Lonely? Online dating site offers comedy tickets

YOU might not meet the man or woman of your dreams through Ireland’s latest internet dating site, but you could get the next best thing — tickets for a Tommy Tiernan show.

The word “lonely” is the most frequently searched word in Ireland by Google users and the site, launched yesterday, is offering a pair of tickets to the master comic’s sold out show in Vicar Street on November 22, in a draw for those who register their profile on the site.

Lonely.ie is Ireland’s “first fully featured social website with free dating functionality”.

The site is looking for “energetic and entertaining men and women from all over Ireland to join”. Other lures, aside from draws for hot tickets, include cash prizes for the best date disaster story.

“Send us in your dating disaster stories... make sure names are changed to protect the innocent or guilty parties and each week we will feature some of the best entries and at the end of the month we will select the ‘Lonely.ie Dating Disasters’ and award a €500 cash prize to the winner.”

Lonely.ie was created following findings by the new service, Google Trends which works out how many searches have been done via the internet search engine on particular terms.

Google Trends discovered “lonely” was the word entered most frequently by internet users in Ireland. Other places that have recorded similar statistics include Melbourne, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand.

“In addition to features typical to social networking sites such as uploading photo albums and online space to write about yourself, Lonely.ie allows you to find other users through various categories such as, free-to-date, attached, looking for friendship and many more. “The site gives the Irish people a chance to share their dating woes and to get some tips from other members and dating experts. Meeting strangers in a bar or a club is hard,” said Irene Gahan, marketing manager of Lonely.ie.

“It is a lot easier to meet like minded people in a secure online environment than taking a chance of meeting someone special in a crowded pub... Using a website to meet people means we could potentially court a number of people at a time, a huge advantage to busy professionals. Lonely.ie will ease the pressure of meeting new people in clubs and pubs, and create a fun online environment for people to widen their social network,” she said.