Women are more likely to cyberstalk their prospective dates according to a recent survey by a firm that bills itself as Asia’s premier lunch dating company.
Eight of 10 women stalk potential dates online while 41% seek love online, according to a poll of 1,900 people from Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia by Lunch Actually, a Singapore-based online dating service.
A third of online stalkers utilize Facebook and one in four use Google to ferret out personal information, says Lunch Actually boss Violet Lim Seow Yan. Men are less likely to engage in online stalking apparently, with only 29% saying they check out the Facebook pages of prospective dates.
“It is important for people to clean up their social media walls or change privacy settings to ensure they will not lose a potential date,” Lim warned.
One of the main reasons for stalking is to see how many online friends of the opposite sex their prospective dates have. Women are a bit more concerned about their dates’ online friendships, with 80% expressing concerns about those with too many female friends. Men are almost as concerned, with 70% expressing concern.
Sixty-four percent of women keep regular tabs on their partner’s doings online. One in three admit to not wanting their partners to be Facebook friends with exes.
For men the most attractive quality is a pretty face at 41%, followed by kindness (17%) and gentleness (12%). Women look for confidence and strong character (29%), followed by kindness (18%) and a sense of humor (14%). Most women also want a man to be taller than them and have a decided preference for guys who insist on paying for the first date.
Over half of women (53%) would go out with younger men, and 43% don’t mind dates who earn less than they do.
Lunch Actually conducted its first biannual survey in 2009. The firm was founded in 2004 in Singapore, followed by a Kuala Lumpur office in 2005 and a Hong Kong office in 2008. It specializes in arranging lunch dates for a low-pressure way for busy professionals to meet.
