General News

PlentyOfFish has just updated their mobile dating applications for both the iPhone and Android OSs. The big improvement with this version is speed and lower bandwidth use. This is achieved by caching the profile and picture data retrieved from POF so it is only downloaded once or when updated.

Other improvements include easier editing of both photos and profiles. Pinching and zooming profile pictures has been added along with updates to editing your location and searching for local users. Users can also now just search for mobile users near them.

The POF App on the Android Market currently has a rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars with almost 6,000 votes. According to a number of reviews the only thing missing from the app is the ability to chat via text.

For more on this story please read the press release. To find out about this dating site and what other singles think you should check out our PlentyOfFish review.

Jazzed went live about this time last year. This week they officially launched (non beta status) as a social dating site where people can "share, meet and connect". Members must complete a profile when they first join. Profiles contain large photos and have unique questions designed to help members engage in communication. Interests of the members are displayed visually making it faster and easier to view profiles and find members who you feel are a match.

The site now has about half a million members and has seen its mobile app downloaded about one quarter of a million times this summer. This dating site is geared towards the younger generation with over half the members aged 18 to 34. It is free to join and browse profiles but to communicate you must pay a subscription.

For more on the story you can read the press release.

Over the last few years PlentyOfFish has tried several different ways to monetize their members. They first offered paid virtual gifts back in December of 2008. It didn't last long though and was pulled after about a month. In March of 2009 PlentyOfFish then offered the "Paid Profile Upgrade". This upgrade called the "Serious Member Badge" was designed to showcase that the member was serious about online dating by displaying icons on your images and highlighting your profile. Prices ranged from $5.95 to $9.80 a month. By mid-2010 the Serious Member Badge also offered a few additional features including having their profile appear above others in search results.

Early this month PlentyOfFish started to offer a new regular membership. As far as we can tell this membership has replaced the Serious Membership along with the “privilege of upgrading” assessment which was supposed to weed out all those who were not serious about maintaining a long-term relationship. The new membership offers:

• The new and improved Ultra Match matching system
• Improved visibility on PlentyOfFish including higher placement in search results
• Find out if your emails were read or just deleted
• The use of profile themes
• Who has viewed your profile
• Unlimited virtual gifts through email
• Additional credits for placing gifts on profiles

Membership costs have increased slightly and range from $6.78 a month for a year to $11.80 a month for a 3 month term. There is no auto rebilling but memberships are also non-refundable. With these new membership changes the only thing that differentiates PlentyOfFish with most other popular paid dating sites is that they still allow all members to email and message each other for free.

With the new membership comes a new statistic. If you upgrade to the new membership it will improve your chances by 530% according to PlentyOfFish (I assume this is when compared to a free membership on the site). With the Serious Membership upgrade your chance of a relationship only increased by 230% 😉 (See Story).

I also notice the other week that the domain Plentyoffish.com now forwards to POF.com, this use to be the other way around. The URLs in the emails I receive from PlentyOfFish for matches etc. also use the POF.com domain though the email is still sent from customercare@plentyoffish.com. The site is still obviously called PlentyOfFish so I am not sure why they changed the primary domain at this point to just the initials. Maybe it will be easier to remember for the average user, or maybe there will be a name change in the future? (I really doubt this will happen)

The last thing that has changed is that the forums link is now back at the top of the PlentyOfFish dating site. We notice that this link first disappeared sometime last summer (See Story). The upgrade link in the forums though still points to the old “SERIOUS UPGRADE” page and not the new membership upgrade page.

To find out more about this dating service you can read our POF review.

Match.com launched in 1995, and the site's popularity is still on the rise. In the highly competitive world of online dating, Match.com consistently ranks highly in dater's minds, and for good reason: their trailblazing technology makes them a cut above the rest.

Codenamed "Synapse," Match's algorithm evaluates a diverse range of factors in order to match compatible singles. David Gelles recently took a look backstage at Match.com for FT Magazine, guided by Mandy Ginsberg, president of Match.com US, and Amarnath Thombre, a key engineer for the company, to discover exactly what makes the Match algorithm so special.

Ginsberg had personal experience with the trials and tribulations of online dating before joining the Match team. After divorcing her spouse shortly after leaving college, she joined JDate but had no luck finding a partner. Love later found her in the form of a co-worker from India, who won her heart despite being vastly different from the man she thought she wanted to marry.

"If I had laid out a criteria for what I was looking for, it would not have been a guy from south India," she told Gelles. "People are complex. You're constantly making trade-offs about who's too tall, too short, too smart and too dumb. People come in and tell us a bit about what they're looking for. But what you say and what you do can be different."

With that idea in mind, known as "dissonance" in academic circles, Ginsberg helped revolutionize Match's approach to online dating. "I might come in and say I'm looking for a nice Catholic guy between 30 and 40 who is non-married," she says. "But after weeks of looking at people, I might get an e-mail from a guy who has kids, and I might accept that." Taking into consideration the fact that most people don't know themselves as well as they think they do, the engineers at Match adapted the algorithm to pair users with potential dates based on a combination of what they say they want and what it seems they actually want based on their actions on the site.

Now, instead of taking user's preferences at face value, Match's cutting-edge technology relies on a variety of factors to match prospective partners. Stated preferences like age range and body type are taken into consideration, while the algorithm augments that information with the knowledge it gains from an intelligent examination of a user's behavior on the site. If a member's actions don't match their stated preferences, Match learns that those preferences are not entirely correct and that the member is open to meeting people who don't fit the original description. Synapse also looks at the behavior of similar users and factors in that information as well, in a process known as "triangulation."

As impressive as Ginsberg's contribution to online dating is, Match's amazing innovations would not be possible without its team of brilliant engineers, like Amarnath Thombre, whose story we'll look at next time.

For more information on this popular dating site you can read our review of Match.com.

It has been about 3 months since eHarmony has had a free communication event. Well the wait is over! In the United States and Canada eHarmony will be having a free communication event from September 2nd to the end if day on September 5th. September 5 also happens to be Labor day in the US making it the last long weekend of summer (FYI Canada also celebrates Labour Day at the same time).

So what is a free communication event? As the name suggests all members of eHarmony will be able to communicate for free during the promotion. New and existing free members will be able to create a dating profile, receive matches, and use the guided communication process to communicate with those matches at no cost. The only thing not include is viewing of members profile pictures and Secure Call communication.

This will be eHarmony's 35th free communication event with the last one occurring last spring in May (see Story).

To find out more about this matchmaking service you can take a look at our review of eHarmony.

What does it take to write an equation for love?

According to Mashable and Match.com, it takes 16 years of data, a crack team of Ph.D.s to interpret it, and a handful of brilliant engineers to create the equation itself. Several years ago, when Match decided to overhaul the algorithm that guides its matchmaking process, they brought on current VP of strategy analytics Amarnath Thombre to revolutionize their system.

And revolutionize he did: the number of "yes" matches on the site has doubled since Thombre's changes took effect. Here's what you need to know about how the Match.com algorithm works:

1. The first thing the algorithm evaluates is what you say about yourself. This information - like height, weight, location, religious affiliation, and what you're looking for in a partner - is all gathered from your profile. Match's suggestions, at their most basic level, are made by pairing people whose self-descriptions match.
2. After examining how you describe yourself and what you're looking for, Match's algorithm compares that data to the information it receives from studying your actions on the site. Knowing that there is often a huge discrepancy between what we say are interested in and who we actually make an effort to pursue, the Match team developed a highly-intelligent algorithm that is capable of aggregating and interpreting all the information it receives about a member, whether it is explicitly stated or not. If, for example, you say you are only interested in meeting members who belong to the same political party as you, but you frequently send messages to members belonging to the opposite party, Match will know that you are willing to date outside of your stated preferences and will suggest potential matches for you based on that knowledge.
3. The next component of the Match algorithm is an evaluation of what other members who are like you do. The algorithm takes a look at the actions of members whose behavior mirrors your own, like a tendency to communicate with the same people, and uses their experiences to learn more about preferences you likely have, but did not explicitly state.
4. Finally, the Match algorithm makes use of the 16 years of data that have been collected over the site's lifetime. Using the correlations that have been found in that data, like "a woman who smokes daily is less likely to email a man who doesn't smoke," the algorithm predicts who you will be interested in before you have even rated your first match.

Match's new approach to online matchmaking has so far been a success, and the algorithm will only get more detailed and accurate as time goes on. In Thombre's words: "Instead of trying to create the perfect algorithm, we try to create the perfect algorithm for you."

For more information on this popular dating service, please read our review of Match.com.