Tequila Finds Love on MTV Dating Show

NEW YORK (AP) — Tila Tequila is taking a shot at love with a dude.
The bisexual Internet celebrity selected 25-year-old film student Bobby Banhart as the winner of "A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila," her popular MTV reality dating show, instead of 29-year-old female firefighter Dani Campbell.
"I do love Dani, and we've gone through so much together," Tequila said during Tuesday's finale. "But I am in love with Bobby."
Tequila — whose real last name is Nguyen — chose Banhart on a platform in the middle of the pool at the mansion where the reality show was filmed. Campbell walked away immediately following Banhart's selection, but Tequila ran after her to hug her and say goodbye.
"I thought we had something real. I thought we had a big connection," Campbell said. "I guess I was wrong."
"A Shot at Love," which featured 16 men and 16 women competing for the affection of the 26-year-old MySpace pinup, became MTV's second most popular series, just behind "The Hills," according to Nielsen Media Research.
Casting notices have circulated online for a second season of "A Shot at Love" and "That's Amore!" — a new dating show starring "Shot at Love" castoff Domenico Nessi. MTV hasn't confirmed that either is in the works, but Tequila told The Associated Press last week that MTV had approached her about taking another "Shot at Love" — although it doesn't look like she needs to.
"I came into this hoping to find love," Tequila said, "and I did."
A reunion of Tequila and the contestants will air Dec. 23.

Dating website in Facebook tie-up

Dating website Match.com hopes to net new customers by becoming the first major match-maker to partner with social networking site Facebook.
The move comes as analysts argue free social networking sites pose a major threat to subscription services like Match. Some dating services have already exited the market as sites like Facebook and MySpace rapidly grow their non-paying audiences keen to make new cyberfriends. Others matchmakers have sought to become more like networking sites by introducing chat functions and video clips.
But dating sites argue the social networking phenomenon has actually helped them grow their overall audience by breaking down people's inhibitions about meeting online.
Match.com is now partnering with Facebook in its bid to gain more networking-crazy surfers. The dating site is offering a "Little Black Book" application to Facebook users from next week, which helps them find potential partners.
"As the market leader, our biggest strategic challenge is to grow the category and our experience tells us that social networkers have a high propensity to try online dating, which makes this a natural move for us," says Jason Stockwood head of the UK Match business.
"Match.com shares many of the same characteristics as a social network, both are about bringing people together. Sites like Facebook are great at helping people manage their existing relationship networks, but Match.com helps people expand these, by meeting new people with an interest in forming romantic relationships."
The Little Black Book service marks a departure from Match.com's subscription model and will give customers the chance to meet its members on a 'pay-per-contact' basis.
The application also seeks to build on evidence showing friends's opinions play a key role in dating, something at the core of TV presenter Sarah Beeny's Mysinglefriend.com. That site allows users to sign up single friends.
Using the Little Black Book application, friends can share potential matches with any of their other friends on Facebook and can purchase keys to "unlock" a potential match for a friend.
Match's announcement follows new research last week showing the UK leads Europe in using social networking sites. UK adults go on social networking sites an average 23 times a month and spend longer on them than their European neighbours - an average 5.3 hours a month, according to media regulator Ofcom.

Dating site hopes to attract younger viewers with videos

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Many online dating sites seek to connect soulmates, to bring together those looking for eternal and everlasting love.
The latest Internet dating site, recently launched in Palo Alto, is not one of them.

"It's not about marriage," said Alex Gurevich, cofounder of SayHeyHey.com, the first free all-video online dating site.
The new site eschews the typical format of online dating sites where users carefully word profiles and post photos "from 10 years and 20 pounds ago," Gurevich said.
Instead, users of SayHeyHey post videos of themselves talking, wakeboarding or -- in one person's case -- using a beer bong.
If a visitor is interested in someone else's clip, he or she can send a video introduction. The goal of the site is to connect with the 18- to 28-year-old audience that's more comfortable with YouTube than with Match.com, Gurevich said.
"If I'm a twentysomething, I don't want to be on a site with old fogeys," said Gurevich, 24, before apologizing to cofounder Soudy Khan, who described himself as "thirtysomething."
The two admitted the idea for the site stemmed in part from their collective dating woes.
Gurevich recalled a date he went on with a woman whose profile described her as laid-back and relaxed. After their first date, though, she hit him with a wave of frenzied calls and text messages.
"I was on JDate, and I went on two or three dates, and every single girl turned out to be super-psychotic," Gurevich said.
Video clips provide much greater insight into a person's personality, Khan said.
On the site, users can post as many videos as they want, with each one up to 10 minutes in length and most averaging around two minutes, said Gurevich.
And those hoping to find a date can click on the "matching" function, which locates a compatible personality, using a top-secret but "very deliberate" algorithm.
Gurevich said the matching formula works so well that it keeps trying to set him up with a woman he dated before the site's launch.