Personal Dating Agent

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when online dating was considered taboo. Dangerous, even. One of the most common reasons people warned against it was because you never knew who was actually on the other end of those private messages you were getting.

Nowadays that way of thinking seems antiquated; after all, we’ve all become web-savvy enough to navigate our way through what’s fake and what’s real when it comes to our online interactions, right?

Well, not if the creators of Personal Dating Agent do their job.

Personal Dating Agent is a new online dating service based in the UK that essentially does the online dating for you. Their dating agents get to know their clients, create online profiles for them, and pose as their clients on said online dating sites. All the client has to do is show up for the date.

According to co-founder Maxime Leufroy-Murat, the site “is targeted to both men and women who don’t have time to go online, scramble through thousands of profiles, send messages … with no guarantee of success. Or for people who just don’t know how [online dating] works.”

The site encourages people to use its services for three reasons: 1) To save time by letting someone else do the work for you; 2) To take advantage of their online dating expertise; and 3) To have a safer online dating experience. Clients can choose whether or not to disclose right up front that they are using a dating agent.

“Our concept is about doing it all for them, not with algorithms, but with people,” Leufroy-Murat said in an email interview. ”We have a team of dating agents who will get to know the member, create their dating profile, sign them up to two sites, find their matches, message them, and organize a date. We become the client online, in other words. The big difference is that we guarantee dates to the member. If we don’t deliver, he gets his money back.”

According to Leufroy-Murat, the site is not a means of deception. The dating agents limit their online interactions with potential dates to 3-4 messages and focus on setting up real-life dates. “We avoid creating relationships online; we are here to facilitate a meeting,” he said.

The site launched in November of 2011. As of this month, they have had more than 80 clients and nine success stories (that they are aware of). The service is available worldwide.

Share Your Thoughts
How would you feel if you found out your date, who you thought you “met” online, was facilitated through a Personal Dating Agent?  Would it make a difference if everything worked out in the end, or would you feel deceived?  Do you think this is a good service for people who are too busy to use online dating sites, or do you think if they’re too busy to online date, they are too busy to date at all? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Article by Mika Doyle at http://mikadoyle.com/2012/03/12/date-online-without-ever-going-online/

Below is an article written by Huffington Post blogger Pamela Gross detailing 10 things that no-one wants to see on an online dating profile.

I want to add a few things to this list:

a) Negative statements - I really hate seeing people rant and moan about all the bad experiences they have had on their dating profiles and writing lists of things they don’t want. One guy wrote a whole paragraph on what a potential partner shouldn’t look like. It’s just crass and says nothing at all about who you are apart from the fact that you’re shallow and judgmental.

b) Unclear photos - First of all, if someone only has one photo I become very suspicious. If you only have one photo and it’s taken from the side with important parts of you (like your teeth) covered then that does nothing to sway me to your side.

3) Extreme light - I hate photos of people with bright lights making their faces look very angelic and masking what they really look like, bad skin and all.

4) Sunglasses - Trust me, you look way better WITHOUT the shades.

And now for the article:

It’s rough out there. Believe me. I know … But when you are looking for love online, there are certain things you can do to make it easier on yourself. I am here to offer the men of the world some very simple, no-brainer DONT’S for their online profile pictures. Men: Take a moment to make sure you are not guilty of any these offenses:

1. Pictures of yourself with a dolphin: I don’t really get it. Is it to show a “sense of adventure?” A love of fish?

2. Listing your job as “professional”: Professional WHAT?

3. Post only one picture — of a group: I get it! You want us to know ‘I’m a cool guy,’ I have friends! And that’s okay, it gives us an indication of what you like to do, but come on — you need to indicate which one you are. Guess which one is trying to land a date? I DON’T KNOW!

4. One very distant picture: “Hellllooooooo out there there the th….” I can’t SEE you. Not helpful when I am superficially sussing out people that I could potentially be attracted to!

5. Blurry: Come on. You can do better, can’t you?

6. Pictures of yourself with several bimbos: So that’s what you like? Pass.

7. Shirt off, no face: While it’s good to let a girl imagine, we’d rather not have to imagine your face — put your shirt back on and stop hiding behind your (real or imagined) abdominals.

8. Only posting self-portraits of the bathroom mirror variety: Get someone to take your freaking picture! Come on, man! If I wanted to date a serial killer, I would get a prison pen pal.

9. Posting arty imagery: I get it. You’re cool. I don’t want to look at what you like to look at. I want to see you. Spare me your awesome sense of aesthetics.

10. No photo: This is of course the worst photo offense one can commit in their online dating profile. Even the least shallow among us, when looking for “the one” online and sifting through thousands of profiles, have at best a four-second window in which we decide whether or not we want to learn more about this person. And the picture is largely what we base it on. No pic/no dice. *see number 4.

(Source: The Huffington Post)

Written by Helen Croydon for the Metro newspaper.

I’m a big advocate of convenience. Shops gift-wrapped all my Christmas presents; professional packers helped me move and my supermarket shopping gets delivered. 

So imagine my excitement when I heard about a scheme that could manage my dates. 

Personaldatingagent.com is part-online dating, part-traditional agency. You get  access to as large a menu of single  hopefuls as you would on a commercial site but you receive a professional’s input on matchmaking. 

Don’t think it can cut out tedious form-filling, though. To start the process there’s a short questionnaire – and yes, you still have to give your eye colour. 

Next comes a 45-minute phone interview by my very friendly ‘personal agent’,  Natasha. The questions are – as with all self-promotion forms – totally  irrelevant personal preferences that you’ll never talk about anyway: my favourite travel destination; my  favourite part of London; my favourite film. 

And the inevitable: What are your hobbies? ‘I drink wine and put the world to rights, often until three in the morning,’ I tell her proudly. ‘And I go to the gym.’ 

There are more open-ended questions, too, with room for expansion. She asks me whether I’m a romantic (of course) and how an ex would  describe me. Uh-oh. ‘A commitment phobe,’ I reply. There’s a pause. ‘Is there anything more positive that you can say?’ she suggests. 

I’m enjoying the interview, though – a whole 45 minutes of indulgent introspection. Natasha’s getting me to expand on all sorts of life goals.  I tell her very firmly that I’m not looking for long-term commitment – more like a reliable and low- maintenance lover. She tells me that she’s never had a request like that but she’ll do her best. 

Natasha emails her verdict 24 hours later. She thinks the perfect site for me is Match.com. I shudder. I’ve  always thought that Match.com was somewhere people go to look for  husbands. 

It certainly wouldn’t have been the site I’d have picked but I go along with it. Hours later she emails a draft of my personal profile. It’s lively and well-written but I cringed so much it took two glasses of wine before I could read it. Natasha had structured it based on a collection of answers from our telephone interview.  Although correctly quoted, she’d  included a montage of life snippets that I would never have considered worth writing up: where I went backpacking at 18 and who my favourite film star is. I rewrite the entire thing and apologetically send it back. 

She amends and sends a  link to my full profile to  approve. This is when I realise that somewhere along the line I’ve shrunk to 5ft 4in, my  ‘athletic’ physique has become ‘average’ and my interests and activities have become ‘seeing my family’. So  I sneak into my profile and change  all that. 

Now it’s live – and I’m totally  paranoid someone will recognise me. Natasha emails a menu of  potential matches. I pick three and she contacts them. There are a few replies – but I don’t read them.  I leave it all in Natasha’s hands. She’s very good at flirtatious banter and that’s fine by me. Three days later she emails to say she has set up a rendezvous with a nice-looking  45-year-old advertising executive. All I have to do is confirm via text. 

En route, I realise since I haven’t read any of the message exchanges, that I don’t know his name. It didn’t matter. I stayed for two hours, drank wine and put the world to rights – not until 3am this time. It’s certainly time saving but some things – such as choosing lovers – you have to  do yourself.

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