Awards

Recipient of Gold
Match.com

Recipient of Silver
eHarmony

Recipient of Bronze
Yahoo! Personals

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.

Recipient
Lavalife PRIME

This award was probably the toughest pick this year, since a fair number of dating sites last year had some major updates and new features implemented. In the end, it came down to which dating site innovated in a way that was not only exciting but most importantly, made it easier for members to learn about each other and to find a match. The recipient of the Editor's Top Pick - Innovative Award is Lavalife PRIME. This is a relatively new dating site (2007), for singles 45 years and older. This dating site puts more of an emphasis on the social aspect of dating. As a member you get the ability to search profiles, a message center for emails, group and 1 on 1 chatting and the ability to partcipate in Lavalife PRIME's active forums. This dating and friends community is designed equally for you to learn about other members through online communication, and by searching for profiles based on your matching criteria. What makes this dating service innovative and sets them apart from other dating communities is their Life Experiences feature.

The basic idea of this feature is for members to learn about you through your own life experiences. You can have as many life experiences as you want in your profile. You can either create a life experience entry by modifying one of the many samples Lavalife PRIME provides, or create one from scratch. To start, you pick an icon that defines your experience. You then create a title and pick a date your experience took place. Finally you write a detailed description of your experience. Photos, audio and video can also be included as part of your Life Experience. When you view a members profile you get to see a summary of their Life Experiences arranged in a timeline. The summary includes a small photo or icon, the date and the title. Users then click on the summary to view the full Life Experience entry.

Read our review of Lavalife PRIME for more information about this dating service.

This Years Runner Ups for this award include (in no particular order): Match.com and FriendFinder.com.

Recipient
Passion.com

This award was an easy decision once again this year, no other site even comes close to what is offered by this dating / hook-up site. The Editor's choice for the Top Pick - Sexy Award goes to Passion.com. This dating community continues to blow away the competition with the features offered and the number of members they have, which now totals more than 25 million. At most times of the day there will be more than 100,000 men and women online looking for intimate encounters and discreet relationships. Passion.com is part of the FriendFinder Network which was recently bought by Penthouse.

Passion.com is a very active community and there are a number of ways for members to express themselves. There are currently 371 thousand personal blogs and over 125 thousand special interest groups of which 2.5 million people have joined. Web cameras have also become a large part of this adult dating site experience. Members can have video introductions as well as chat and IM with their webcams. Of course photos are a big part of the site as well. Most typical dating sites have members who post usually from 1 to 3 photos. At Passion.com you will find a large number of members who have posted 10 or more photos. This site just teems with activity and member participation. There is not another site on the internet where you will find more sexy personals.

At Passion.com they have a thriving international community. Besides English this dating site is available in 10 other languages. Countries that have at least a million members at Passion.com include the United States, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

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

This Years Runner Up for this award is: Lavalife.

Recipient
MillionaireMatch.com

For the second year in a row MillionaireMatch.com is the recipient of the Editor's Top Pick - Wealthy Award. This dating site is the most popular wealthy matchmaking site that we know of. This is in large part due to all of the exposure this online dating site has received on TV and news print over the last couple of years. They have been featured and talked about on CNN and daytime talk shows from all 3 major networks, ABC, CBS and NBC.

There are two main features that makes Millionaire Match stand out from the rest in their dating niche. First is they allow Guest members (Free) to reply to emails. This means as a paying member anyone can reply to your emails and not just other paying members. This greatly increases your chance of success since all members can reply to messages . The other feature which makes this dating site more popular than other Sugar Daddy dating services is, they will verify up to 5 different attributes of a members profile. All the member has to do is send in the proper documentation. This means income level, occupation, education, photo and age can be verified. For a dating site that promotes wealthy singles, this takes out the guess work of wondering if someone has just lied about their successes. If you are unsure about someone's credentials and they are not verified, then you can just move on.

The most important aspect of MillionaireMatch.com is that it offers wealthy singles and singles looking for someone who has done well financially in life, a large number of high quality members. This dating service has over 1 million members since it's debut.

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

This Years Runner Ups for this award include (in no particular order): Sugardaddie.com and MillionaireMate.com.

Recipient
Senior FriendFinder

The 2008 Editor's Top Pick - Senior Award goes to Senior FriendFinder. This active online senior community offers much more than a place to meet other singles for dating. This service is also popular for seniors looking for activity partners, friendship and group activities. You get many extras on this site like your own personal blog, which can be accessed by just your friends, Senior FriendFinder members or anyone on the internet, you get to decide. Interest Groups on Senior FriendFinder is a very popular feature. You can find people with similar interests from all over North America. It doesn't matter if you love dancing, your pet, or talking about politics, there will be a group you will be interested in, to join.

Senior FriendFinder has been in business since the late 90's and their experience shows. You have a large active membership base (currently over 400,000) and a large number of dating features and tools at your disposal to use. Some of the feature highlights are:

• With your profile you can include video and/or voice introductions.
• An easy to use Mail and Friends system that gives you filtering and privacy controls.
• Instant Messenger and Flash Chatting with a Webcam option.
• A great Search System that can be used in several different ways to obtain results.

A points system is also present which awards Senior FriendFinder members who participate in the community. Points can be easily obtained through actions like uploading profile photos, by participating in the FriendFinder magazine, interest groups and user blogs. You can trade in these points for things like the ability to email other members (used by free members), sending virtual flowers and upgrading you membership to Silver or Gold.

Read our review of Senior FriendFinder for more information about this dating service or visit SeniorFriendFinder.com directly.

This Years Runner Ups for this award include (in no particular order): Lavalife Prime and Prime Singles.

Recipient
eHarmony

This years Editor's Top Pick - Match System Award goes to a dating site which has produced more than 1 Billion matches, eHarmony. This dating service has continued to grow to become the most popular personality matchmaking system in North America. I am sure this continued growth will follow their newest endeavors in the United Kingdom and Australia. These sites share the similar interface of eHarmony in Canada and the United States but contain modified profile and matching systems based on the cultural differences of each country.

No other dating site that we know of spends 3 million dollars a year on matchmaking research. They currently have 6 PH. D. researches on staff who's full time job is to improve eHarmony's matching algorithms. Each question in their 256 question profile helps determine who is the best match for the member.

Just remember this dating site completely relies on their match system. You cannot search for singles yourself like most other dating sites. This is what makes eHarmony unique. It also means that the matching system must work, and it does! A study by Harris Interactive found in 2007 that eHarmony is responsible for 43,000 marriages in the United States over the past year. This means on average 236 eHarmony members a day get married. No other dating site that has a detailed personality matching system comes close to these numbers.

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

This Years Runner Ups for this award include (in no particular order): Chemistry and PerfectMatch.com.