When you agree to a date, you'll get to see a description of your match. If you still can't find each other amongst all the other nervous-looking people at that bar or coffee shop, quack like a dog and make armpit farts. If that doesn't work, you can send each other text messages through us. In the final 30 minutes before the date, we open a relay. If you send a text message to CUPID (28743) it will go to your date's phone. For example: "I'm at the bar in the back, wearing a blue sweater, drinking a martini."

Instead of creating a profile, Gelato pulls in updates from your Facebook profile, Twitter account, Netflix queue, Pandora stations and Flickr photos to create what founder Steve Odom says is a more authentic profile of who you are. Odom says online dating is ripe for change because it involves static profiles that are time-consuming to create and that people don’t bother to update very often.

“Dating sites haven’t really changed in five years,” Odom said. “At the same time with Twitter, I felt if I could follow someone for a couple weeks, I’d get a more honest picture of who they are.”

The deal includes the purchase of about 27 targeted dating sites with a combined 255,000 paying subscribers, including BlackPeopleMeet.com, BBPeopleMeet.com, LDSPlanet.com, SingleParentMeet.com and SeniorPeopleMeet.com.

People Media, founded in 2002, had $11.6 million of EBITDA in 2008 and quotes Jupiter Research as saying the combined revenues of the targeted dating service business are expected to reach $1.2 billion worldwide this year. Still according to the announcement, People Media, besides exclusively powering multiple AOL Personals communities, reaches nearly 4 million internet users each month. Match.com attracted about 5.8 million unique monthly users in May 09 according to comScore and reported $9.9 million in operating income before amortization last year.

At a price of $480 per month, the company's virtual dating assistants will use "advanced internet dating techniques and strategies to create online dating profiles, interact with women and set up dates with them." The company says it will work approximately 40 hours per month for each customer and guarantees them a minimum of 2 dates per month (or their money back).

Co-founders Mark Anderson and Scott Valdez are overseeing a cherry-picked team of virtual assistants that are referred to as "007" Dating Assistants due to the "suave and sophisticated nature of their undercover interactions." Yes, they are actually called "007" Dating Assistants.

In a February report, Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay called it "the most successful of a new generation of 'free' or advertising-supported dating sites," and one whose growth could pose a "Craigslist-like disintermediation” threat to established players like Yahoo Personals and IAC's Match.com.

By wading into the paid arena, it may lessen that disintermediation risk, but compete on more even terms with those sites.

According to a blog entry by its CEO, Markus Frind, PlentyofFish will sell "Serious Member" badges that will appear on members’ pages for three, six or 12 months. Serious members will be marked as such in search results, and their messages to prospective partners will be highlighted.

PlentyofFish's approach to a paid option is different from Match and Yahoo Personals, which charge users when they sign up or attempt to contact someone. "Paid sites monetize on impulse," Mr. Frind wrote. "PlentyofFish is going to monetize on user intent. I believe we will have far more members that are serious than paid sites."

Love 2.0: As many Centenarians as Baby Boomers (3 percent) say they have dated someone they met on an online dating site. Twelve percent of Centenarians surveyed say they have used the Internet and some have "Googled" someone they have lost contact with (2 percent) or have visited someone's personal Web site (2 percent).

For the last few weeks I've been working on this tiny project that allows people to find their missed connections. This has been done before, but in my version it is hyper concentrated to finding love in the New York subway. Everyone has had a missed connection while riding the trains (you don't have to just be this guy) so we thought we would help.

Max Kiesler's sweet tweet at 3:13 a.m. Thursday: "To @emilychang - After fifteen years of blissful happiness I would like to ask for your hand in marriage?"

Emily Chang's reply, a minute later: "@maxkiesler - yes, i do."

The proposal: "@stefsull - ok. for the rest of the twitter-universe (and this is a first, folks) - WILL YOU MARRY ME?"

Sullivan's reply: "@garazi - OMG - Ummmmm... I guess in front of the whole twitter-verse I'll say -- I'd be happy to spend the rest of my geek life with you."

A search on MySpace.com brought up more than 700 recent comments that accuse others of stealing headlines, user names, songs, background designs and entire profiles. In a recent survey of more than 400 online daters commissioned by Engage.com, 9% of respondents said they copied from another person's profile; 15% suspect their own words were stolen.

A Match.com profile of a man in Redmond, Wash., includes this postscript: "Shame on the woman who plagiarized my narrative and stole it for her profile!" And a 34-year-old woman in Basking Ridge, N.J., tacked this P.S. to her Plentyoffish.com profile: "To the girl who copied my profile -- and denies it...you s-!"

The quest for originality has spawned the services of online-dating coaches and profile writers. Some of them are victims, too. Dave Mizrachi, 34, of Miami sells an "Insider Internet Dating" course for $97. Mr. Mizrachi includes his own dating profile, advising men to use it as a guide. But at least 25 people on Match.com have stolen his lines, including: "I get a lot of women emailing me, (which is great for an ego boost)." One man uses Mr. Mizrachi's photo.

A recent search on Match.com brought up more than 90 profiles with such lines as: "I want an opposite. A yin to my yang," or "You know that woman who is the first person on the dance floor at every party? That's me." They weren't even from real people. They were cribbed from sample profiles posted online at E-Cyrano.com by dating coach and profile writer Evan Marc Katz. "It just seems so short-sighted," says Mr. Katz, of Los Angeles. "Everybody steals the same lines so they are not original anymore."

Thierry Khalfa says he had a good excuse to copy: His English isn't so good. The 44-year-old Frenchman first cobbled a ho-hum profile that said he liked to cook and enjoyed walks on the beach. Then he stumbled across the profile of Mike Matteo, 47, a screenwriter in Tampa, Fla. Mr. Matteo's profile had such nuggets as, "I have a sweet tooth, love my strawberry twizzlers and cheesecake jelly beans."

Without thinking twice, Mr. Khalfa says, he copied Mr. Matteo's prose because it also fit him to a tee. "That guy should be proud," says Mr. Khalfa, of Largo, Fla., who runs an auto-glass business. "In France, in the fashion business, when you see something that looks good, you take it and you copy it."

Mr. Khalfa caught the eye of preschool teacher Marjorie Coon, 48. They exchanged emails, and Ms. Coon wanted to meet Mr. Khalfa in person. Then she discovered he had copied the profile of Mr. Matteo, by coincidence her friend. She let Mr. Khalfa know she knew and dumped him. "I felt he was less than honest, a manipulator and downright stupid," says Ms. Coon, of Largo, Fla. Mr. Matteo wasn't too happy, either. "I'm not Cyrano de Bergerac," he says, referring to the 19th-century play about a man penning love letters for a rival.

A handful of next-gen dating services updates the original online-dating sites' standard mix of exhaustive personality surveys and poring over profiles in search of a potential mate. They're the latest twists on internet dating, which drew in 22.6 million people this year, according to data collected by comScore.

Video-centered services like SpeedDate, Say-hey-hey and WooMe reel in online speed daters by offering quick registration, free memberships and the tantalizing promise of a date within minutes. Others, like Ice Brkr and Crazy Blind Date, rely on text messaging to coordinate speedy meetings.

WooMe, backed by original Skype backer Mangrove Capital Partners, allows members to create short group-video-chat sessions. SpeedDate, based in San Mateo, California, files a seemingly endless line of daters through your virtual door for three-minute "video dates" supplemented with a text client. With Say-hey-hey, users upload a YouTube-style clip of themselves, and viewers interested in a date ping the posters with intro videos of their own.

Larry Rosen, professor of psychology at California State University at Dominguez Hills and author of the forthcoming book Me, MySpace and I, says the evolution of online dating is only natural: Even pioneer dating site Match.com is hooking up with Facebook to tap the social networking site's growing popularity.

"It's so important for women to be informed and empowered in all areas of their lives," said the site's founder Tasha Cunningham. "And I'm thrilled to be able to start 2008 by launching this fund to help women to do just that. DDHG Empowers, in partnership with the Dade Community Foundation, will fund projects and programs that uplift women, give them a voice and make a positive impact on their lives."

A significant portion of the proceeds from DontDateHimGirl.com's annual advertising revenue will be donated to the fund, which will be administered by the Dade Community Foundation. DontDateHimGirl.com is an online resource for women seeking counsel, community and communication about love, sex, dating, relationships and marriage. Its mission is to empower women with information and connections to help them make better decisions and take more control in their personal lives.

"DontDateHimGirl.com gives us a powerful tool that can help to limit the amount of damage con men and sociopaths can wreak on our lives," says Kerry Gray of Austin, Texas, a poster and frequent visitor to the site. "Before, these men would simply move to the next town and next victim. Today, thanks to the World Wide Web and DDHG, we have a way to help our sisters around the world. Information is power."

Dating used to be largely a matter of spending time with a love interest, discovering the good, the bad and the ugly in person. If you were lucky, friends helped fill in some of the blanks.

These days, the Internet -- and the ability to check people out before they ever meet up -- has forever changed the rules.

For better or worse, "googling" your date has become standard practice.

"I often tell my friends that are still in the dating sphere to use the power of Google to their advantage," says Katie Laird, a 24-year-old Web marketing professional and self-proclaimed "social software geek" from Houston.