Dating Services

Recipient
PlentyOfFish.com

The 2013 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll was closed on January 2nd in 2014. It received 423 votes. This article looks at the second question of the poll were we asked you to recommend the best free dating site from our list of seven. For the list we choose the seven most popular free services. A dating site is considered free when a member can create a profile, search for matches, and communicate with all members through email for no cost and with no credit card required. A free dating can offer an upgraded membership that can include other perks but it must keep the core dating site experience free.

The 2013 Single's Choice Award for a Free Dating Site goes to Plenty Of Fish (POF). This makes it the fifth straight year for Plenty of Fish to win this award. They received 22.46% of the vote which is 95 votes in total. It looks like singles have been trying other free sites this year as in previous years POF always received at least 30% of the vote. I wonder if Plenty of Fish will hold onto the top spot again next year? I guess we will have to wait 12 months to find out!

Here are the final results of the poll:

1. Plenty Of Fish (POF)
2. OkCupid
3. DateHookUp.com
4. Meetup
5. BookOfMatches
6. Craigslist
7. Mingle 2

Once again OkCupid.com came in second place. Last year was a close race and this year was just as close. Plenty of Fish squeaked by with just 3% more votes. In other years the difference between first and second place has been more than 10%.

Read our review of PlentyOfFish.com for more information about this online dating service or visit Plenty of Fish directly.

Recipient
Match.com

For 2013 the winner of the Editor's Top Pick - Over All Award is Match.com. For seven straight years Match.com has been our number one dating site. They continue to bring in new members who quickly finds results and with this success the word spreads. One of the best things about Match.com is that its appeal is very broad. In 2013 25% of their members are under the age of 29. Almost 50% of their members are between the ages of 30 and 50, and just over 25% are 50 years or older.

This year Match.com continued to expand their Stir Events which are now available internationally. They also have added more games to the event which have proven very popular. In 2013 Match got a boost in publicity when Martha Stewart became a member and added a dating profile. In just a couple of days her profile had over 20,000 hits.

Read our review of Match.com for more information about this online dating service or visit Match directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: Plenty of Fish

This is a truly international take on online dating.

A Russian man, Andrey Andreev, who established the London-based online dating service Badoo, has found his site winning over users in France, Spain, and Italy. "The seven-year-old company says it has signed up some 200 million people worldwide, 25 million of them active users," reports Bloomberg, "making it the biggest dating service, according to ComScore."

Andreev's ambition is to make Badoo "a social network for meeting new people," rather than a service for connecting users with people they already know. So far, his ambition has paid off: Badoo has been profitable since 2009, with last year's sales expanding about a third to $200 million. The company now has its headquarters in a loft in London's trendy SoHo district, has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as an advisor, and may have an IPO in its future.

The challenge Andreev now faces is to keep US rivals like Tinder and OkCupid at bay, while expanding Badoo beyond its current strongholds in southern Europe and Latin America.

The key to doing so might be Badoo's business model. Unlike services like Match.com, Badoo doesn't charge a monthly fee. Instead, users are invited to pay 1 euro to highlight their profile on the site and increase their chances of being noticed. Because the advantage only lasts for a minute or two - until other people pay to raise their profiles as well - Badoo says that some dedicated users have paid for as many as 20 boosts per day.

Competitors' responses to Badoo's success have been mixed. Jessica Delpirou, director of Meetic France, told Bloomberg that Badoo is no threat to her service, saying that users prefer her more traditional dating site (a sister to Match.com in the US) despite its higher price, because it creates better matches. "People seeking serious relations need confidentiality and tend to pay for a subscription," Delpirou said.

OkCupid founder Sam Yagan told Bloomberg that he, too, believes his service is superior to Badoo and is rated higher by users. Officials from other competitors, like Tinder, did not return Bloomberg's requests for comment.

Right now, Badoo far outstrips Jiayuan, the largest dating service in China, which registered 19 million active users as of September 2013, according to ComScore. Badoo's userbase is also larger than Meetic's 16 million, Match.com's 8 million, and OkCupid's 2 million. And that's all before further expansion into Asia, Britain, and America, which Andreev is currently eyeing. If things continue on the same path, these other dating sites might soon be changing their tunes.

Recipient
Senior People Meet

Senior People Meet is the 2013 Editor's choice for the Top Pick - Senior Award. This is the fourth time in which this dating site has won this award. This year we decided on honouring Senior People Meet not only because it is one of the largest seniors only dating sites but because they make it easy for singles 50 years and older to meet each other online in a fun and safe way.

It takes about 2 minutes to create a basic profile which will allow you to then look over the site and search for members in your city. Searching and sending email to your favorite members is straight forward and can be done in just a few clicks. Just make sure you finish your profile first and include a couple of good photos so the person you sent the message too has a better idea of who is contacting them.

Besides email you can also communicate with members by creating a video greeting, and chatting via text or a live video connection (at least one person must have a video camera). If you are inundated with too many communication requests SeniorPeopleMeet.com also allows you to specify an age range and the gender of the person with whom is allowed to contact you.

Read our review of SeniorPeopleMeet.com for more information about this dating service or visit Senior People Meet directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: OurTime.com

We all know that people post older or misleading photos on their online dating profiles from time to time - photos from when they were younger, thinner, or had more hair - just to attract more people. This phenomenon is nothing new, but it's something that frustrates and puts a damper on people's online dating experiences, even though they might not complain to the dating site about it.

But what if a profile is even more deceptive - what if someone has posted a false identity with fake pictures to lure you in? What about extreme cases, like catfishing, where you've been swindled out of some money? Does the dating website have accountability in this situation?

According to a Florida mother and part-time model, Match.com should be held accountable for engaging in 'one of the biggest conspiracies ever executed on the Internet.'

According to a lawsuit Yuliana Avalos filed against the popular dating website, more than 200 bogus Match.com profiles were created using her pictures. She maintains that hundreds, possibly thousands of fake profiles are posted on the site, including those using her pictures, even though she's never signed up for the site.

The lawsuit also claims that "thousands" of others - including celebrities, soldiers and adult actresses, have had their pictures taken from Facebook and other sites and used in creating fake profiles for Match.com. Avalos maintains in the suit that people (mostly in other countries) use the photos and fake profiles to scam people out of money. She says Match.com knows this and looks the other way, because the IP addresses of scammers show that they originate in other countries, even though the Match.com profile claims to be posting from inside the U.S.

Avalos maintains that Match.com could crack down on these fake profiles if they wanted to, simply by using facial recognition software, but they choose not to.

In the suit Avalos asks for $500 million in money damages for the thousands of victims, and another $1 billion in punitive damages.

Although Match.com has been sued over fake profiles before, these suits have been dropped because of the terms of its user agreement. Match.com says it isn't required for them to police the site and so the company isn't responsible for fraudulent information people may post.

The outcome of this lawsuit could change the online dating landscape - especially if companies are required to take action and crack down on those posting bogus information. Online dating could get more expensive for members. It could also bring down membership numbers that are used to boost ratings and attract people to various sites. But then hopefully, it would protect people from being manipulated and cut down on the amount of catfishing taking place in the online community.

We'll see what happens next in Avalos' case.

Recipient
eHarmony

The recipient of the Editor’s Top Pick - Match System award goes to eHarmony. Singles join this service because they want a matchmaking system they can trust. They don’t want an endless list of profiles to stream through looking for the one which is literally like trying to pick a needle out of a haystack. You can tell the care that went into their matching algorithms by the questions eHarmony asks when you create a profile. Every answer is an important part of their matching system and provides a signal to what type of person you will not only have fun with but will be compatible with you as a person in the long run.

Did you know that 69% of male members meet their spouse on eHarmony within one year. For women that number is even higher at 71%. Your match also is usually not that far away with the average being a bit under 21 miles. Men tend to be about 2.39 years older and of those 600,000 couples who have met on eHarmony and married it took them an average of 22 months to tie the knot.

eHarmony is free to join and to review your matches. They allow limited communication for no cost which gives you a good idea if the site is a right fit for you. About once a month eHarmony has a Free Communication Event which allows members to send and receive messages. These events are an ideal time to try out this service and give it a test drive before you spend any money.

Read our review of eHarmony for more information about this dating service or visit eHarmony directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is:OkCupid.com