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AshleyMadison.com has now opened their affair website to married men and women in the United Kingdom. For those of you who haven't heard of this site before it is described as a traditional dating site but for people who are already married. For UK members it costs £49 for 100 credits. With these credits members can email someone for 5 credits, chat in real-time for another 30 credits and send a virtual gift from 20 to 50 credits.

Apparently there are plans to spend upwards of £10million in advertising if Ashley Madison can get their ads approved by the Advertising Standards Authority. With this type of marketing budget Ashley Madison expects to have 1 million UK members in 3 months.

For more on this story read TNT Magazine.

“Japan's Fukui prefecture has the nation's biggest share of dual-income households, the highest ratio of working women, and the lowest unemployment rate. What it doesn't have is enough babies.”

With those arresting leading lines, Aki Ito, a reporter for Bloomberg News in Tokyo, opens “Japan's Government Plays Matchmaker,” an article that details an interesting new initiative that’s about to be launched in the island nation.

Introducing…the Fukui Marriage-Hunting Café, the government’s new online dating site for Japanese singles. The idea of government-sponsored matchmaking might sound crazy, but Japan is not the first country to set up a service with the intention of encouraging and aiding the love lives of its citizens. The Social Developmental Network of Singapore, for example, runs LoveByte, a Web site that doles out dating advice and has a search function that allows registered users to find other single users.

The Fukui Marriage-Hunting Café is a unique solution to a potentially-devastating problem Japan now faces: “At 1.34 children per woman, Japan's fertility rate is one of the lowest in the world, well below the 2.1 that is considered the minimum for a developed nation to maintain a constant population.” According to census data, 32 percent of Japanese women between the ages of 30 and 34 were unwed in 2005, a figure that is more than twice the number from 15 years earlier. As an increasing number of Japanese women postpone marriage, or decline to marry at all, the country’s birthrate is dropping to a dangerously low point with serious financial consequences.

Approximately “23 percent of the population is over 65, the highest ratio among the 62 countries tracked by Bloomberg,” which means that the “ranks of pensioners are swelling” while “the pool of workers and consumers is shrinking.” To combat this problem, Japan’s Democratic Party promised to lessen the burden of child rearing by offering families a monthly allowance of 13,000 yen ($150) per child and abolishing the fees for public high school. Naoto Kan, the current Prime Minister, also supported relationships and procreation in his former job as Finance Minister by encouraging his employees to leave work at 6 p.m. to go on dates.

The Fukui Marriage-Hunting Café will go above and beyond traditional online dating sites and Japan’s previous efforts to increase the country’s sagging birthrate by offering money or gifts to couples who marry partners they met using the site’s services. While government-sponsored matchmaking is an interesting idea, critics of the scheme note that “the central government's previous attempts to nudge up the birthrate have not met with success.”

So what do you think, readers? Should governments attempt to play cupid for their populace, or should they steer clear of citizens’ love lives?

JetPlace, the owners of the Australian dating and swinger site Red Hot Pie, was ordered by the federal court to remove 1,371 fake profiles that they had on their website. Jetplace must also disclose to its Red Hot Pie members that they had misrepresented the number of users on the dating site. Members who registered between December 2004 and November 26, 2008 will also receive notices via email of this information. These same users can also apply for a refund if they can show that they were mislead by these fake profiles.

These fake profiles created by Jetplace contravened the Australian Trade Practices Act of 1974 since the dating site engaged in misleading conduct. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said they would have gone after Red Hot Pie in civil court where penalties are more severe but the conduct of the dating site happened before the new Australian Consumer Law. In their defence, Red Hot Pie said these profiles were created over a 4 year period and only a small number were active at any one time. They were used by the dating site's User Security Suite.

For more information on this story, read The Sydney Morning Herald.

Match.com in Australia (Match.com.au) has been in operation for 15 years now. They launched back in April of 2002 after buying out Soulmates Technology. To celebrate this milestone they have released some Aussie statistics about Match.com:

• More than 80,000 profiles are viewed every day.
• Everyday 16,000 winks and messages are sent. This equals to 6.5 million communications a year.
• 67% of Australian singles have never been married.
• 59% of members are looking for a non-smoker.
• 90% of members are okay with a partner who drinks on occasion.
• Gold Coast members are 45% more likely to have children than those members from Sydney.
• 64% of men are looking for a partner who has some tertiary education. With women it is 71%.

To find out more information about this dating site, read our review of Match.com.

The other eHarmony dating sites had their free weekend at the end of May. eHarmony Australia is celebrating theirs this weekend. Starting today, Friday June 11th and until Monday June 14th, 2010 eHarmony Australia (eHarmony.com.au) is having their free communication weekend. During this time all members of eHarmony Australia will be able to communicate with each other at no cost (with no credit card required). This 4 day event is happening during the Queen’s Birthday holiday which makes it ideal for singles to try out the dating site as it will be extra busy this weekend. Fasttracking the guided communication process and profile photo's are not included in this promotion.

The last free weekend at eHarmony Australia was 4 months ago on Valentine's Day. Check out our eHarmony review for more information on this popular Australian dating service.

The Australian website Smart Company did an interview with the vice president of international marketing at eHarmony, Sean Cornwell. In the interview he was asked several questions which resulted in him giving us some new information and statistics about eHarmony in Australia.

eHarmony.com.au was launched in November 2007. In those 2 years, the matchmaking site has had over 650,000 single residents of Australia register. In the first quarter of this year (2010) they saw 123,000 additional people create profiles on eHarmony Australia. Part of the huge growth this year is due to a bigger marketing budget. By late 2009, eHarmony felt they had enough Australian members in which they could properly promote their service through the media.

eHarmony offers singles a chance to receive high quality matches. Singles who sign up to eHarmony will receive between

five and a maximum of seven compatible matches every day.

These matches offer the best chance for a relationship to develop, but it is still up to members through communication to see if there is any sparks or chemistry between them. eHarmony believes it is more important to receive quality matches than to receive a large number of matches that have little chance of creating a successful relationship.

For more information about this dating site, read our review of eHarmony.