Match Group

I found more information about the new Match.com Platinum membership package that will soon be available to all members (from this Story). Match.com already has information available under the Help section when you log into the dating site. It is under the Searching and Dating section and the topic is called Platinum. The first thing I saw was this new membership package is available in some test markets. This means most members will not see the new package in the upgrade area but some of you will. Please comment on this story if you have any pricing information or where the test markets are. The help section also confirms that with this subscription 100 percent of Match.com members will be able to respond for free to your emails and Instant Messages. I'm glad they included IM in the package. Platinum members are identified by an icon on their profile (visible to only non paid members). The Help section also mentions that free members can contact you for free. This is a huge bonus for members. Most paid dating sites who allow free members to contact other members only allow this once the paid member has initiated communication. Match.com definitely has taken a bold step here and turned their dating service partially free.

The Platinum membership may also be purchased as an add-on to any existing membership. No cost information is available at this time. I believe also the Platinum subscription package is available to only online daters in North America.

While I was on Match, I noticed the new Smart Search feature has received an additional upgrade. The results page has been updated to include a Refine Your Search section. This allows you to easily refine your search scope for the following attributes, photos available, age ranges and location ranges. For each attribute range it also gives the total number of profiles which fit within the range.

For more information on this award winning online dating site, read our Match.com review.

PlentyOfFish.com has had some features updated last weekend and has dropped the paid virtual gifts. The virtual gifts lasted a little more than a month and a half. The only reason given according to Markus on his blog for dropping them was, "not really core to what we are doing". Markus has been looking for more ways to make money on his site and this was his first foray into offering a paid feature on PlentyOfFish.com. Obviously people didn't use the paid virtual gifts to often. I'm thinking the prices where to high. It cost between $12 to $30 to send a virtual flower to a member. Maybe lowering the prices by at least half would have made a difference?

I'm thinking Markus still has some ideas up his sleeve for other paid features on his dating site. Maybe charging for better placement in search results or a profile highlighted option?

David Evans of the Online Dating Insider, had an interview with Mandy Ginsberg who is the Match.com GM for North America. She let David know about a few things that will be coming to Match.com in 2009. The main thing we have to look forward too is the new Platinum membership package. Not much is know yet, but apparently Platinum members will be able to contact all member types, including free users. This means members now have the ability to communicate with anyone on Match.com and they will not have to worry if the user can reply back or not without paying first. Other dating sites have started to allow this and I am glad to see Match.com following suit.

I could of sworn I wrote about Match.com's Platinum package before but I couldn't find anything mentioned on my site. Through a Google search I did find what I was looking for. Match.com currently does have a Platinum package. You can find it here and I believe it was started a couple years ago. It currently is a premium matchmaking service offered by Match.com but is not directly tied to the dating site. The service is only available in Dallas, Texas where the Match.com head office is located. This is a personalized service where you and a matchmaker work one on one to find your ideal match. I wonder if Match.com will be either dropping this service or renaming it to avoid confusion?

We closed the 2008 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll yesterday (Jan. 12) with a total of 600 votes from the public. This is almost 150 more votes than last year's Single's Choice Awards which ran roughly the same amount of time. I'm glad to see user participation up this year for our most important award. We started the 2008 poll in October, for 2009 we plan to start it in September as we did for 2007. This way we hope to get the Awards Summary finished by the end of the year instead of January like this year.

We did two things different this year. First we included 10 dating sites instead of 8 as with the year before. Second, we are giving the top 3 dating sites an award, Gold for first place, Silver for second and Bronze for third. We decided to do this since there is not a huge percentage difference between first and second place and it also gives an idea to the public what other dating sites singles also consider as a good choice to join.

The Gold 2008 Singles's Choice Award recipient is Match.com. This is the second year in a row that they are the winner of this award and it is also the second award for them this year as well. Match.com also won our Editor's Top Pick - Overall Award. Of the 600 votes received, Match.com got 160 votes which is over a quarter of all the votes. Smart advertising, a good designed interface and communication tools makes this site a popular choice for singles everywhere.

The recipient of the Silver Singles's Choice Award for 2008 is eHarmony. This dating site, which is famous for its automated matching system, won the award this year for the Editor's Top Pick - Match System Award. eHarmony has 132 votes which is 22 percent of the total vote and just 4.67 percent less votes than Match.com.

Finally, the Bronze 2008 Singles's Choice Award recipient is Yahoo! Personals. This is our first award for Yahoo. They had 12.83 percent of the total vote, less than half of what Match.com received but 5 percent more than 4th place which received only 7.83 percent of the vote. With the Yahoo name behind this dating service, a well designed service and a new 6 month guarantee this year, makes this online dating site our readers 3rd choice.

This year's standings for the Single's Choice award for all dating sites in the poll are (click the dating site name to read our full review):

1. Match.com
2. eHarmony
3. Yahoo! Personals
4. SinglesNet.com
5. FriendFinder.com
6. Lavalife
7. PerfectMatch.com
8. True.com
9. Chemistry
10. Date.com

We received 30 percent more votes this year for the Single's Choice Award and we would like to thank everyone for your participation.

On December 3rd in a story called New Features & Design at Match.com we reported that on Match.com's fact sheet at their parent company website, IAC reported that Match.com receive 60,000 new registered members every day. Well, it appears they have updated this information. IAC now reports "more than 71,000 new people register on Match.com every day". That is roughly a 18 percent increase in new registered members. Recently Match.com also reported that they had their best November in 7 years. Things seem to be on the upswing for Match.com who's membership levels have remained stagnate in recent years.

For more information on this popular dating site, read our Match.com review.

It looks like Match.com UK mascots Cupid and Fate will be around for another year. Starting December 26, 2008 Match.com will begin its new multi million pound marketing campaign in the United Kingdom. This campaign will dedicate 50 percent of the available air time to creative's for the new matchmaking personality test (see Story). The new ads will use humour and are targeted primary at women between the ages of 25 to 34.

Read our UK Match.com review for more details on this dating service.