General News

Remember that class action lawsuit brought against Match.com? It's back. But before I get into the details, here's a little refresher course, for those whose memories could use a jog:

• Dissatisfied Match members sued the company in December 2010 for failing to meet its obligations to its users.
• The members felt that Match had misled them into believing that the site had millions of subscribers, when in fact more than half of the profiles were fake, scammers, or inactive.
• A class action lawsuit was filed in U.S. District court in Dallas, Texas, claiming that Match.com is guilty of breach of contract.
• A second part of the lawsuit says that Match uses "deceptive trade practices" as described under Texas law.
• The complaint alleges that Match encourages members to renew their subscriptions by sending them messages expressing interest from inactive or fake profiles.
• Full accusations include breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and negligent misrepresentation.
• The plaintiffs sought unspecified damages and repayment of subscription fees

Match.com is not the first dating site to face such a fate. Yahoo found themselves battling a similar lawsuit in 2007, accused of allowing users who had no interest in dating to maintain profiles. Yahoo agreed to pay $4 million to settle the suit. Match has also been the subject of previous lawsuits, one in 2005 when the company was sued in California over allegations that it hires employees to create fake profiles and another in 2009. Both cases were dropped.

The latest update on the Match.com lawsuit came earlier this month, when a federal judge dismissed a major part of the suit. U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay ruled that Match is not in violation of its user agreements, and that the agreements do not require Match to remove profiles that are dormant or inaccurate. Judge Lindsay wrote that the Match.com agreement "in no way requires Match.com to police, vet, update the website content," or verify the accuracy of user profiles.

Regarding the other part of the lawsuit, alleging that Match is guilty of deceptive trade practices, Judge Lindsay has given the plaintiffs until August 27 to prove that this part of the lawsuit should not be dismissed as well.

A spokesman for Match.com announced that the company is pleased with the ruling, adding that Match has always considered the allegations "unfounded." Jeffrey Norton, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, says his team is currently reviewing the decision and considering the options for proceeding.

Looks like these Match members are finding no love online or at the courthouse.

Everyone's either tried it or seen it on TV:

The date's not going the way you'd planned, so you quickly send a sneaky text to a friend begging them to rescue you. A few minutes later they ring your phone, you pretend it's an emergency that requires immediate attention, and you dash off before your disappointing date can register any objections.

It's a good plan, but what if you can't reach a friend in time to rescue you from certain dating disaster? Thanks to eHarmony, there's now an app for that. With the free iPhone app, aptly named "Bad Date Rescue," you can arrange for downhill dates to be interrupted by phone calls from fictional characters. You can even program the app to make it appear as though any of the contacts in your phone, accompanied by their photo, is calling you.

Bad Date Rescue will call at a pre-scheduled time or via an emergency prompt from you, then, using a pre-recorded message, pretends to be your mom, your boss, or a neighbor who needs your assistance asap. Your mother, who has a thick Dakota accent, needs a little help figuring out one of her more complicated technological gadgets. Your boss needs a hand in the office right away. Your British neighbor is calling to inform you that something catastrophic has happened to the plumbing in your house, and "it's running down my walls!"

If interacting with the pre-recorded message sounds like a stretch of your acting skills, eHarmony offers an alternative "Repeat after me" option. In case it wasn't clear by the name, the app tells you what to say and how to say it (e.g. "frantically"), then praises your expert delivery of the line (I guess that after school improv class back in high school really paid off!).

And just when you think the Bad Date Rescue app has become a kind, generous, and helpful new friend, the recording scolds you for making poor dating choices, lecturing you about how - if you'd used eHarmony in the first place - "you wouldn't be in this mess." Who do you think you are, Bad Dating App? You don't get to tell me what to do.

"eHarmony developed the Bad Date Rescue App as a fun and engaging way to help people get out of a bad date and into a good date," spokeswoman Whitney Standring-Trueblood said.

"Fun" it certainly is. Just be sure you don't crack up mid-call and totally blow your cover.

For more information on the dating site which brought you this app you can read our review of eHarmony.

We just updated our Chemistry.com dating site review and it is now available online. It has been almost 2 and half years (very bad on our part) since the last major update to the review. We usually try to do a major update to the reviews at least once a year and then do minor updates as we come across any new information about the dating site (i.e. price changes, new features, etc.).

So what has Chemistry updated with their service since the last time we did a review? Here is a quick list of the major changes:

• The look and feel of the site has been updated with a more modern look
• The new Stream feature has been added that allows you to see what your matches are up to
• The personality test questions has been modified
• Membership costs have decreased across all subscription levels

To find out more about this matchmaking site and the changes please read our updated Chemistry.com review now.

If you’re into outdoor activities and a more organic experience when it comes to meeting potential love interests, there’s a new concept that took place at a farm recently in Boise, Idaho called “weed dating.” Before you chuckle and roll your eyes, it’s not what you think. This is a speed dating event that involves doing work on a real farm – not a recreational activity. In fact, the hostess of the event herself claims she’s not an event planner or a matchmaker, but just a farmer.

Weed dating is a form of speed dating, except that instead of taking place in a bar or restaurant at night, it takes place on a farm under a sunny sky in the middle of the day. And instead of sitting across from each of your dates trying to come up with things to talk about, you are doing farm work beside each other – specifically, pulling nasty weeds out of the ground so that vegetable and fruit plants can grow properly. The hostess provides instruction to everyone – from how the rotation of couples works (the women stay put while the men rotate every three minutes) to how to discern the weeds from say, a zucchini or tomato plant.

While this is a pretty strange concept, it does provide a way for like-minded people to meet. Most of the participants have been outdoor enthusiasts, environmentalists, gardeners, and activists. While there are niche online dating sites that cater to these groups specifically, some prefer to meet in a more organic way that through an online dating site, so this provides another option.

As one participant stated in an interview with Associated Press, “What I find is if you go to bars, you don't really know what people's interests are. You can't really walk into a bar and complain about climate change or peak oil without having people look at you weird. That would probably scare off a lot of people.”

This wasn’t the first weed dating event – they’ve also taken place in Vermont, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio. More than 40 participants showed up at the event this year in Boise, compared with only 20 last year.

I don’t expect this to become mainstream like online dating or even regular speed dating, because it’s really geared to certain types of individuals (and ones who live relatively close to farms), but I’m always intrigued by the new ways people develop opportunities to meet others. And if you’re open to trying something new, why not? It gets you outside, allows you to feel like you’ve accomplished or learned something, and there’s always a chance that someone interesting might show up.

To find out more about a popular online speed dating service you can read our SpeedDate review.

Everyone knows that online dating is popular, but just how popular is it? The Wall Street Journal decided to investigate the phenomenon, to figure out exactly how web-based American love lives have become.

"One result of the increasing importance of the Internet in meeting partners," says an article published on the 'How Couples Meet and Stay Together' survey, "is that adults with Internet access at home are substantially more likely to have partners, even after controlling for other factors."

In 2009 and 2010, a research team asked a group of over 4,000 participants (including couples who'd met as long ago as 1940!) how they met their partners. They found that almost all traditional ways of meeting people - like school, church, and mutual acquaintances - are in decline:

• The number of heterosexual couples who met through friends dropped from nearly 40% in the mid-1980s to less than 30% in 2010.
• From 1960-1990, neighborhood and church meetings accounted for 10% and 7% of romantic partnerships, but both numbers dropped after 2000.

At the same time as those figures were declining, the proportion of couples who'd met online was on the rise. From the mid-1990s to 2010, the number rose from 0 to just over 20%. Bars and restaurants, always popular choices for romantic meetings, maintained steady popularity, becoming even more influential after 2000.

The online dating revolution has been an even greater boon for same-sex daters. The numbers of homosexual daters who met online rose to more than 60% by 2010. Other dating markets who have fewer chances of meeting potential partners in real life, like older singles, have also found online dating to be hugely beneficial.

But the facts and figures may not be as simple as they seem. "Answers to the 'where did you meet?' question could be multiple," notes the WSJ article. "It could be that online daters were taking note of their real-world encounter."

With the exception of couples who met before the Internet era, people without an Internet connection were significantly less likely to be in a relationship than those with access to the Web: 36% vs. 72%. The authors are quick to point out, though, that the numbers cannot be taken at face value. Survey participants who did not have Internet access at the outset of the survey received Internet access, meaning that those who "lacked" it actually only lacked it when the survey began.

The authors also caution that there is no way to be certain that technology is the causal factor in their findings. There is no evidence that online dating has affected the proportion of people finding partners over time - displacement of old methods of partnering up seems to be what the researchers observed.

It looks like True Beginnings (aka True.com) is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. They filed in Texas Federal court last week along with the owner Herb Vest. According to the filings True.com owes between $50 and $100 million to their creditors in amounts up to $10 million.

True.com claim to fame was their stance against married people and criminals joining their dating site. According to True they screen all members against a United States criminal database before they are allowed to communicate on the service. They also state on their homepage “TRUE reserves the right to report violators to appropriate law enforcement …”. Violators would be married people who report themselves as single and people who say they have no criminal record when in fact they do. Violators could be accused of fraud since they potentially violated the True.com Privacy and Use Policies.

For more on this story you can check out the Dallas Business Journal.