Dating Services

Our new review for the free dating site Mingle2 is up now.

When I was creating a membership on the site for the purpose of doing a review, at the end of the process Mingle 2 asked an interesting question. They asked me if I wanted to automatically register for free on FriendFinder without filling out additional information. All I had to do was just click YES and FriendFinder would email me the log in information.

I thought this was an interesting way for a mostly free dating site to make some extra money (because the 2 sites shared profile information), but I was a little surprised. I had not even reached the dating service homepage yet and I was already prompted about another matchmaking service. This cannot really instill confidence in Mingle2 for new members. I wonder how many people actually click yes.

To find out more about this dating site, check out our new Mingle2 review.

"My Match" is a suite of tools in which Match.com recently launched to help complement their existing search capabilities. This personalized matching channel is accessible from the tool menu at the top of most Match.com pages (may be called "Matches").

Here is the list of Matching Tools:

• Daily 5 - Daily introductions to people based on how likely you are to strike up a conversation together.
• Mutual Match - Daily introductions to a handful of people based on your stated preferences and their stated preferences.
• Singled Out - Introductions we only make when we believe there is an especially high likelihood that you will hit it off with the person.
• Like At First Sight - Introductions to people who we think you'll find immediately appealing based on your responses to a fun online quiz regarding first impressions.

We have seen the other features before this but, "Like At First Sight" is new and currently in Beta. "Like at First Sight" matches are based on a quiz you take. The quiz consists of 15 questions where you have to pick the best choice from 15 different answers (most questions). The difference here is all questions are answered by picking from images. For example the first question asks "Of these celebrities, I think she is most attractive:", from here you are presented with 15 different pictures of actors or actresses (depending on the gender you are interested in). The only questions which followed a different format was the one where you had to pick the voice which was most attractive to you. Other questions from the quiz include:

• The SHAPE of this face most resembles my dream woman:
• I find this hairstyle most attractive.
• Which of these figures always turns your head?

The" Like At First Sight" quiz definitely is designed to figure out what your ideal man or woman looks like. Once you complete the quiz you are then presented with a number of matches. I am curious to know how Match.com figures out some of the matches since questions about hair styles and the shape of your face are not included in ones profile. I wonder if Match.com has software to analyze profile pictures to produce these answers.

For more on the story, read the press release and to get further details on this dating service, read our review of Match.com.

 

Our Australian visitors have become a important part of our community, so this year we decided to offer the Editor's Top Pick - Australian Award. The recipient of this Award is the most visited dating site in Australia, RSVP. In business for 13 years and with over 1.5 million carefully screened profiles this is an Australian singles best choice for an online dating service.

As with most countries, Australia has plenty of dating sites which can make it confusing for first time online daters, which one do you join? Well, we found RSVP has several reasons why, which made it our pick for Editor's Choice.

• They have over 1000 new Aussie singles joining the site every day. RSVP is very popular in cities like Sydney, Perth and Melbourne (just to name a few).
• Profiles need to be mostly completed before a member can communicate or be viewable by other members.
• New members can reply to subscribed members messages. This means members who buy stamps can communicate with all users on the dating site.
• Easy to filter profiles of members who have not logged in recently. When searching you can specify to filter out members who have not been active within a certain time period.
• One of the few dating sites to offer single events and parties in all States of Australia.

RSVP is dating site for all types of single people. It doesn't matter if you are gay or straight, young or old, or if you are looking for a casual relationship or something long-term, there will be someone on RSVP that meets your match criteria. RSVP makes it easy to find these people by offering excellent search tools and once you have found them, you can use email or instant messaging to get to know them better. If you are looking for love in Australia, then RSVP is the dating site to try out first.

Read our review of RSVP for more information about this dating service or visit RSVP directly.

There was no Runner Up this year for the award.

Good job Mate1 and a great idea for other companies.

Mate1 plans to match their employee donations to Haiti, dollar for dollar. All employees have to do is make a donation to any reputable charity like the Red Cross and then send a copy of their receipt to the accounting department.

If every company did this, or offered to at least match a percentage of their employee donations it would go a long way to help the suffering.

For further details on this dating site, read our review of Mate1.

eHarmony has a few updates planned for the profile page which members should be able to see any day now.

The first change is photo thumbnails will be twice the size on profiles. This allows you to view matches in more detail without entering the actual photo album. The slideshow in the photo album also received an update giving users a more cinematic experience.

Members now can also easily see how their profile looks to others on eHarmony. Just visit the "About Me" tab and click on "View your profile as others see it".

The profile layout also has been approved. Overall width size has been increased by about a third. Profile questions have been moved around with the "What are you most passionate about?" and “What is the most important thing you are looking for in a person?” answers appearing at the top, right next to the profile's main thumbnail image. Color changes are also apparent with a dark gradient blue of eHarmony's homepage replacing the light blue color in the older profile.

The last thing to see a change is the communication stages. The communication process has been simplified slightly (not sure quite how yet) and the actual communication flow has been clarified more with improved messaging between each stage. FastTrack also has been renamed to "eHarmony Mail" to help describe the process better.

For more on the story read the eHarmony Blog and to find out further information about this dating site, check out our [staticpage: eHarmony.com review].

According to IBISWorld the online dating industry in Australia experienced a 5 percent growth in 2009. This year they predict that growth may reach 10 percent with earnings of almost $100 million AUD from advertising and subscriptions.

So how many people use dating sites in Australia? RSVP, the leading Australian dating site, surveyed more than 3000 people. They found that 50 percent had used online dating before with 10 percent of those surveyed (300 people) finding a partner on the internet. The number of active online dating accounts in Australia is also expected to increase from 1.5 million to almost 2 million by 2020.

For more on the story, read The Times of India. To find out more about Australia's leading dating site, read our RSVP review.