Online dating has become a very HOT topic.

The Los Angeles Times featured a story on how to find the right online dating service which appeared in the IMAGE section.

In the article, Mark Brooks from Online Personals Watch called the Internet the world’s largest bar. I have to agree here.

Read my expert dating advice in the cover story of the Valentine’s edition of  Los Angeles Times.

“EHarmony has [about 250] questions in their questionnaire,” says Julie Spira of CyberDatingExpert.com and author of “The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online.” “Anyone who signs up with eHarmony is truly serious about having a relationship with someone.”

Industry experts Brooks and Spira also praise GPS-based mobile applications like Skout and Foursquare that let users find out what people are doing and where they are so they can join the party at the bar or restaurant and meet new people.

For those who want to approximate a real in-person date before spending time and money on what might very well be an awkward first date, CyberDatingExpert.com’s Spira says to look to webcams.

“People are so conditioned on the first date to be disappointed that you don’t look like your photo,” she explains. She lists Speeddate.com or WooMe.com, both meet-via-webcam sites with younger clienteles, as success stories because their users tend to be less inhibited and quick learners of the software platform. “With video, what you see is what you get. But the older people in their 40s and 50s aren’t taking the time to do videos. You’re just getting them to join online dating for the first time so it’s like baby steps.”

Virtual sites, such as Second Life, OmniDate.com and Weopia.com, or even gaming sites, such as World of Warcraft (where romances have sometimes sparked between members of the gamers’ playing guilds), are perfect for those who are “gadget oriented” but also add another layer of anonymity, Spira says — something that can be a pro or a con. She says that virtual daters should get real pictures of their suitors before getting too serious.

Spira says it’s also common for online daters to be on several dating sites at once, at least one of which is free. But there might be a lot of abandoned profiles on free sites because “if you are paying $50 a month for an online dating site, you’re going to pay more attention to those e-mails. It’s economics.”

Click here to read full article on the Los Angeles Times

Photo Credit: Step Up Women's Network

It was the first holiday party of the season, where Step Up Women’s Network hosted their annual membership get together hosted by Wolfgang Puck Catering at the Pacific Design Center on November 18, 2009.

More than 1000 members registered for the cocktails, social networking, and philanthropy event where they served signature drinks called the StepTini and and the Luminary Limba, in honor of their highest level membership.

The event hosts included Lisa Lee and Leslie Ann Warren and the Keynote speech was delivered by Access Hollywood’s Shaun Robinson who quoted Oprah Winfrey numerous times. Robinson just published her first book, Exactly As I Am: Celebrated Women Share Candid Advice with Today’s Girls on What It Takes to Believe in Yourself

Julie Spira and Board Member Jaclyn Mullen

Guests who renewed their membership or upgraded received a VIP Goody bag so enticing, that it was worth attending just to get the Sports Club LA Free one month membership.

The evening before the festive event, Step Up celebrated Stepping Up in the City with their New York chapter members at M2 Ultra Lounge where the Keynote Speaker was Fern Mallis, senior vp IPG Fashion, widely credited as the creator of Fashion Week in New York City.

Julie Spira is a writer, dating coach, and bestselling author of the online dating book, The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online. Visit her at CyberDatingExpert.com