.

Before the night was over, we got some great on-camera interviews (two sneak peak pics below) with all of our online dating experts. Stay tuned to ZooskTV, folks! We’re releasing the interviews soon!