Dating Services

eHarmony has announced it's closing the doors on its short-lived sister site, Jazzed.com. Jazzed will be no more on September 18, two years after its launch in 2010.

Years ago, Match.com introduced Chemistry.com, its algorithm-based answer to eHarmony. eHarmony responded with Jazzed, a more casual site that allowed users to freely contact other members instead of connecting only with matches provided by the site. eHarmony hoped Jazzed would be a strong competitor for Match's massive market share, but alas - it seems their dream was not to be.

Jazzed barely managed to get off the ground, despite eHarmony's efforts. The site launched a photo-sharing app last year and was featured on a dating television show called "Excused," but that was the extent of its popularity. After the initial excitement over the site wore off, it never returned to the public's radar.

If you're a Jazzed member, you now have three options:

• Take no immediate action, and continue to use the site until it shuts down on September 18.
• Cancel your subscription before the site closes, and receive a prorated refund for the remaining portion of your subscription. (Users who do not cancel their subscriptions will be issued a prorated refund after the date of closure.)
• Sign up for eHarmony instead, which is offering a discount to former Jazzed users. Use the promo code JAZZEDEH to receive a special rate of $9.95/mo for three months. The offer expires on September 20 at 11:59 pm PST, after which your account will automatically renew at a rate of $29.95/mo.

Upon closure, Jazzed members will not be able to view or edit profile information on the site or access their Jazzed mailboxes. "Any data associated with your account will be deleted shortly after the closure," says Jazzed, "provided that we may archive certain information for record keeping integrity, fraud prevention, enforcement of our terms, or to the extent it relates to a pending dispute."

Unfortunately, that last bit raises a lot of questions for Jazzed users. Exactly what does "shortly" mean? How can data be both "deleted" and "archived?" Does it still exist or not? And if it still exists, what's going to happen to it? How can a site that's no longer active enforce its terms?

What's going to happen to Jazzed profiles? Will the URLs remain active? Will they be sold to other companies? Will they be merged with the eHarmony database? Will the database go offline?

Right now Jazzed seems to be creating more questions than it's answering. I advise all users to keep a close watch over their privacy and data, and monitor the progress of this story as Jazzed shuts down.

PayPal has been told by a Judge that they cannot dismiss a lawsuit filed by SeekingArrangement.com. The lawsuit is about PayPal suspending SeekingArrangement.com accounts because of the sexual nature of the dating site. Meanwhile they still allow similar sites like Ashley Madison to have a PayPal account so their members can pay for the dating service.

SeekingArrangement.com started to use PayPal as a payment gateway for their members back in 2007. By 2011 PayPal has suspended their account permanently citing the fact that they allow dating options such as “Intimate Encounter” and “Discreet Affair”.

To find out more about the sugar daddy dating site that is taking on PayPal you can read our SeekingArrangement review.

Our review for the dating site Plenty of Fish has just received a major update and is now available online. Our last significant update to this review was completed under a year and a half ago. Beyond shortening there name from Plenty of Fish to POF this dating site has gone through a number of changes since May 2011.

So what has POF updated with their service since the last time we did a review? Here is a quick list of some of the more important changes:

• Profile questions modified and added
• Photo rating removed
• Relationship chemistry predictor went from 28 to 73 questions
• Profile themes now requires a paid membership
• The ability to see who viewed your profile find out the date and time it was viewed now requires a paid membership
• The amount of credits you get has changed for the 3 price points
• Additional relationship statuses have been added
• Some limits to what users can contact you via private messaging has been removed. You can no longer specify that the sender’s profile must have an image and that the message must be a certain size
• New "Hottest Girls" feature that lists women who consistently reply to messages
• New "Most Attracted" feature that lists men who have a high likelihood of being attracted to you
• There are now 5 different Personality Tests

To find out more about this popular free dating site and the changes please read our updated POF.com review now.

2 years ago eHarmony launched a dating site called Jazzed. When it launched Jazzed was free for a time before it eventually went pay (I am not sure when). Back in 2010 we found Jazzed to be a lot like Match.com. The Jazzed dating profile contained about the same amount of information and members could search for their own matches. Unfortunately the Jazzed dating site will be closing next Tuesday September 18th, 2012.

Why are they closing? They never did get the site off the ground and I think very little money was spent in marketing. The site was on our radar to do a full fledge review but we just never got around to it since our visitors never asked about it. I also never saw many ads for the service so we kind of forgot about it (which is saying something since that is all we do around here is talk about online dating. 😉

Overall from a technical point of view Jazzed was a good dating site. It had a solid interface and offered the right tools for finding your match. They even had mobile apps on the iPhone and Android. Maybe if they had marketed the site more this would be a different story, but they didn’t. As a lot of dating site owners know marketing is the hardest part of running a dating site (I imagine this is true for most online services).

To find out more details about the closure you can read the Jazzed FAQ which includes information on refunds if you have an active subscription.

If you are looking for information on another dating site to try please take a look at the reviews on these popular services:

• eHarmony
• Match.com
• OkCupid
• Plenty of Fish

I have never been the most romantic of gals. I never fantasized about being swept off my feet by Prince Charming or a knight in shining amour. I always found the idea that there's only ONE person out there for each of us - a soulmate - to be a little silly (and, frankly, far too limiting). And the idea of "love at first sight" seems more than a little corny to me.

Now a new dating service is trying to make those of us who are romantic realists change our minds. 1iDreamofU is a new online social dating site that allows members to visually create an image of the person they would like to meet, making "love at first sight" a reality.

So it's like The Sims for my love life? I'm totally in.

After a user creates the image of their perfect match, the IDOU software compares the image, along with responses to questions on demographics and relationships, to other members on the site to make the match. Joe Schwinger, President of eXcelaweb, the company responsible for IDOU's custom software, says "The software associated with IDOU's creation leverages a unique algorithm which allows users to custom select and compile every asset of the person they want to create. The compiled assets, the image of a person, are shared via social networks to crowdsource that perfect match."

New users can create their dream guy or girl from the ground up, customizing every detail - from ethnicity, to facial structure, to eye, nose, mouth, and hair shapes - or chose from "Almost Famous" faces or already-created base faces. After the Dream has been built, users rank their chosen features from most to least important.

Following the creation of the Dream, users answer typical dating site questions about relationship status, religious and political beliefs, occupation, and education. Other questions ask users to describe their "Actual Saturday" and their "Ideal Saturday," and to go into more detail about themselves and the date they're looking for. You can create as many Dreams as you want in search of your perfect match.

Once the Dream is created and your profile has been completed, hit the Search button to receive your matches. You can use advanced search features to filter the results, and can organize matches by adding them to your favorites, connecting with them, or blocking them. To initiate a conversation, send a message (you can even use a pre-made subject headline) and start talking! You can also ask your friends to help you find your Dream by sharing it on Facebook and Twitter.

Karen Howard, President of KLEA, Inc., the owner of the IDOU brand, says this of the new site: "IDOU is fun and entertaining in that you can create a person just for the experience or in the hopes of meeting the person you've built. That you can share the person you created with friends through social media is an added bonus."

On August 31, 2012 Plenty of Fish released a new update for their Android dating app. The new version number is 1.4.1.9627 and it includes a number of new features and bug fixes. The new features include:

• Username search
• Additional search filters on profile attributes
• You can now register on POF through the App (done through web before)
• Auto-refresh for conversations
• Local event notifications
• User interface modifications

I haven't had any problems logging in with the new version but more than a few members have complained about not being able to use the app due to time out issues or notifications that the service is down for scheduled maintenance. A reviewer also mention that the Apps MeetMe feature could use additional search filters so you can have tighter control on which members are displayed.

Check out the Google Play Store on your Android phone and search for POF to download the app. To find out more about this popular free dating site you can read our POF.com review.