General News

eHarmony is offering a 5 day free trial this Thanksgiving weekend here in the United States. It starts Thursday November 26th and ends on Monday November 30th, 2015.

If you are single, the holidays can be harder on you especially when family and friends keep asking the same question - Have you met anyone new? If you are not out shopping for gifts (hopefully you have finished because those lines can get crazy), what better way to fix your predicament this holiday weekend than looking for your ideal match. Trust me you are not alone in this. Dating services like eHarmony are extremely busy during the holidays for this reason alone. If you are looking for a steady long-term relationship then eHarmony should be the dating service you want to try out. Their complex matching algorithm, which has had millions of dollars in research spent on it, sends eHarmony members new quality matches everyday for them to review. During the free trial, communication is free so if one or more match sparks your interest, you can send them messages.

Signing up to eHarmony is easy to do and free. All you need to do is complete the membership signup process and the matching questionnaire (which takes about 30 minutes). Once complete eHarmony will analyze your profile and send you your first set of matches. This process is completely free and no credit card is required. Just remember free trials do not include photos, secure call (a phone service), or skip straight to email. You will have to purchase a membership to use these features directly.

For more information about this service (the website and dating app) which looks to create long-term relationships between it's members, you can read our review of eHarmony.

Looking for a new dating app? It’s not hard to find something besides Tinder – it seems a new dating app launches every week, each with its own particular spin. But the new U.K. launch of dating app Once has got my attention, because it offers something the other apps don’t – real human matchmakers in place of computer algorithms. (We are now going back to basics with online dating.)

Once works like this: once every 24 hours, users will get a hand-picked match to either decline or accept within the next 24 hours. Dates are carefully chosen using several criteria, including interests, looks and personal preferences.

With Once, there is no auto-swiping or endless browsing or location matching like you find on apps like Tinder because the match is personally curated. But it also means as a dater, you have to have patience, because you only get one match a day.  After all, the human matchmakers have a lot of other people to cater to, not just you, and this takes time.

But patience can work in your favor, and often leaves you more interested to tuning in and seeing who your featured match will be. Chances are, you’ll accept more matches when you don’t have an endless array of potential dates to choose from – and because it’s a bit more personal, instead of computer-generated choices. The thinking is that you and your hand-picked date will have some things in common, and the likelihood of relationship success will be greater. The jury is still out on this, as Once hasn’t been on the market long enough to see results.

The dating app recently launched in France, and managed to gain 100,000 users in only a couple of weeks. Once has now launched in the UK, where real-life matchmakers will be picking daters to match in London.

"People are fed up with having just to sit and swipe through hundreds of people in the hope that they might find one person who they like and then start a conversation with," said Jean Meyer, the CEO and founder of Once in an interview with Mashable. He also noted the time-saving aspect of his app: “With Once, we’re taking that responsibility on ourselves, and are handpicking great people for London’s time-starved daters.”

While Once is available in France and the UK on both iOS and Android devices, there is no news yet on the app’s roll-out in other countries. Perhaps this adds to its mystique, to keep daters guessing. Dating Sites Reviews will keep you updated as we learn more.

There’s no doubt about it: JDate is a big name in the world of online dating, and when it wants something, it will go to great lengths to get it. And recently, its parent company Spark Networks decided that it wanted popular dating app JSwipe, owned by Smooch Labs. The two companies struck a deal in late October, and now JSwipe is one of the dating properties of Spark Networks, along with dating sites Christian Mingle and Black Singles in addition to JDate.

JSwipe, which launched in April of 2014, has grown rapidly, with over 450,000 downloads worldwide and over 40 million messages between users. The dating app was definitely posing some competition to JDate, and attracting a younger user base who prefer apps to the traditional dating websites. This made the company an attractive target for Spark Networks, JDate’s owner.

In fact, JSwipe and JDate have had a tumultuous dating history, so to speak. Earlier this year, Forbes broke the story that JDate was suing JSwipe for copyright infringement because JSwipe was using the trademark “J” in the name of their app. In the lawsuit, JDate also claimed it owned the patent on software that “confidentially determines matches and notifies users of mutual matches in feelings and interests,” which would ultimately interfere with all dating apps using this technology (in other words, all dating apps).

JSwipe at first fought back, going to the press with the story of the lawsuit and calling out JDate for trying to shut the app down. JSwipe also started an IndieGoGo fundraising campaign to help them fight the lawsuit against JDate, assumingly because they didn’t have the funds to fight on their own. As it turns out, either the company ran out of money, or JDate put forth a really compelling offer, which Spark Networks said they would reveal later in the company’s 4^th quarter financial statements.

The lawsuit has been dropped and Sparks Networks put out a press release, praising the new relationship between JDate and JSwipe. Michael Egan, Chief Executive Officer of Spark Networks, stated in the release, “We’re very excited to welcome the Smooch Labs team into Spark.  They’ve created a fantastic mobile application that helps young Jews meet and form meaningful relationships, and together with JDate, our leading Jewish focused dating platform, Spark is now able to significantly build on its mission to strengthen the Jewish community through dating and marriage.” David Yarus, founder of JSwipe had equally glowing statements about the union.

While JSwipe remains free to download right now, Sparks Networks has promised that new paid premium services will be rolled out in the near future. For more information on JDate you can read our review of JDate.

Plenty of Fish may have taken a backseat to services like Tinder in terms of cultural recognition, but 2015 has been a big year for the company nonetheless.

In March, POF released its revenue numbers for the first time. The dating app and website reached 100 million users worldwide and announced that its run rate – the revenue a company can expect to bring in if business continues as it has so far that year – for 2015 was expected to hit $100 million. That's a dollar per year per user, even though most POF users don't pay a dime for the service.

In July POF was acquired by Match Group, an IAC/InterActive subsidiary, for $575 million in cash. Match Group had purchased a number of dating services over the previous six years, including How About We and OkCupid. Add those to Tinder, which Match had funded early in its lifetime, and Match Group became a serious power player in the online dating world.

After much speculation, Match Group filed for an IPO in October of this year with a tentative offering amount of $100 million. It will operate under the ticker symbol "MTCH" on NASDAQ.

And that's not where the big news ends for Plenty of Fish in 2015. As part of Match Group's filing with the SEC, the company revealed POF's current financial status. This is only the second time the public has seen POF's revenue numbers.

POF's revenue is divided into two categories: subscription and advertising. The majority of the website's funding comes from subscriptions, which make up 75% of POF's income compared to 25% from ads. POF currently estimates 2015 revenue to be $80 million.

With a little math magic, we can find out how many paying users Plenty Of Fish has. Seventy-five percent of $80 million is $60 million per year from subscriptions. Divide that by 12 and POF pulls in $5 million per month. Then divide again by $10, the average monthly revenue per paid member, and the final number is 500,000 paid members. That's a remarkably small percentage of POF's 100 million users.

There's a reason the company relies so heavily on subscription revenue over ads. As singles increasingly favor mobile devices over computers, services like Plenty Of Fish are forced to adapt to smaller screens. Ads are more distracting and harder to read in the cramped space of a smartphone screen.

In other ways, mobile has strongly contributed to the success of POF. “Since our shift to mobile we’ve seen rapid growth both in terms of users and revenue,” says founder and CEO Markus Frind.

“Our revenue model has also evolved from one driven by advertising to one driven by paid membership,” he adds. “Now more than ever, singles are willing to pay for an enhanced user experience.”

eHarmony is offering a free trial this Halloween weekend here in the United States and Canada. It starts Thursday October 29th and ends on Sunday November 1st.

Are you ready to be scared this Halloween weekend? If so, you should check out your matches at OTHER dating sites! At eHarmony there are no ghouls or trolls 😉 to worry about as all matches are generated using the eHarmony matching algorithm and are based on what you want in a partner as well as what traits matches best with your personality. eHarmony's goal is to find you a long-term relationship.

All eHarmony memberships are free and no credit card is required. It is also free to receive and review your matches. Normally you do have to pay a membership fee to communicate (sending emails) with those matches, the only exception is on free communication and trial weekends like this one. Free eHarmony communication and trial events do not include secure call (anonymous phone service), skipping the guided communication process, and viewing of profile photos.

For more details on this popular matchmaking service designed to find members long-term relationships you can read our eHarmony review.

Ashley Madison, the notorious dating website for married people, has been immersed in scandal since the company’s database was hacked a few months back. First, the hackers threatened to reveal users of the site, and then, it was discovered that most of the 5 million women registered on the site (a fraction of the number of men registered on the site) were actually linked to fake email addresses set up by employees of the website.

Now another potentially damaging piece of information has been uncovered by The Toronto Sun. Apparently, Ashley Madison’s parent company Avid Life Media, which owns several other dubious dating sites such as Cougar Life, The Big and the Beautiful, and Established Men, have been hiring attractive women to pose as founders of these dating sites.

According to the report in The Toronto Sun, Avid Life Media was trying to work the best PR angles possible to attract attention to these sites, a strategy that worked with Ashley Madison. Simply by trying to purchase ad space in a mainstream publication or even airtime during the Super Bowl, Ashley Madison received a lot of media attention – notably because they were refused the ad space/ time. However, new angles had to be thought out for the other Avid Life sites, including Cougar Life.

Cougar Life was repped by Claudia Opdenkelder, a beautiful spokesperson who portrayed herself to be the founder of the dating site which matched older women with younger men. "Why shouldn’t older women have younger men to love, just as older men can pursue younger women?" she campaigned to such outlets as The Globe and Mail and New York Times. She managed to generate a lot of coverage for the dating site.

The Big and the Beautiful followed suit by hiring plus-size America’s Next Top Model winner Whitney Thompson, who claimed to have founded the dating site, which caters to men looking for plus-sized women. Simone Dadoun-Cohen represented herself as the founder of Established Men, a site aimed at wealthy men who are looking for some arm candy – much like dating site SugarDaddy.com. Dadoun-Cohen claimed to be stripping to put herself through college before she met her wealthy boyfriend, hence the idea for the app. However, this turned out to be a made-up story.

The information was leaked from hackers of the Ashley Madison site, who also managed to get their hands on emails between former Avid Life CEO Noel Biderman, who stepped down after the hacking incident, and former media relations manager Shari Cogan. In the emails, the two discussed plans of what they would do about a potentially damaging segment about Cougar Life on ABC’s Nightline. “I don’t want this turning in to a witch hunt,” Biderman wrote. “We don’t want the site and Claudia to look like ‘frauds.'”

As of now, the three women who posed as the websites’ CEOs are no longer employed by Avid Life Media. Opdenkelder settled a lawsuit she brought against the company.

It must be noted that journalists went along with the stories of the CEOs without fact-checking, just taking their sources’ word for it – in this case, the PR staff of Avid Life Media. It seems the story made for better headlines than the truth.