Match

The recipient of the Editor's Top Pick - Over All Award for 2011 is Match.com. This dating site year after year continues to be in our opinion one of the best choices for singles who wish to find a date through an online service.

What more could you ask for in a dating site? The service has lots of members, a 6 month guarantee, mobile apps for all types of phones, a robust and easy to use interface and, lots of dating tools to help you to find your match. Match.com is designed for all types of singles. Whether you’re a senior just getting back into dating and discovering you can now do it online, to a busy professional whose time is short and knows what they want in a relationship.

For over 10 years Match.com has been the leader in online dating and in 2011 it was no different. They continued to refine the online dating process by improving their matching algorithms and adding such features for communication as filtering your email by attributes of the senders profile, and VIP mail. We were also introduced to DateSpark which helps members interested in each other, to take that first step and meet in person. DateSpark allows members to suggest on their profile their ideal first date. If another member finds the date interesting they can comment on it which not only helps break the ice but has them already planning the first date.

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: eHarmony

Match.com (Match.ca in Canada) is now powering online dating at Yahoo! Canada. Yahoo in the United States has been using Match.com since May of 2010 (see Story). Previously Lavalife had partnered with Yahoo! Canada to provide online dating to their visitors (see Story).

To find out more about this dating site you can check out our Match.com review.

Match.com launched in 1995, and the site's popularity is still on the rise. In the highly competitive world of online dating, Match.com consistently ranks highly in dater's minds, and for good reason: their trailblazing technology makes them a cut above the rest.

Codenamed "Synapse," Match's algorithm evaluates a diverse range of factors in order to match compatible singles. David Gelles recently took a look backstage at Match.com for FT Magazine, guided by Mandy Ginsberg, president of Match.com US, and Amarnath Thombre, a key engineer for the company, to discover exactly what makes the Match algorithm so special.

Ginsberg had personal experience with the trials and tribulations of online dating before joining the Match team. After divorcing her spouse shortly after leaving college, she joined JDate but had no luck finding a partner. Love later found her in the form of a co-worker from India, who won her heart despite being vastly different from the man she thought she wanted to marry.

"If I had laid out a criteria for what I was looking for, it would not have been a guy from south India," she told Gelles. "People are complex. You're constantly making trade-offs about who's too tall, too short, too smart and too dumb. People come in and tell us a bit about what they're looking for. But what you say and what you do can be different."

With that idea in mind, known as "dissonance" in academic circles, Ginsberg helped revolutionize Match's approach to online dating. "I might come in and say I'm looking for a nice Catholic guy between 30 and 40 who is non-married," she says. "But after weeks of looking at people, I might get an e-mail from a guy who has kids, and I might accept that." Taking into consideration the fact that most people don't know themselves as well as they think they do, the engineers at Match adapted the algorithm to pair users with potential dates based on a combination of what they say they want and what it seems they actually want based on their actions on the site.

Now, instead of taking user's preferences at face value, Match's cutting-edge technology relies on a variety of factors to match prospective partners. Stated preferences like age range and body type are taken into consideration, while the algorithm augments that information with the knowledge it gains from an intelligent examination of a user's behavior on the site. If a member's actions don't match their stated preferences, Match learns that those preferences are not entirely correct and that the member is open to meeting people who don't fit the original description. Synapse also looks at the behavior of similar users and factors in that information as well, in a process known as "triangulation."

As impressive as Ginsberg's contribution to online dating is, Match's amazing innovations would not be possible without its team of brilliant engineers, like Amarnath Thombre, whose story we'll look at next time.

For more information on this popular dating site you can read our review of Match.com.

The owners of Match.com, IAC announced plans on May 30, 2011 to buy all outstanding shares of Meetic for 15 euros a share. IAC currently owns 27 percent of Meetic already through a deal where the sold their European business to Meetic in early 2009 (see Story).

Meetic is valued at 347 million euros which works out to about $497 million in USD. The share offer by IAC is about 12 percent higher than the closing price last Friday. Since then trading has been suspended at Meetic's request.

Meetic's co-founder Marc Simoncini has entered into an agreement with IAC to sell about 3.7 million shares which works out to about 7% of the total outstanding shares. He also still plans to remain on Meetic's board of directors.

To find out about IAC's most popular dating site you can read our Match.com review.

I have been reviewing Match.com again recently and found a few mail message features that I had missed. It looks like both of these features where added in the first half of 2010 (at least that was when the information was added to help).

VIP Email

A Very Interested Person or VIP Email message can be sent by a subscriber to indicate that they are particularly interested in the person who is receiving the message. What makes this email different is that a Match.com member can send only one a week. With a VIP Email, Email Read Notification is included for free (there usually is an upgrade charge for this). The message will also be bolded and highlighted green in the receivers email box so it is easier to identify. Plus, your profile will be highlighted on the receivers Match.com's Connections page for 30 days.

I was surprised today to find out that Match.com announced that they have acquired the free dating site OKCupid. The purchase price is $50 million plus potential future payments which depends upon performance in the coming year of the dating site. OKCupid makes most of its revenue through displaying online advertising. Their secondary revenue generating tool is a paid upgrade membership option. The CEO and co-founder of OkCupid, Sam Yagan will continue to run the business and oversee all day-to-day operations.

OKCupid membership base has seen a large increased over the last 18 months. Their members tend to be younger adults which is a market Match.com is looking to develop.

This time last year Match.com purchased Singlesnet.com for an undisclosed amount. (see Story) and in the summer, the year before, they had acquired People Media for $80 million (see Story). I wonder who they will buy next year? 😊

For more on the story you can read the press release. To find out more about these two dating sites, please read our Match.com review and our OKCupid.com review.