Location

I have finished up our new review of the dating site, RSVP. It is the first dating site in our new Australian Dating Site category. I hope to have a few more added to this new dating category by the end of May.

RSVP is owned by Fairfax Digital and currently is the largest Australian dating site with over 1 million members. It uses a stamp/credit system for initiating contact with members and it is free to reply to any message from a member. This is also the only dating site that I know of which Australians can use there mobile phone to access the dating site and receive SMS alerts.

Read the new RSVP review for more information.

The popular UK dating site, DatingDirect, has recently launch a service called DatingDirect Affinity. It is a separate dating site but it is easily accessed through the DatingDirect membership area. DatingDirect Affinity provides a service based on a unique psychometric test. The test is designed to bring together compatible members and to build strong and lasting relationships. It has almost 100 questions that touch on 71 different psychological criteria. The Affinity test will explore your fundamental values, interests and gather information on your views of love, life and family. The test was designed by a group of psychologists who are specialised in psychometrics and dynamics of human relationships. The test is based on the highest standards of analysis as defined by the American Psychological Association and the Educational Testing Service.

Once you have completed the test, you can view your confidential personality report as well as see a detailed breakdown of your compatibility with other members who meet your search criteria. The compatibility is defined by an affinity score, which each member who has taken the test will have. Your personality report is made up of three groups of criteria. These are:

Australia's largest online dating site, RSVP, reported strong growth in membership over their last quarter. They saw a 31 percent increase in members in the first quarter of 2009 when compared to the last quarter of 2008. Men memberships increased by 30 percent while woman jumped even higher at 36 percent. The month of March even had higher numbers than January, which is usually one of the best months of the year.

Apparently even in Australia, online dating sites like RSVP.com.au are experiencing growth while the global economy suffers a recession.

For more on the Australian dating site, you will find our RSVP review here.

The Richard Ivey School of Business (The University of Western Ontario), Intouch Magazine (Winter 2009 edition), has a feature story about the history of a few of their graduates who are successful business men in the online dating industry. Lavalife co-founder Nicholas Paine (HBA ’83) is interviewed first. He talks about his experience in the early 1990's of converting their Tele-classifieds business (Classifieds over the phone) into a web personals site, and by 2001 into the popular dating site Lavalife.

Sam Moorcroft (MBA ’95), is also interviewed about how he started the popular Christian dating site, ChristianCafe.com. In the late 90's Sam had used a U.S. based Christian dating service to meet women locally and on the advice from a friend decided to start a website himself.

The key to the success of Christian Cafe.com was filling a niche in the market. Moorcroft knew from the women he had dated that they wanted to meet believers like themselves.

In the beginning years Sam and his brother held down several jobs to support themselves while they got their online dating site off the ground. In ten years ChristianCafe.com has grown into a multi-million dollar business.

To find out more information about these dating services from Canada, read our ChristianCafe.com review and our Lavalife review.

The Australian media company, News Digital Media, has partnered with Match.com. This partnership will result in the integration of the Match.com.au dating site into news.com.au, Australia's leading news portal. Match.com's main dating site competitor in Australia is Fairfax owned RSVP. This new deal will give Match a big competitive boost against RSVP, whis is currently the largest Australian dating site.

For the full news post, read MediaBizNet. For more information on Match, read our Match.com review.

White Label Dating mentions The Tonight Show from the iTV network which noted it is estimated that there will be 15 million singles in the United Kingdom by 2011. According to the post, this will make the value of the dating industry at that point, of over £1billion. By comparison, in 2008 there was 10 million Canadian singles and 93 million single Americans. As a general rule of thumb I found for the G7 countries that roughly 1/3 of the population is single at any one time.

For more dating sites that service the UK, see our United Kingdom dating category.