Jamie Oliver joins online dating bandwagon

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has given thumbs up to online dating with an endorsement of the modern matchmaking platform on his own website.

The online dating sector has been growing in leaps and bounds over the last couple of months as singles worldwide turn to the web to avoid the costs associated with traditional dating.

Entrepreneurs have been responding to the demand by launching new and increasingly niche services in a bid to be different from the thousands of websites offering matchmaking services.

It would appear the debonair cook also wants to inject his passion for romance on the online dating scene after he added a new web-based dating service on his site to help single people find like-minded partners.

The 34-year-old cooking expert told Hello Magazine that the online dating page, which is linked to Match.com, was set up in the hope of encouraging singles with a passion for food "to love each other".

"Hopefully…we'll be able to bring single food lovers together and make some love matches," he told the glossy celebrity magazine.

Meanwhile, single women who love being in charge can now enjoy the services of an online dating site that claims to have been designed specifically to let them have their way.

HerWay.com was launched in Beta on December 1st and the website said it is capable of offering "a completely customised experience for both male and female daters" despite the apparent bias in the name.

The website also claimed that it is "the first online dating site that recognises men and women approach dating differently", especially following research showing that success rates for both men and women increase significantly when a woman initiates communication.

In a bid to ensure this is the case, the online dating site is configured to ensure women control all of the searching on the site, meaning that men will have to do the waiting unlike in many other online matchmaking services.

According to HerWay.com, "this revolutionary new concept ensures women have unprecedented privacy, discretion, and safety as they search for Mr Right".

Despite appearing to favour women, the website has also incorporated some tools and resources including statistics to enable men to track, improve, and optimise their online dating profiles.

The website claimed that single men on the website "know exactly how they compare to other males on the site and have the tools to improve their success rate through HerWay's breakthrough Profile Performance feature".

Elsewhere, an online dating survey of women aged between 25 and 35 found that more than half (51 per cent) prefer their partners to have a strong personality and be able to hold a conversation without dwelling on football and cars.

The study by In2town Magazine also revealed that 13 per cent of women prefer affluent individuals for financial security purposes.