As an industry first, Skout found a way connect the virtual online dating world with the real world. People can use Skout to chat, share photos, and even share videos. The new SKOUT.COM iPad app will not only show you singles nearby who are active and ready to chat, it will also boast a new concept: The HotMap. The Map will display a live overview of where most singles are currently active in your area. If members are searching for men between 25-30, the map will show the highest concentration of the results on the map. Data is aggregated live from the Skout Network of over 500,000 members using iPhones, the web, mobile web, and now the iPad. According to Match.com founder Gary Kremen, "As we stand at the cusp of mobile convergence, SKOUT is perfectly positioned to disrupt the online dating market. SKOUT represents what all dating companies must become to not only just remain relevant, but to survive." The Skout dating service is available on virtually every mobile phone with a browser as well as via a laptop or desktop computer by visiting http://www.skout.com. With Valentine's around the corner members can also rely on SKOUT to meet up with others with similar interests who are nearby hoping to communicate and maybe even find love.

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).

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.

"I find younger guys will usually be totally into you while older guys will be looking over your shoulder at a younger woman," said Gail Garrison, 44, a fashion designer and former model.

"Younger men expect an older woman to be more accomplished. They are looking for you because you are intelligent. They are not looking for a mother," she said.

Mr Abelson, 27, calls it "Natural Selection Speed Date II: Sugar Mamas & Boy Toys". He came up with the idea after drawing criticism from feminists for organising an event last year that paired wealthy older men with young women.

More than 5000 men applied for a place in this year's event. Twenty finalists were selected.

"I think for men it is an incredible fantasy (to be with an older woman)," Mr Abelson said. "Older women are more experienced and they know what they want."

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.

"People buy into this myth of the perfect mate and how once they find them, they won't have any interest in anyone else, and that's just wrong," says Barash. "If they're a normal healthy human mammal, they're likely to be attracted to someone else on occasion. It doesn't mean that their marriage or partnership is doomed. Nor does it mean they have to act on it."

Barash says being upfront with both yourself and your partner about the fact that "attraction happens" is the best way to deal with it - although that doesn't mean completely giving in to your inner wolf.

Another possibly new development? Shameless horndoggery.

"We've found pretty consistently that the extent to which people find their attention captured by attractive members of the opposite sex really depends upon personality characteristics," says Maner. "And people who are more sexually promiscuous are much more likely to have their attention captured by attractive members of the opposite sex."