General News

Zoosk's dazzling rise to fame is the stuff of online dating legends. Over the last five years, Zoosk has evolved into a leader in the industry, and this year it celebrated a major milestone.

On May 22, 2013, Zoosk announced a company record: revenue exceeded $40 million in the first quarter of the year. That's not a bad way to celebrate the half-decade mark...

And that's not all Zoosk has achieved this year. The first quarter of 2013 also saw these breakthroughs for the popular dating site:

• Zoosk experienced a 116% increase in monthly total unique visitors compared to the same period last year.
• The number of monthly active users for Zoosk's mobile products increased more than 200% year-over-year.

Zoosk believes its success can be chalked up to its unique approach to matchmaking and a strong focus on the mobile market. The site set itself apart with its Behavioral Matchmaking engine, which learns users' preferences by observing their behavior on the site. It continuously improves subsequent matching suggestions as it more thoroughly profiles a user, resulting in increasingly better matches and higher levels of engagement with other singles.

The Behavioral Matchmaking engine is driven by three discovery tools:

• Zoosk's Scientific Matchmaking service, a daily introduction to a potential match
• Carousel, a rapid-fire round of profile pictures
• Search functionality that sorts through the millions of profiles on the site

On the mobile front, Zoosk created a variety of mobile applications to meet users' increasing demands for dating on-the-go. The applications are all optimized versions of the site's experience that are frequently updated to provide better and more sophisticated service. Applications are available for Apple devices on iTunes and for Android in the Google Play store.

Zoosk's commitment to mobile has paid off. It consistently ranks as the #1 dating app for the iPhone and iPad, and in Google Play the Zoosk app has been downloaded more than five million times.

"We wanted to bring a no-compromise approach to small screen dating for users on-the-go," said Shayan Zadeh, Zoosk CEO and co-founder. "So instead of designing our mobile product as an extension of our website, we built a brand new experience from the ground up. This mobile-centric design plus our Behavioral Matchmaking engine equals a powerful formula that is driving user adoption."

Congratulations to Zoosk on their stellar start to 2013. Can't wait to see what the rest of the year has in store...

For more on this dating site you can read our review about Zoosk.

I just got an "Upgrade your POF Account" email. After reading it I was only a little surprised to find even more free features of POF for paid members only.

These features includes reading date feedback, hottest girls that reply, and viewing extended profiles. Features that are new and for upgraded members only include standing out in all searches (highlighted) and seeing who viewed your profile after you voted yes or maybe on.

The last time we found Plenty of Fish removing free member features was in December of 2012 and this was for knowing when a user was last online (very important when using a dating site).

I wonder what is next on the chopping block? Does anyone have any guesses?

There's yet another dating app that's taking advantage of the power of Facebook. And why not? With all the connective power the social network has, why wouldn't companies capitalize on it to help people find love?

"You Should Totally Meet" is an app that helps you play cupid among your Facebook friends, introducing them to each other to see if they hit it off. (I guess you could say it's like setting two of your friends up on a blind date, but in a cool-because-it's-digital kind of way).

So, if you've been dying to set up your single friend Sally, you can be her wing-woman and set up a profile through the app. It allows you to list reasons why you think Sally would be so amazing to date. Then your other Facebook friends can agree or disagree with your assessment.

When the profile is complete, you can scroll through your list of friends and see if there's anyone you want to introduce Sally to, and then let them take it from there. As in real life, there's either a connection or there's not.

I met my husband through a mutual friend on Facebook, so I'm all about tapping into your network to see what can happen. But really, let's call this app for what it is - you're setting your friend Sally up, and you are playing cupid here, not some dating website. So you better be sure to run it by her before she starts getting emails and friend requests from people she doesn't know.

As cool as this app sounds, I wouldn't replace online dating with it. Although the company claims that it's a less awkward, more organic dating experience than meeting a stranger for coffee, it's also limited to your friend's circle of friends.

It's good to keep your options open when it comes to meeting people. Online dating, mobile dating, and plain old-fashioned ways like approaching the cute guy at your local bar are effective ways to meet more people, especially those outside of your network that you'd otherwise never come across.

Of course, online dating means meeting people without any mutual friends to help vouch for them. And sometimes in dating we like to know what we're getting. References are good, because they put us more at ease. We like to hear that Sally is a cool girl before we meet.

So, try it out. But don't drop your online dating membership.

When online dating site PlentyofFish.com first launched (now just pof.com), it quickly gained attention. Free dating sites were not as popular (or as common) as the standard ones like Match.com and eHarmony. Over the first seven years, the site grew to over ten million users.

Within the last few years however, the site has gained a reputation for being a hook-up site, with its "Intimate Encounters" option a prime example of how many male subscribers were using it. Unfortunately, as founder Markus Frind admitted, many of the female profiles were actually men posing as women. On top of that, the male users were harassing the female users. So Frind has decided to scrap Intimate Encounters option and refocus the brand back to its original intention - connecting people for relationships, not for hookups.

While this might seem like a daunting task, Frind has outlined some of the ways he's trying to prevent people from misusing the site. He claims that the rise in mobile dating has created a kind of urgency to meeting people that pushes hook-ups, but there is also the issue of the fake female profiles.

Some of his changes include:

"Any first contact between users that contains sexual references will not be sent. Anyone who tries to get around this rule will be deleted without warning.

You can only contact people +/- 14 years of your age. The majority of messages sent outside those age ranges are all about hookups. Anyone who tries to get around this rule will get deleted.

Intimate Encounters will go away in the next few months. There are 3.3 Million people who use the site every day, of those there are only 6,041 single women looking for Intimate Encounters. Of those 6,041 women, the ones with hot pictures are mostly men pretending to be women. Intimate Encounters on POF can be summed up as a bunch of horny men talking to a bunch of horny men pretending to be women."

I appreciate his honesty and his attempt to reign in the users of the site and gain more trust. But it's easy to see how this happened, since the members don't pay for their membership and there is no financial repercussion when they abuse their privileges. There is less at risk, which means that more people will join and use the site to their advantage.

While online dating sites have little control over which users join, how they represent themselves, and how they behave on the site, there are certain steps that sites can take to ensure greater safety. Plenty of Fish has started this process, and I'm curious to see its effect, and how other sites may follow.

To find out more about this service you can read our Plenty of Fish dating site review.

The online dating industry is booming, but there's a dark cloud lurking on the horizon. For users, a successful stint of online dating ends in meeting a match and no longer needing a dating site. But for the dating sites themselves, business success means retaining customers and keeping them coming back for more. Clearly, there's a conflict of interest. Houston, we have a problem.

eHarmony may have the answer. While some dating sites are developing products for couples in order to remain relevant in users' lives, eHarmony is taking a very different approach.

With 565,000 marriages under its belt so far, eHarmony now plans to expand from the marriage market to the job market. eHarmony vice president Grant Langston says the company will launch a service to match employers with job seekers in the U.S. in June, followed shortly afterwards by a launch in Canada.

"We've seen indicators that 60 to 65 per cent of people are unhappy with their jobs, whether or not they are actively searching for new ones," Langston says. Expanding into the job market is a natural progression for eHarmony, he believes, given the company's extensive research into habits, desires, and personality types.

The typical hiring process is driven by employers, who ask a series of questions and evaluate potential employees' skills to assess suitability for the position. eHarmony's approach to hiring will look a little different: employers and employees will complete extensive questionnaires focused on culture to determine whether they're a good match for each other.

"When employers post a job on eHarmony, job seekers in the database will be matched to that job and both parties will be notified," TheStar.com reports. "They can review each others' profile and communicate online before meeting face-to-face."

Research agrees that the eHarmony approach to job hunting might be more effective. In December of last year, an issue of the American Sociological Review reported on a study of the recruiting practices of over a hundred professional service firms that found that applicants and employers with similarities in experiences, hobbies, and personal appearance made the best matches.

Langston is confident that the idea has a future, but acknowledges that there may be a few bumps along the way. eHarmony plans to allow for a year to iron out the kinks in the new service, and hasn't ruled out purchasing an online job board that can be combined with existing matching services. To date, there is no word on who will pay for the service or how much it will cost.

I had a bit of a laugh today when I was reviewing a few senior dating sites. What do these 3 pictures have in common?

Senior FriendFinder

Senior People Meet

Single Seniors Meet

That's right each one uses the exact same photo of a senior couple! Single Seniors Meet and Senior People Meet actual used the photo at the exact same time back in 2010 before they switched to different photos. Also Single Seniors Meet has gone through a few name changes which is a little confusing. They were called Prime Singles at one point and are now called SilverSingles.com. The site is also run by Spark Networks who also owns Christian Mingle.

I was surprised to see Senior FriendFinder join in on the party and use the same photo of the couple (it is at least a 3 year old photo). There is either very few good photos of happy couples in their later years or ... heck I am not sure why they are using it ... 🤔