Dating Services

Almost 2 months ago Zoosk reported that their Facebook Fan page had over 1 million fans. I checked today and they currently have 1,612,923 Facebook Fans. Here is a YouTube video that Zoosk put together to mark the milestone.

That certainly is a large number of fans and the increase of 600 thousand fans in under 2 months is an achievement itself (that is roughly 10,000 Facebook Fans a day). This is by far the largest number of Fans any dating site has on Facebook. Two other popular online dating sites only have about 6,000 each.

For more information on this popular dating site, read our review of Zoosk.com.

Instead of a Free Communication Weekend (FCW), eHarmony has decided to have a 10 day long Free Communication Event! As far as I know this is the first time eHarmony has had a 10 day event. Most Free Communication promotions are less than half the length of time at 4 days. Free communication for this event starts this Friday July 23, 2010 and runs straight through to Sunday August 1, 2010. As with the Free Communication Weekends, members during this time period will be able to create a profile, take the eHarmony Questionnaire, receive matches and then communicate with them all at no cost and with no credit card required. Features available only to paid members during this promotion are viewing profile pictures, eHarmony Mail and Fasttracking the guided communication process.

If you are thinking about trying out eHarmony, this weekend would be a good time to start. The next 10 days will certainly be busy as old and new members take advantage of this event. For new members this is a great way to learn how to use eHarmony and it will give you a good idea on how eHarmony's matching system works. This will probably be one of the busiest weeks on eHarmony this summer thanks to it being prime vacation time, and this event.

This Free Communication Event/Weekend will be eHarmony's 27th. The last FCW was held on the Independence Day Holiday Weekend only 3 weeks ago (see Story).

For more information on this popular online matchmaking service, you can check out our review of eHarmony.

Chemistry.com is planning a Free Weekend starting Friday July 23rd, 2010 and ending Sunday, July 25th, 2010. During this weekend no Credit Card is required to use almost all the functions of this popular matchmaking dating site. This includes creating a profile, taking the personality test, receiving highly targeted matches and communicating with them as well.

Chemistry works because of the match system behind their fun and interactive personality test. You not only answer unique and thought provoking multiple choice questions, you will be asked to analysis situations and images. All this information is then used to determine your personality type, and is then compared and matched with other Chemistry members. On this dating site you will only be contacted by members who are determined to be a good match for you and not by people just searching through a long list of members. This makes Chemistry the ideal choice for singles who are only interested in a long-term relationship.

This Flirtathon is the 8th time Chemistry has offered a free weekend for members. The last Chemistry.com free weekend for communication happened at the end of April (see Story). To find out more information on this dating service which does the matching for you, read our Chemistry.com review.

Here are the Canadian eHarmony coupon codes for two of their more popular promotions. Both of these coupon codes expire on December 31, 2010.

eHarmony Coupon #1

eHarmony Coupon #2

These coupon codes listed above are valid on eHarmony in Canada (eHarmony.ca).

For US singles, go here for our eHarmony USA (eHarmony.com) coupons.

For UK singles, go here for our eHarmony United Kingdom (eHarmony.co.uk) vouchers.

Read our review of eHarmony for more information about this online matchmaking service.

We all want to portray ourselves in the best light possible when it comes to online dating. After all, the more attractive you seem online, the greater your chance of receiving responses and garnering more dates.

The problem is, many people fudge the truth in order to get more responses. So how do you know what information is real and what's not when you're looking at potential matches?

OkCupid recently did a study of its membership base to determine what online daters are most likely to lie about, along with the likely reasons why. Here's what they found:

• Online daters tend to lie about height. Generally, men are two inches shorter than the height they claim to be. The surprising statistic OkCupid also noted was that women tend to lie about their height just as frequently, although shorter women tend to get more attention. The study noted women under 5'4" get 60 more responses per week than their 6-foot counterparts.

• A second popular lie is about income. Generally, men and women both exaggerate their income levels by about 20%. However, men have more incentive to lie. Their response rates increase significantly when they claim to make more than $100K as opposed to a more modest salary. Also, after 23 years of age, if a man is making less than $40K, likely he won't be getting much response at all.

• The more attractive the picture, the more likely it is to be out-of-date. Typically, people seem to be posting recent pictures on OkCupid, the median date being about 92 days old. However, more than a third of the most attractive photos on the site are over a year old. Also, older singles tend to post older pictures. Men and women over 30 tend to post pictures that are a year old or more.

For more on this dating site, you can read our OKCupid review.

FriendFinder Networks Inc. made an offer on Thursday to buy Playboy Enterprises, Inc for $210 million. The founder of Playboy Magazine, Mr. Hefner, owns about 70 percent of Class A commons stock and 28 percent of Class B giving him complete voting control. The CEO of FriendFinder Networks, Marc Bell, stated that:

We look forward to Mr. Hefner and other key members of management being an integral part of the combined companies.

The problem with the offer is that last week Mr. Hefner made his own bid to take Playboy private at $185 million (or $5.50 a share). Playboy (PLA) is currently trading at around $5.65 on the New York Stock Exchange.

For more on the story read Stock Markets Review.