Match Group

I found a recent article were the author asked the question, Are free dating site like Plenty of Fish good or evil? By this the author means, if hooking up has become so easy through free dating sites, does it affect relationships and marriages, and in the end, just add to the divorce rate. He then goes on and actually compares Plenty of Fish to a gun. The analogy he uses is, are free dating sites only bad when someone misuses it? He further expands on his analogy by comparing a safety of a gun to features like site registrations and paying membership fees.

The first thing I have to wonder is, why are only free dating sites under attack? Sure more scammers, etc.. can access free sites easier than paid dating sites since there is no real barrier to creating a membership but, does this have much to do with people cheating online? I would think affair dating sites like Ashley Madison, which actually promote cheating would be his target. It is not like spending $40 on a membership is a huge financial burden for anyone.

Comparing a dating site to a gun is a little extreme. I haven't read many newspaper stories were a dating site was used to kill somebody. Some people consider guns bad, even if they are not misused. Plus, almost anything can be misused and therefore bad in certain circumstances.

For the full article, visit Muncie Free Press. For more information on this free dating site, read our Plenty of Fish review.

Last Friday on PlentyOfFish.com the Instant Messenger was disabled. Since then POF claims a 10% increase in traffic from the UK and over 15% from Australia. There is no mention on if the visitor traffic increased for the US or Canada. With the traffic increase Markus (CEO of POF) has decided to completely remove the feature. He also mentions that he should of realized there was a reason why a number of the other major dating sites don't use Instant Messengers on their websites.

I'm not sure why Markus attributes POF having more visitors to him removing IM from POF. There was no news story surrounding this (until now) so why would this increase visitors to his site (since no one knew about it)? It probably increased page views of visitors since members now have to use the mail center more instead of the instant messenger. I think it might be a mistake on his part since he freely admits that hundreds of thousands of users used it every day. While Plenty Of Fish's instant messenger may not have been as smooth experience as Microsoft's, it was still definitely useable. Maybe he should of disable IM on a user's account by default and require an action by them to enable it? This way users who don't use IM would never be bothered by it.

POF logo also has been updated. It has a cleaner look and the tag line of the site has changed. It use to say 100% Free Online Dating. Now it says Free Online Dating. Which is true, since POF just recently started to offer a paid membership that has a few additional perks (see Story).

Read our PlentyOfFish.com review for more information on this popular dating site.

According to an online report, it looks like email spammers are spoofing Match.com. Since Monday spammers have sent out emails that appear on the surface to be from Match.com.

The attack involves messages claiming to be from someone on the dating website who wants to show the user pictures and videos.

If the link is clicked on, you are then directed to a malicious website which then attempts to install a fake video player which is actually the Trojan called Papras. From the F-Secure website summary page on this Malware:

Trojan-PSW.Win32.Papras.DC steals login credentials and other sensitive information on the compromised system. It also drops and uses a rootkit driver to hide itself. The rootkit driver is detected as Rootkit.Win32.Agent.SZ.

This is definitely not something you want installed on your computer.

The good news is most of the popular Anti-Virus programs will protect you from this threat being installed now (as long as you keep them updated), but as always you should be careful when clicking on any link from an email. If you get an email that you are unsure of and it is from a website you deal with, always visit the website by your browsers bookmarks instead of the link in the email. You should also forward the email to the company to let them know you think someone is sending you fake emails.

Match.com is far from the first site to be spoofed like this, though it is the first time I have heard of a dating site having this trouble. Usually it is the major banks or websites like PayPal which get targeted by email spoofers.

Visit mxLogic for more information on this story and read F-Secure for more about what Papras modifies on your computer.

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.

Three of the major dating sites offer a guarantee. Here is a comparison of them in alphabetical order.

Match.com

The first one to offer any type of guarantee was Match.com way back in the summer of 2006. It was initially called the "Make Love Happen Guarantee" but has been shorten to "Match.com Guarantee". The way it works is, when you purchase a 6 month membership and if you don't find someone special in that time period, Match.com will give you an additional 6 months for free. To be eligible for the guarantee, during your subscription you must create a truthful profile with a primary photo that is visible at all times. You must also respond to or initiate email communication with at least 5 unique Match.com members for each month of your membership. This email must be sent through the Match.com service and does not include winks or instant messaging.

To find out if you are eligible for the guarantee extension you can check it out anytime on the Guarantee Program Progress Page located in your Account Settings on Match.com. To receive your guarantee you must visit the progress page during the last 7 days of your 6 month subscription. You would then answer the questions related to your eligibility status. If you qualify you can then accept your additional 6 months for free. If you did not qualify, a message will be displayed telling you why.

To find out more on this dating site and their guarantee, read our Match.com review.

I am surprised at the Economist. They posted this article on Thursday about how Online-dating websites prosper in the recession. While this may have been true 5 months ago, it is not the case anymore. They should of really done more fact checking. Take a look at a few traffic monitoring sites like Compete.com and they show most dating sites in February actually stayed flat or lost 5 percent or more of their visitors, when compared to January. February is suppose to be a dating sites most busy month. Granted traffic monitoring sites are not 100 percent accurate but they do give you a rough idea when you take several of them in consideration.

The Economist should also realize that traffic alone does not determine a website success. Revenue and Net Income ultimately determines if any business will survive. Not once is this information mentioned. They talk about OkCupid and how their registered active users is up but no where do they mention how online advertising has dried up in the last few months, OkCupid's primary source of revenue. eHarmony is also mentioned but, traffic patterns do not support this. Plus, there is a huge goof in the article:

eHarmony, a wholesome marriage-oriented site with more than 20m paying subscribers.

eHarmony has had 20 million people register on the site since they launched in 2000, this is both free and paid members. In 2008 we had estimated eHarmony only has about 90,000 paid members at anyone time (see this page for more details).

Another thing the Economist should of considered is, none of the major dating sites have had a press release lately touting the continued growth during the recession. This is another sign things may not be as good as back in November-December 2008, when we saw press releases from dating sites like Match.com, eHarmony and Perfectmatch. This was when they talked about the recession and the increased growth they received.

For more information on the dating sites mentioned in this post, read our eHarmony review and our OkCupid review.