Dating Services

According to Ilana Angel, a popular blogger for the Jewish Journal website, earlier this month she had gone out to lunch with a few people who work at the online dating site JDate. JDate had wanted to see how her search for a Jewish match was going. Her previous two relationships with men had been the result of using JDate but this time when she joined, she found she wasn't having the same success. One thought Angel had was, that the men were scared away because she blogs about her dating experiences (even though she doesn't use real names). JDate decided on this lunch to share their recommendations on how Angel can use their site better to find a man she likes and who is not worried about dating a professional blogger.

She hasn't posted yet on how the lunch went with JDate. When she does we will make sure to let you know.

You can read Ilana Angel blog post here and you can find out more about the dating site she talks about by reading our review of JDate.com.

The "Are You Interested" Facebook application is owned by SNAP Interactive. This app recently became the largest dating application on Facebook with 13,262,420 monthly active users. Just a month ago they had only around 8,424,000 monthly active users. Snap Interactive also posted 3rd quarter revenues of $1.65 million which was an increase of over 100 percent when compared to the same period last year. With these rising revenue numbers it looks like Snap Interactive new found traffic is of high quality.

The second largest Facebook dating application is Zoosk with 7,514,381 monthly active users. While "Are you Interested" may have a larger Facebook presence, Zoosk still has a much larger overall membership base thanks to the popularity of their dating website. Zoosk Facebook users also get to interact with the members of the dating website, and vice versa.

For more on this story, check out All Facebook. To find out more about dating on Facebook, please take a look at our Facebook Dating reviews category.

The results of OkCupid's latest study are in, and the findings are bound to amuse some, offend others, and leave everyone else wondering why Canada is so intrigued by same-sex sex.

Blogger Christian Rudder explains the reasoning for collecting the latest research, in a study called "Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex," with this intro: "Gay issues have been in the news a lot lately, from the debate over same-sex marriage in Congress to a sickening rash of gay-bashing here in New York City. We see a lot of emotion out there, instead of information, and we wanted to provide some data-based context on sexuality so that people might make better choices about what they say, think, and do."

It's certainly a noble goal, but did they achieve it?

The initial conclusion the researchers draw is this: "First of all, gay sexuality is not a threat." Wording - which is bound to ruffle a few feathers - aside, the study makes a valid point: "The subtext to a lot of homophobic thinking is the idea that gays will try to get straight people into bed at the first opportunity, or that gays are looking to 'convert' straights." After reviewing more than 4 million match searches, the OkCupid research team found almost no evidence to back up the stereotype. Only 0.6% of gay men had ever searched for straight matches, only 0.1% of lesbians had ever searched for straight matches, and only 0.13% of straight people's profile visitors were gay. There were no gay users, male or female, who predominantly searched for straight members.

The researchers' next task was to debunk another virulent, but persistent, stereotype: that gay people are more promiscuous than straight people. "The statistical reality," Rudder writes, "is that gay people as a group aren't any more slutty than straights." The median reported sex partners for straight men, gay men, straight women, and gay women was exactly the same: just 6 people. A little under half of gay people (45%) and straight people (44%) had had 5 or fewer partners, while 98% of gay people and 99% of straight people had had 20 or fewer partners. The myth of gay promiscuity turned out to be just that - a particularly stubborn myth that was not supported by the research. In fact, the OkCupid team found that "just 2% of gay people have had 23% of the total reported gay sex," a finding that Rudder eloquently describes as "pretty crazy."

The study's next conclusion is certain to come as a surprise to many: "Straight people have gay sex, too." Almost a quarter of the 252,900 straight people asked "Have you ever had a sexual encounter with someone of the same sex?" answered "Yes." Rudder breaks the responses down into a pie chart: 66% responded "No, and I would never," 11% responded "No, but I would like to," 6% responded "Yes, and I didn't enjoy myself," and 17% responded "Yes, and I enjoyed myself."

Rudder further breaks the results down into charts for men and for women. Predictably, women expressed more interest in exploring their same-sex desires than men did. 1 in 3 straight women reported intimacy with another woman, and of those who hadn't hooked up with women, more than 1 in 4 stated that they would like to. As for the men, 13% responded that they had had a same-sex experience, and an additional 5% said that they hadn't yet, but would like to.

Stay tuned for Part II, in which Rudder takes on politicians, teaches an important astronomy lesson, and examines Canada's homosexual curiosity.

AshleyMadison.com has now opened their affair website to married men and women in the United Kingdom. For those of you who haven't heard of this site before it is described as a traditional dating site but for people who are already married. For UK members it costs £49 for 100 credits. With these credits members can email someone for 5 credits, chat in real-time for another 30 credits and send a virtual gift from 20 to 50 credits.

Apparently there are plans to spend upwards of £10million in advertising if Ashley Madison can get their ads approved by the Advertising Standards Authority. With this type of marketing budget Ashley Madison expects to have 1 million UK members in 3 months.

For more on this story read TNT Magazine.

A recent post from Markus, the owner of PlentyofFish.com, over on his blog commented on Mark Brooks view that free dating sites are going to kill off paid dating sites. It looks like Markus doesn't see that happening (which I agree) since he mentions the fact that the rankings for dating sites over the last few years have remained relatively stable.

What he did say is Facebook has been taking traffic from all dating sites. According to Markus, his Google Analytics account shows that page views per user (a free dating sites bread and butter since they make money on displaying ads) have declined 30 percent in the last 2 years. He also reported that PlentyOfFish.com's traffic increased by 15 percent on September 23 when Facebook went offline for 4 hours.

I was actually surprised to see Markus refute Mark Brooks in public like that since he was a client of Marks dating consulting business for a while a year or two ago. It looks like their working relationship may not have ended on a high note.

For more information on the online dating site mentioned in this article, read our review of PlentyofFish.com.

The online dating site Chemistry is having a free communication weekend starting this Friday October 8, 2010 and ending Sunday October 10, 2010 at midnight. During this 72 hour period all visitors will be able to create a profile and take the personality test to become a Chemistry.com member. Once completed, you then will receive personalized matches. From here you can communicate with these matches at no cost, by expressing interest and sending emails.

This is Chemistry.com's 10th time they have run a free communication weekend. The last one was held in late August (see Story). For more details on this popular matchmaking service please check out our review of Chemistry.com.