Match Group

The Motley Fool has an interesting point of view regarding eHarmony's charges against Chemistry before the Better Business Bureau's ad council. The charges are in response to Chemistry's new TV and internet ads that mention eHarmony has rejected over a million singles.

The article goes on and explains that the Chemistry ads are free advertising for eHarmony and they don't necessary reflect them in a bad light. It can be a good thing for a dating service to be choosy over which singles can join.

I noticed a feel good article at the MiamiHerald.com today about how a couple met using Match.com. The small twist in this story is the woman, Cheryl, is in a wheel chair. She has been in a wheel chair her entire adult life. When Cheryl first tried online dating she go a lot of email replies stating that the single men she had emailed couldn't handle her situation. That is until she met Mathew. He was hesitant at first but thought he should give it a try. Now 3 years later they are married.

To update an older story we did on Paying For Perks at dating sites, I noticed on Online Dating Insider that Match.com has added a few more perks above and beyond what a normal paying membership covers. Their main push is still MindFIndBInd with Dr. Phil but, the new perks included:

• matchMobile - Allows you to access features of Match.com right from your cell phone. Includes viewing profiles and instant messaging singles. Costs $4.99 per month for 3 months.
• Email Read Notification - Find out when and if singles from Match read the emails you send them. Costs $3.99 per month for 3 months.
• matchTalk - Speak with other Singles on the phone but keep your phone number anonymous. Completely integrated into Match. Costs $4.99 per month for 3 months.

I wonder if these new features will work out. If they do, this is where paid dating sites will start to out shine there free counterparts. By having services that truly offer added value and are just too expensive to be implement by the free dating sites (costs couldn't be covered by on site advertising).

The only service I don't agree with here is the Email Read Notification. In my opinion, this service should be included with a normal paying membership. It should be part of the Hot Lists functionality like, who has viewed your profile. There also should be a privacy option here for members to disable notifications being sent out when you read someone's email, and not a paid option either!

One perk I did miss from my last article was:

• Highlighted Portrait - Your profile picture is highlighted with a border so it stands out in search results. Costs $2.84 per month for 3 months.

This perk may be worth it for some members since it does make your search listing much more noticeable, and the price for it is not bad either.

I notice this article on Online Dating Insider, it looks like Match.com now requires you to sign up for a free membership before you can perform searches or view any profiles. While I understand they are doing this to increase membership numbers, I think the increase in singles creating fake profiles or people just moving on and not signing up would be a bigger loss to Match. Most singles do join multiple dating sites (according to our polls) but I would think they like to perform searches to see if there are potential matches close to home before investing time in creating a quality dating profile.

Should be interesting to see if Match.com does this still in 6 months.

I Just saw my first TV ad for Chemistry last night. I was expecting a commercial that just explains the merits of Chemistry's dating service. I was surprised to find that they also mention some negative points regarding eHarmony, such as there policy against accepting gay members. I must admit, I have always viewed this gay member policy of eHarmony in a negative light. I realize eHarmony is a Christian based dating service but some Christian faiths have excepted gay people for who they are. People who are offended by someone's sexual preference wouldn't even know about there existence on eHarmony since, eHarmony only shows you members who are your match. Members are not allowed to search for other members.

Online dating competition with the major players is definitely getting much more furious this year. I wonder what will be next and if eHarmony will respond.

While I was over at Chemistry checking out some review information I notice that they have revamped their home page. It looks like they have added a new dating blog called The Great Mate Debate where Chemistry relationship experts can blog away about online dating, relationships and of course Chemistry! After looking over the blog I found it to be well laid out, with some interesting articles. Most important their Experts actually have half decent resumes that deal with relationships and advice. A lot of so called relationship experts on other blogs are experts just because they put the word expert after there name.

Of course Chemistry isn't the first be any means to add a relationship blog. Relationship blogs has been popular for a while with other dating sites and some have taken the form of more a online magazine than a blog. What's the difference? The main difference really is the style of writing. Blogs usually have a more journal like feel to it's writing. Blogs also tend to allow users to comment on their articles more than the online magazines do.

Here is a list of some blogs and magazines from other popular dating sites:

• Date.info
• eHarmony Labs
• FriendFinder Magazine
• True U