Partnerships

Two is hardly enough to call it a trend, but if online dating sites collaborating with relationship experts does become a thing, I am fully in support of it.

Earlier this fall, one of America's longest-serving advice columnists, E. Jean Carroll, began a new partnership between HowAboutWe and Elle magazine. The arrangement, called Elle dating, is part of HowAboutWe's media partners program. Joining forces with a fashion magazine may not seem like the natural course of action for a dating site, but HowAboutWe believes the alliance could go a long way towards helping people who might otherwise object to finding love on the Web warm up to the idea.

Carroll's Elle column has long been an important fixture for the magazine. A membership to HowAboutWe through Elle will cost $30 per month, and for $500 an Elle reader can get a one-on-one telephone consultation with Carroll and the services of Tawkify, the small matchmaking firm she founded two years ago. Carroll hopes that her influence will bring a sense of serendipity to HowAboutWe that can be lost in other online dating services.

Are You Interested is also jumping on the expert bandwagon. AYI.com recently announced that author and relationship expert Laurel House will join the site as its resident dating coach. Laurel has appeared on numerous television shows, including E! News, Weekend TODAY, and most recently MTV, where she was the ultimate "It Girl" dating and confidence-boosting coach for an episode of the channel's MADE show. She is also the author of QuickieChick's Cheat Sheet to Life, Love, Food, Fitness, Fashion and Finance on a Less than Fabulous Budget and the upcoming book No-Games Guide to Love.

For her collaboration with AYI, House will post written and video content to the site's blog to help guide singles through the online dating experience. She will be available via AYI.com's social platforms to offer personalized dating tips to members, and will act as a face of the AYI brand in media interviews.

SNAP's Chief Executive Officer Clifford Lerner commented, "We believe Laurel's depth of experience and professional expertise is unmatched and will greatly help singles looking to connect online. She is aware of what single men and women are looking for in the online dating experience and her ability to guide them in their search for love will only better the AYI.com experience."

My favorite collaboration between an expert and a dating site remains the inimitable Dr. Helen Fisher, who serves as leading expert on the biology of love and attraction for Chemistry.com, but I'm excited to see more professionals in various dating and relationships fields lend their support to the online dating movement.

Christian Mingle has partnered with a Dallas, Texas ministry called H.I.S. BridgeBuilders. This ministry helps restore low-income urban communities through economic means, education, health and spiritual development. With this new collaboration Christian Mingle's first project will be to help plant gardens in underprivileged communities located in south Dallas. These gardens will offer healthy food options to people who need it.

Christian Mingle and H.I.S. BridgeBuilders also plan to host charitable events to raise money for this and other projects. For more on this story you can read the press release and to find out how Christian Mingle works as a dating site you can read our review.

Christian Mingle is one of the top dating sites in the United States. The Drew Marshall Show is a Canadian radio spiritual talk show based in Toronto. What does these 2 businesses have in common? They have partnered to create a matchmaking contest called “The Dating Game”. This segment is an 8 week-long series that follows a contestant who is given a free subscription to ChristianMingle.com.

The first contestant named Danielle is 25 years old and is new to online dating. The series follows the experiences she has from joining Christian Mingle to the men she meets. A couple of weeks in she has met a man named Phil whom she really likes and who funny enough goes to the same church she does. The two have never met or seen each other before meeting online at Christian Mingle. Danielle and Phil have been on several dates and have decided they want to be exclusive and now pursued their relationship offline.

To find out more and to see who the next contestant is you can listen to the Drew Marshall Show On Saturday’s at 3:30 pm Eastern Standard Time.

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) is a non-profit organization with more than 37 million members. They are the voice of Americans 50 plus and have several media publications including a magazine and website. On Monday AARP debuted a new Dating Channel on their website (found under the Home & Family tab). Within this dating channel you will find articles on dating and relationships geared towards older singles.

Along with the expert advice and dating resources AARP also has partnered with the dating site HowAboutWe.com to bring online dating to their members. Through the dating portal AARP members are offered a free 7 day trial membership along with a 50% discounted membership for those who choose to subscribe.

To celebrate the launch of AARP's Dating Channel they commissioned a survey of 1000 people. With the survey AARP found that the top 3 reasons singles over 50 try online dating are:

• 23 percent said they can meet a broader range of people
• 20 percent said that there is no pressure to communicate with others until they are ready
• 14 percent said they tried online dating because a friend recommended it

In future articles we hope to dive deeper into the AARP survey and tease out more interesting data about online dating.

To find out more details about this dating site you can read our HowAboutWe review.

Match.com (Match.ca in Canada) is now powering online dating at Yahoo! Canada. Yahoo in the United States has been using Match.com since May of 2010 (see Story). Previously Lavalife had partnered with Yahoo! Canada to provide online dating to their visitors (see Story).

To find out more about this dating site you can check out our Match.com review.

Yahoo! has partnered with Zonacitas.com a leading Latin America dating service. Currently Zonacitas.com has 400,000 registered users from Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and Mexico. With this partnership Zonacitas.com expects more exposure thanks to being Yahoo! Argentina's official destination for online dating. Look for Encuentros on ar.Yahoo.com for the link to the dating service.

To find out about Yahoo's dating partner in the US you can read our Match.com review.