Dating Services

In a bit of a surprised move eHarmony Canada is having a 10 Day Free Communication Event. The event starts today, Friday May 21st and runs through Labour Day Weekend, all of next week and ends Sunday, May 30th, 2010. As with previous free communication promotions, members can review their matches and use the Guided Communication Process to communicate with members. There is no cost associated with this promotion and you will not be asked for a credit card. Fasttracking, Photos and eHarmony Mail are not included for members participating in this promotion.

The longest Free Communication promotion before by eHarmony was 5 days. With 10 free days new members will certainly be able to figure out if the dating site eHarmony is to their liking and in the meantime still be able to meet a lot of compatible singles. Plus, with the May 24 long weekend holiday and the spring season, eHarmony Canada will certainly be a popular place for online daters.

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

OkCupid's blog post about picture myths was very popular. To capitalize on this OkCupid has released an experimental widget that will generate a report for you based on votes from members of OkCupid. All you need to do is upload a couple of photos. Once completed you will then need to help out and analyze other people's photo submissions (or how else will someone analyze yours? Pay it Forward!). After a little while a detailed report will be made available showing which photo was considered the best for a dating site.

In your report you get to see how many people voted and a list of 16 personality types of how people voted in a bar graph for each photo. This allows you to find out, for example, if Artists, Christians, Divas or Jocks either loved your photo or preferred a different one you uploaded. It also lists in the bar graph the age range and gender of the people who voted to give you a better idea if your pictures appealed to a younger or older audience.

MyBestFace looks to be sort of a smarter version of a picture rating website like Hot or Not .

To try My Best Face, visit this page and to find out about this dating site, check out our review of OkCupid.

It looks like the domain name Dating.com was sold yesterday at auction on DomainFest for $1.75 million US. The domain was sold by Oversee.net to an unknown buyer. Currently the Dating.com domain hosts a World Dating Partners while label dating site. I wonder what the new owner plans on doing with the domain? I am going to assume they have plans to launch a dating service since that type of website potentially could generate the most profits. With the money the buyers spent on the domain it looks like the new owner plans to invest a fair bit of money in the new service. It should be interesting to see what they come up with.

For more on the story read TechCrunch.

The popular Christian dating site, ChristianCafe.com, released an iPhone dating app (which also works on the iPad) this week. With this App, members can search and view profile information and photos of other singles. They can also send and receive messages and winks as well. Non-members who have never visited the website before can download the app and use it to create a basic profile and sign up for the 10 day free trial. To download the ChristianCafe.com app for your iphone visit iTunes.

Here is a short video of the ChristianCafe iPhone Application in action:

Members on the go who have a Google Android phone are in luck too. ChristianCafe expects to release an app soon for Android.

To find out more about this dating site, read our review of ChristianCafe.com.

The custom of arranged marriage is very popular in India but in countries like the United States and Canada it is not popular. In North America when a match could not be found locally, families from India and other Asian countries sometimes resorted to using newspaper classified sections to find a potential suitor for one of their children. This practice has now changed thanks to online dating. Dating sites like Shaadi.com have matched more than a million South Asian couples and now parents are logging on to find potential matches for their children. Many parents find "religion, mother tongue, residency status, education, caste or class, astrological sign and diet" important attributes in a mate for their child. Shaadi.com does keep track of this information within member profiles which makes it easy for parents to find matches. Roughly 20 percent of profiles on Shaadi were created by parents looking for a partner for one or more of their children. The average age of a profile is in the range of 26 to 35.

In Canada Shaadi.com has become so popular that they have opened up their first North American center in Mississauga Ontario in March of this year (close to Toronto). The greater Toronto area is home to more than 700,000 South Asian Canadians making it ideal for a matchmaking center. Shaadi also has started to promote their new center not only online, but off as well through billboards and other physical media to better reach their target audience.

To find out more details about this dating site, check out our review of Shaadi.com.

While the iPhone changed the way we consume content, the iPad is about to change the way we date. According to a TIME Magazine article released this month, Skout.com will soon be releasing the first online dating app designed specifically for the iPad.

Some of the biggest benefits that developers see with the new iPad are the iPhone interactivity combined with the larger screen size. The larger screen size is what's prompted Skout.com developers to design a location-based app that will allow users to search the area around them for fellow Skout users while chatting and browsing profiles.

Skout isn't the only site stepping up to the iPad. Gelato, a new online dating site launched in 2009, is redesigning its entire site based on the iPad. Gelato includes live streams of members' social media accounts in their profiles if members choose to add them and CEO and founder Steve Odom sums the iPad up with, "It's big, it's beautiful, and it's perfect for dating sites."

As online dating sites are highly interactive, it's no wonder that we're already hearing the stampede as they rush to tailor apps and websites exclusively for the iPad. The large touch screen allows a high level of hands-on during the profile building and viewing process and the article predicts we may even see eye-tracking software that accompanies these apps in the future. Does that mean the potential for love at first sight with the iPad? While an eye-catching device, it definitely appears the cliché may become a reality down the line.

Bottom line? It's about interactivity. If online dating site developers can access the tech-savvy iPad crowd then the sky's the limit. Online dating lives in a bit of a crunch due to the iPhone's size, but the iPad puts big, bold pictures in front of the user and the touch screen adds to a more personalized experience.

Want to read more about what's on the horizon with the iPad and online dating? You can read the original TIME Magazine article here.