We are happy to announce that SpeedDate was awarded the Blogger’s Choice in the Open Web Awards for the ‘Dating & Romance Category’.  According to Mashable,

• the Open Web Awards is a competition that covers major innovations in web technology
• Over 100 Blog Partners have helped make this the biggest Open Web Awards to date with over 100,000 confirmed nominations and votes so far.
  
• The blog partners come from 25 countries and are written in 10 different languages.

We are happy to be recognized by Mashable and blogs around the world, and will continue working hard to deliver the best possible online dating experience to our users!

Ever wondered how to standout on SpeedDate?  Our guest blogger, Jullien Gordon, offers up some great advice in this 3-part series. Thanks Jullien!

How To Differentiate Yourself on SpeedDate.com:
Part 1 of 3: “About Me”

Speed dating is not that different from interviewing.  Your profile is like your resume.  Your first online date is like your interview.  And the actual date is like your first day at work.  So the key to getting an offer from a potential match is make sure your resume or profile stands out.

On SpeedDate.com, the “About Me”  section is a great place to differentiate yourself.  Since most of the fields are pull down menus, the two places to distinguish yourself most in this section are: ‘More about me’, and ‘Who I would like to meet’.

1. More About Me

It’s impossible to tell someone all about yourself in this little section.  The goal of this section is to spark their curiosity and desire to know more about you. Instead of seeing this section as “More About Me”, imagine that the heading is “Why should I date you?”

This section should be more than a few sentences. A surefire formula for success is to answer the following:

Where you’re from?

Give a short timeline about yourself that includes your education and geographic moves.

Example: I’m an 80s baby, born and raised in San Francisco, CA.  I got my BA in American History from the USC before moving back to the Bay Area

What do you do for a living?

Talk about what you do in an interesting way that your business card doesn’t capture.  Talking about your job in a new way sparks curiousity and prevent prospects from putting you in a box based on what they think they know about your profession.

Example: My day job is being a mental farmer.  I plant seeds in the fertile minds of youth so that they can grow.  Some people call me a teacher.

2. Who I would like to meet

What you’re looking for is a reflection of who you are so it’s fair game to state what you’re looking here so that potential prospects can self-select if they think they are a match.

Example: I’m not looking for anything serious.  I’m just looking for someone who knows how to have fun and likes to travel.
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Stay tuned for Part 2: Interests!

SpeedDate is a *Top 3 Finalist* in the Open Web Awards. Whether you’ve voted for us or not in the first few voting rounds, now you can make your vote REALLY count!

 Update: Voting ended and we won the Blogger’s Choice Award - thanks for supporting SpeedDate!

One of the best things about running a dating site like SpeedDate is hearing success stories from our members every day.  Here’s one that came in a few days ago from a woman in Canada:

On August 24th I came to check my messages on your site and had a wink, so I checked it out and decided to msg the guy back.  Well we have been talking every day since and we now live together and are very much in love. We just wanted to thank you because with out SpeedDate we would never have found each other.

By the way, as of yesterday, over 23 million online speed dates had taken place through SpeedDate!

Thanks to all of our supporters, SpeedDate has been nominated in the ‘Dating and Romance’ category for the Open Web Awards.

Update: Voting ended and we won the Blogger’s Choice Award - thanks for supporting SpeedDate!

Please nominate SpeedDate for the Open Web Awards. Help get the word out about SpeedDate, the new way to meet people!

Update: Voting ended and we won the Blogger’s Choice Award - thanks for supporting SpeedDate!

In honor of the U.S. Presidential Election, SpeedDate made available virtual gifts related to politics. Tens of thousands of gifts were sent by our users. We introduced an equal number of gifts related to Obama and McCain. We’ve posted the percentage of each gift sent below. The results are interesting:

• The most sent gift was the ‘Vote Obama’ Badge with 24% (it even beat our default ‘vote’ gift)
• The least sent gift was the elephant that represents the Republican party
• Obama/Dem gifts were sent 51% of the time versus only 9% for McCain/Republican gifts

There’s still time to send more gifts to influence the results right here. Will SpeedDate users mirror the rest of the U.S.?

Do you have a super-sexy Halloween costume? Well, Thursday night, you can try out your costume on SpeedDate. The night before Halloween, we’re inviting SpeedDate members to wear costumes while they are on SpeedDate. Either upload a pic of yourself in costume or turn on your webcam.  Give your costume a whirl on SpeedDate before wearing it on Halloween.

Also, please email your best Halloween date stories to info @ speeddate.com.  We’ll post the some of the highlights right here.  Happy Halloween!

We celebrated the first anniversary of our launch this month.  Since launching in October 2007, we’ve hosted 18 million online dates.   Since SpeedDate hosts an average of 120,000 online dates per day, a new date begins on the site every second of the day. 

 One of the highlights of our first year came on Valentine’s Day, when SpeedDate.com user Francesca Salcido dated over 300 people in a single 24-hour marathon session.  We were excited that the event attracted worldwide press coverage including ABC’s Good Morning America.  The site’s themed dating nights around events such as Super Tuesday and the summer Olympics also drew large dating numbers.

To think that a year ago online speed dating didn’t even exist and today we help millions of people all over the world to find that special someone is truly gratifying.  At SpeedDate.com the chances are that you will be connecting with someone you have real chemistry with in just minutes.

We look forward to enhancing SpeedDate and welcoming plenty of new users in Year #2!

We are happy to announce that we’ve created the SpeedDate community toolbar.  The SpeedDate toolbar brings lots of great features to your desktop, including:

1. Quickstart button to begin dating
2. Direct access to members, messages, and add buddies pages
3. Google search box
4. Other fun features (Weather, email, radio)

 Check it out here:  Try Our Toolbar