Archives
10 ways you can enjoy being single
By Juliet O
We love being single here at Zoosk. And we hope you singles out there are enjoying and celebrating your singlehood. We’re an online dating website, so obviously, we don’t want you to remain single forever. However, we believe that in order to be successful in a relationship, you have to first be okay with being single. It’s like that old saying: to love another person you have to first love yourself. To celebrate singles everywhere, we’ve come up with 10 simple, easy ways you can make the most out of being single (and ready to mingle).
10. Go out to a great dinner with your single friends
One of the best aspects of being single is hanging out with your single friends. Spending time with couples is okay, but from a singleton myself, I definitely prefer hanging out with fellow singles. We’re just more fun! And we definitely know how to party. This week, organize a dinner with your single pals. Whether its casual or elegant, raucous or sedate, go somewhere for food and drinks with the company of people you enjoy spending time with.
Remember to celebrate being single this week!
By Juliet O
Hello singles. Are you celebrating? Because in case it’s escaped your radar, this week is National Singles Week!
20 years ago, a group of people known as the Buckeye Singles Council created NSW to celebrate the lives and accomplishments of single and unmarried people, and to recognize their important contributions to society (like keeping bars and nightclubs open!). Since its inception, NSW has become widely observed around the world.
Coinciding with National Singles Week, we conducted a survey of over a thousand of our Zooskers, asking you for your thoughts on single and unmarried life. The results are fascinating. Contrary to what you might think, we found that the men we surveyed voted that they’d rather settle down in a relationship, while the women we surveyed stated that they enjoyed being single. 49% of men wish they weren’t single, as opposed to 31.5% of women.
We also found that Zooskers, overall, have quite a romantic viewpoint on love.
Continue reading
Warning! Your date may be at risk from pet peeves
By Juliet O
To find out more about what pisses you Zooskers off, we posted over at the new and improved community forums asking for your biggest dating pet peeves. The response we got was varied, insightful, and revealing. Here are the top 10 most frequently cited pet peeves, and advice on how to avoid them.
1. Texting
It seems, hands down, the pet peeve we noticed most frequently was regarding cell phone use during a date. People really, really don’t like it when you use a cell phone on a date. Says Zoosker Shannon, “I understand when an emergency comes up, but it’s so important to be present with each other especially when you’re learning about each other.” Zoosker Tommy agrees. “I can’t stand texting while on a date. It’s rude and a really bad impression for me when they text while I’m in the middle of saying something or if it’s while they are saying something and they abruptly stop, text, and then continue.” Texting can be an addictive thing, but if you want to make a good impression on a first date, keep your phone away from you greedy little fingers! Turn the phone to silent or vibrate, and put it deep in your pocket or handbag. Equally bad as texting is constantly checking your phone to see if you’ve received any messages. You can check your phone if you excuse yourself to use the restroom, but never in front of your date unless it’s an absolute emergency. As Zoosker DD states, “Put the phone down and try to enjoy yourself.”
Love Advice: How to overcome shyness
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.
Smooth operator — on the phone
By Juliet O
“Hello Jane!”
“Hi?”
“This is John. From Zoosk! How are you, Jane?”
“Hi! I’m good.”
“So I’m calling you cuz I thought your boobs looked really great in your photos.”
“What?!”
“I mean, I’m calling because I thought we hit it off and–”
Click.
Err… real smooth, John. Now Jane thinks you’re a total creepazoid. Right after she hung up the phone, she went to see if your name was on the national sex offender registry. It goes without saying that this is the type of phone conversation an online dater should do his very very best to avoid. But you already knew that.
Continue reading
Facebook Connect, Yo
Hella quick, efficient Facebook Connect integration in da HIZZOUSE! Continue reading
Valentine’s Day With Zoosk Never Tasted So Sweet!
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…
