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We just got word that eHarmony in Australia (eHarmony.com.au) is having a free communication weekend starting today, Friday October 2nd, and ending Monday October 5th, 2009.

Not only can all members (including free ones) review matches for free but you can communicate with them as well. Just remember if you are a new non paying member, don't use the guided communication FastTrack option. This option is not available for free during this promotion and you would lose the ability to communicate with this member. For those of you who have not used eHarmony before, the FastTrack option allows you to skip the 4 step guided communication process and permits you to go ahead and send a email message right away to your match.

The last eHarmony Australia Free Communication Weekend was held at the end of August (see Story).

Read our review of eHarmony and find out why Australian singles have made this a very popular matchmaking service.

From a Australia point of view, online dating for singles 50 years or older, is seeing a huge increase in popularity. The premier Australian dating site, RSVP has seen a 30 percent increase of these members each year, for the last 5 years. Currently 13 percent of all members are over the age of 50 at RSVP.

RSVP is not alone in their findings. Other Australian dating sites are reporting the same trend. Match.com Australian dating site has seen similar numbers. 12 percent of Match.com.au members are over 50 and this age groups saw an increase of 23 percent in 2008.

For a bit more on this story, see Stuff. To find out more about the most popular dating site in Australia, read our RSVP review.

eHarmony in the United Kingdom launched in July 2008. It is just over a year later and they now have 400,000 members. For the first couple of months eHarmony was giving out free 90 day subscriptions to all new members (see Story), but beyond that they did not do a lot of marketing. According to Greg Waldorf, eHarmony's chief executive,

... last year's launch was deliberately "soft" so the company was not left in the awkward position of having lots of members of one sex signed-up without a sufficient number of the opposite sex to provide enough suitable matches.

For comparison, a competitor of eHarmony's in the United Kingdom, Match.com, has had 6.5 million singles signup as members since launch (a number of years ago).

We got word that there will be a Free Communication Weekend at eHarmony in the United Kingdom (eHarmony.co.uk), starting Friday August 28th to Monday August 31st, 2009. Having this popular promotion and combining it with their big TV advertising campaign going on at the moment, means eHarmony UK members should have lots of matches to review and communicate for free with during the last weekend in August.

There is no information yet of a Free Communication Weekend coming soon for eHarmony here in Canada and the United States but we expect it will happen at the same time or in the first few weeks of September.

Read our review of eHarmony for more information on this popular online matchmaking service.

In an article on the UK website, The Guardian, author Tanya Gold asks the question, Are Britons who are searching for love online, looking in the wrong place? At the point of writing the article Tanya had been internet dating for 3 weeks. She so far has mixed feelings. On one had she is dazzled by the possibilities but on the other, she feels "sleazy and slightly vulnerable".

Tanya gives four examples of online dating gone wrong. Two are her own dating experiences and all seem to point to men as the ones causing all of the problems 😲. I had a laugh at one of her dates named Clive. Apparently he had broken his dentures the day of the date and asked if he could pick her up toothless. What was he thinking? She also gave 4 positive examples of how online dating worked and created successful matches. One of her examples was Jane, who in 10 years, went on more than 200 internet dates before she met her soul mate.

Lets look at some of the UK stats more closely in which Tanya compiled. According to her information, fifteen million people in Britain are single, and almost five million are looking for love online. 20 percent of married people between the ages of 19 and 25 met their spouse online and a YouGov survey of 2000 people found that, for all age groups, 15 percent of couples met through the internet. The surprising twist here is that according to research at Bath University, a relationship that was started online lasts on average 7 months. I wonder how long an average relationship lasts that was not formed on the internet?

Across the pound and in America, Tanya found that according to the Plenty of Fish dating site, 33 percent of online daters form a relationship, 33 percent do not, and the last 33 percent give up on internet dating altogether. She also discovered a poll from the University of Texas which found 30 percent of women who met men online had sex on their first date. From these encounters, 77 percent of men did not wear condoms (how about other birth protection?) When compared to the information from the Centre of US Disease Control, almost 50 percent of all women required men to wear a condom during their first sexual experience.

A news website from Ontario, Canada published an article about a couple of peoples experiences on a some of the more popular dating sites. The ChristianCafe received positive praise from an online dater named Peter. He met his wife Helga, through the Christian dating service back in February of 2008. They have been happily married now for 3 months.

In early 2008 Peter lived in Ontario and Helga lived in Alberta. Peter was keeping his searches for a partner limited to the province of Ontario, though Helga was searching in neighboring provinces. Helga first contacted Peter via instant message. After a few emails and phone conversations they both realized the other person was special. In the beginning, everyday Peter would log into ChristianCafe to read Helga's messages. After about a month, Peter flew to Edmonton to meet Helga in person for the first time, at a local cafe. Things went well with Peter and Helga for the couple of days that he visited and it became a regular occurrence for Peter to fly to Edmonton. In April of 2009, Peter married Helga and they decided to stay in Edmonton.

For more on the story, read Northern Life and to find out what makes this dating site a great place for singles, read our review of ChristianCafe.com.