Summer time is in high gear, and that means plenty of opportunities to get “out and about” to meet other singles. Online dating services are of course a great way to meet up with someone whose interests match with your own, but there will always be a role for in person, face to face interactions when it comes to the dating world.

That’s why Match.com conducted its annual Singles Summer Travel Survey to find the very best places for singles to travel this year if they want to find lots of opportunities to meet other singles.

And this year’s winner? Miami, Florida, of course! Who wouldn’t want to take a summer trip to this beautiful city which is also home to some of the most beautiful beaches to be found anywhere?

In fact, it is the availability of beautiful beaches that most singles say is one of the major deciding factors in their choosing of a summer vacation destination. A great beach is a “must have” for over 70% of the singles who responded to the survey, with a great swimming pool coming in a distant second with about 43% of the singles saying it was a “must have” for them.

If you can’t make it to Miami this year, though, take heart because there are a number of other great beach destinations that are also top picks for singles. These include Manhattan Beach, California; Waikiki Beach, Hawaii; and South Padre Island, Texas. So wherever you might be, there’s a great beach near you for meeting and connecting with other singles this summer!

News & Views Holidays, Match.com, Summer, Survey

This should come as no surprise at all to anyone who has spent even a little bit of time online visiting social networking sites and online dating sites. The information posted on these sites is rapidly becoming a primary source of evidence used by divorce lawyers in their filings of client divorce papers.

The reason is simple, of course. Cheaters, unhappy spouses, and others looking for “alternatives” to their current relationship make up a large percentage of people using these kinds of sites, which means they are putting themselves out there for others to find and meet. As long a their activities remain a secret from their partner, it’s not a problem; but once that partner gets a whiff of something suspicious it only takes a quick and easy search to start finding online evidence of misdeeds.

Lawyers are well aware of this, too, and more and more of them are including online searches as a standard part of their services when it comes to divorce filings. In fact, according to one of the leading professional legal associations up to 81% of divorce lawyers use some form of online research to specifically look for this kind of evidence in order to use it to benefit their clients. Facebook.com was the site most often cited as a great source of this kind of evidence, followed closely by MySpace.com and Twitter.com.

So what’s the lesson here? If you’re cheating, fair warning: anything you have out there is going to be found. And if you’re the partner being cheated on? Better check with your lawyer to make sure he or she is going to include this kind of search as part of their professional services.

Divorce Cheating, Divorce, Lawyers, Searches, Social Networking

In a move that has surprised very few people in the online dating world, Yahoo Personals has admitted defeat and given up on running its own dating service online. After being one of the earliest online dating providers, Yahoo led the marketplace for a long time but over the last few years has had a huge amount of trouble competing with its larger competitors such as eHarmony.com and Match.com.

And so it’s goodbye to Yahoo Personals and hello to Match.com. The larger and more popular Match.com will absorb Yahoo Personals members and transfer their accounts to their service. Yahoo isn’t getting out of the online dating business entirely, though; they will still earn commissions from signing up new Match.com members via Yahoo channels.

What does this mean for singles? For the most part it should only affect those who are Yahoo Personals members, but not necessarily in a negative way. They will transition to Match.com and be able to take advantage of that site’s features and benefits. Some experts who watch the online dating marketplace think the loss of Yahoo Personals is a sign that only the very big will survive long term, but most others think it is not that dire of a situation. The reality is that there is still going to be plenty of opportunity on the web for other online dating sites to launch and prosper, especially those that focus on niche categories with highly specialized services.

So goodbye, Yahoo Personals, it was nice knowing you!

News & Views Match.com, Yahoo