Features

It looks like members of PlentyofFish.com will have another way soon to access the dating site. In a few weeks (July, 2010) an iPhone Application will be released which will allow members to access the dating site directly on their iPhone, iTouch and iPad. No information has been released yet on what features will be available on the dating application but I assume profile editing, searching and sending messages will be possible. I am curious to see if location based dating will be included with this new application.

Since an iPhone POF Dating App will be here soon I wonder how far off an application for Android will be? Android mobile phones are now outselling the iPhone here in the States.

To find out about POF, you can read our review of PlentyofFish.com.

Markus, the CEO of Plenty of Fish, posted on his blog with word that they have updated their Chemistry Test. They now use a new and more advanced predictive statistical model which now will give you a list of 30 matches that you are most likely to end up dating and falling in love with. He mentions that they spent year's collecting dating from POF members of who they dated, who they broke up with, and who married. With this information in hand, Plenty of Fish used it to create a model which generates better matches than before for the average user.

As with the older test at Plenty of Fish, the new Chemistry Test still measures 5 dimensions of personality. They are Self-Confidence, Family Orientation, Self-Control, Social Dependency and Easygoingness. These factors were determined by POF to be essential for building a successful long-term relationship.

To find out more about this dating site, read our review of Plenty of Fish.

OkCupid's blog post about picture myths was very popular. To capitalize on this OkCupid has released an experimental widget that will generate a report for you based on votes from members of OkCupid. All you need to do is upload a couple of photos. Once completed you will then need to help out and analyze other people's photo submissions (or how else will someone analyze yours? Pay it Forward!). After a little while a detailed report will be made available showing which photo was considered the best for a dating site.

In your report you get to see how many people voted and a list of 16 personality types of how people voted in a bar graph for each photo. This allows you to find out, for example, if Artists, Christians, Divas or Jocks either loved your photo or preferred a different one you uploaded. It also lists in the bar graph the age range and gender of the people who voted to give you a better idea if your pictures appealed to a younger or older audience.

MyBestFace looks to be sort of a smarter version of a picture rating website like Hot or Not .

To try My Best Face, visit this page and to find out about this dating site, check out our review of OkCupid.

The custom of arranged marriage is very popular in India but in countries like the United States and Canada it is not popular. In North America when a match could not be found locally, families from India and other Asian countries sometimes resorted to using newspaper classified sections to find a potential suitor for one of their children. This practice has now changed thanks to online dating. Dating sites like Shaadi.com have matched more than a million South Asian couples and now parents are logging on to find potential matches for their children. Many parents find "religion, mother tongue, residency status, education, caste or class, astrological sign and diet" important attributes in a mate for their child. Shaadi.com does keep track of this information within member profiles which makes it easy for parents to find matches. Roughly 20 percent of profiles on Shaadi were created by parents looking for a partner for one or more of their children. The average age of a profile is in the range of 26 to 35.

In Canada Shaadi.com has become so popular that they have opened up their first North American center in Mississauga Ontario in March of this year (close to Toronto). The greater Toronto area is home to more than 700,000 South Asian Canadians making it ideal for a matchmaking center. Shaadi also has started to promote their new center not only online, but off as well through billboards and other physical media to better reach their target audience.

To find out more details about this dating site, check out our review of Shaadi.com.

The Archived tab is a relatively new feature of the eHarmony communication process. When you know you are not interested in communicating with a Match that eHarmony gives you, just click on "Archive this Match" link. The Match will then be moved from your New Matches section too the Archive Tab. There is also a new auto-archive feature that goes along with the tab that will (as the name suggests) auto archive any Match that closed communication with you. These archived Matches will still appear in the Match Updates list if any one of them updates their profile information or photos.

If you find a Match in your updates that you want to reconnect with because the update renewed your interest, eHarmony does allow you to un-archive any Match to continue on with the guided communication process.

If you want to find out more about this dating site, read our eHarmony review.

Some of you may have notice in the last month or so that eHarmony has added a new feature to their dating service called "Something to Talk About". This feature is designed to help break the ice and to get conversations started between matches much easier.

To setup "Something to Talk About" you first need to visit the "My Profile" tab found when you log into eHarmony. Once on the tab, take a look at the "In My Own Words" section. Here you will find the link "Something to Talk About". Currently there are eleven topics that you can answer one or more questions on. Sample topics include sports, Music, Movies and Leisure. Questions under these topics can be as easy to answer by checking off what sports you like, to actually typing in a short answer.

So when does "Something to Talk About" get used? When you are viewing your profile matches and when a match has also filled out "Something to Talk About" you are presented with a nice block on the right side of the page that shows all the things you and your match have in common.

To find out more about this dating site read our eHarmony review.