Cyber Love Links – Links to Love When You’re in the Mood for Love

Happy Friday. It’s time for our weekend wrap up of Cyber Love Links.

We’re always so grateful to thank those who have featured us or mentioned our dating advice, but also love sharing some of our favorite tweets and stories on the web for your reading pleasure.

A huge thank you to Men’s Fitness, where we were quoted in two stories this week, 10 Little Ways to Kill Your Online Dating Game from Meredith Bogas and Answers from a Hot Girl: Do Women Really Want Chivalry? from our friend Jenna Birch. We say yes! Chivalry is still alive and well, so men we love it when you stand out from the most and do open the door for us. Thank you to Best Dating Sites for listing @JulieSpira as one of the Top Experts on Dating and Relationship Advice on Twitter.

Worried about online dating safety? So are we. Thank you to NBC News in Raleigh who did an in-depth story and including our safety tips called An Online Dating Horror Story. We’re not here to scare you, but are committed to helping you spot the red flags to enjoy your online dating journey. Gratitude to Prevention magazine for being featured in Text Mistakes You’re Making. How to Improve Your Text Life With These 6 Tips.

On Twitter, our friends at Mashable just posted Four Steps for Using Your Mobile Device to Jumpstart Your Love Life. So grab your lipstick and change your location-based-options and let us know how you like it. We also retweeted Ask Men’s video on Long Distance Relationships. Yes, they can be tough, but you can keep the spark alive through texting, tweeting, and Skyping so absence will make the heart grown fonder instead of making it go wander.

Our friend Natasha Burton wrote a terrific post on iVillage, Dating Online? Watch Out For These Red Flags to Avoid Distasters. On eHarmony Advice, we enjoyed, In Online Dating: Who Should Make the First Move? Ladies, men do love a little nudge here and there.

Finally, one of our favorite article was featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Dating Game’s Rebooting Call, featuring new fun niche dating sites.

Wishing you much love and joy in cyberspace, or wherever you may roam.

~Julie and the Cyber-Dating Expert Team

Julie Spira is a leading online dating expert and bestselling author of The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online. She creates irresistible profiles for singles on the dating scene. For more dating advice, follow @JulieSpira on Twitter,  like Facebook.com/CyberDatingExpert, and sign up for the Weekly Flirt newsletter.

5 Texting Tips to Help Improve Your Relationship

Digital love –  Should texting be a part of your dating life?

According to a Rice University study, both men and women are sending text messages to their S.O.’s.

In a recent article on Prevention.com, I shared tips and texting advice to help spice up your love life, along with a few precautions to make sure you don’t end up in the digital doghouse.

1. DON’T overdo it. Sending a simple happy face to your loved one can be a fun and flirty way to brighten up their day, but the overuse of emoticons reduces the effectiveness. In other words, if every message you send is punctuated with a smile or a wink, your partner will find it harder to figure out what you’re really feeling. (And off-topic but related: The overuse of exclamation marks, especially by men, is a turn-off.)

2. DO embrace the quick hello. I’m a big fan of sending a good morning text to your sweetheart. It never hurts to add ‘xoxo’ at the end to put a smile on his face.

3. DON’T send explicit photos. Even if you haven’t been a teenager for decades, sending naked photos via texting can still come back to haunt you. This is the biggest mistake women make. I can’t stress enough that anything you send digitally can and will be shared by others.

4. DO use it for quick updates. Texting is tailor-made for confirming plans or giving a status update to someone who’s waiting on you. If you’re running late for a date or appointment, you should always send a text to let the other party know.

5. DON’T text angry—ever. The problem with relying on text messages is you can’t hear the sound of someone’s voice.  A text message sent in jest may be received as hurtful, and cause a fight. If you find a text exchange veering into argument territory, that’s the time to switch over to a phone call or talking in person. Do sleep on it. Just because you can send a text doesn’t mean you should—especially if it concerns your relationship. If you have to get something off your chest, send it to yourself (and only to yourself!) in an email and sleep on it. You might feel differently about it in the morning.

Read full article at PreventionMagazine.com

Julie Spira is an online dating and netiquette expert. She’s the author of The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online and The Rules of Netiquette: How to Mind Your Manners on the Web.

For more dating and relationship advice follow @JulieSpira on Twitter and at Facebook.com/CyberDatingExpert.

Photo Credit: LiveStock – Fotolia.com