Dating Services

The Editor's Top Pick - Canadian Award goes to the dating site, Lavalife. While Lavalife is not strictly a dating site for Canadians (it is popular in the United States as well), its heart is in Canada where it first started back in 1987 as a telephone dating service in Toronto. All of Canada's big cities like Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal are well represented in Lavalife with plenty of members to browse through in each of Lavalife's 3 dating communities. The dating communities are Dating, Relationship and Intimate, and make Lavalife unique among dating sites since, all of the communities are offered as one service and for one cost. When joining Lavalife members can specify to be included in one or more of the dating communities.

The other plus Lavalife members enjoy over other dating sites is, free members can reply to any paid members email or instant messenger request. This means when you become a paid member of Lavalife you can contact anyone, not just other paid members (like how most dating sites operate). A new feature this year is Lavalife's Speed Dates. As the name suggests this feature allows Lavalife members to go speed dating in the virtual world where you can meet up to 10 local singles in 30 minutes.

If you are a Canadian single and are considering trying an online dating site, then are winner of the 2009 Top Pick - Canadian award, Lavalife, would be the best place to start.

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

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: Canadian Personals.

Back in October Match.com UK selected, the ad agency, Mother, to run their new marketing campaign (see Story). This month Mother unveiled their first commercial for Match.com.

The new ad uses the Jack and Jill icons in a fun felt animation with a female narrator telling the viewers why they should use Match.com. At the end of the ad the new tag line is shown, "Start your love story at Match.com". I thought this is an excellent slogan, much better than Match.com's North American one of "Its Okay to Look". The ad also informed the viewer that a member of Match.com finds there match once every 10 minutes on the dating site.

For further details on the story, read Marketing Magazine and to find out more about this dating site, read our review of Match.com UK.

After careful review, we have determined that Match.com is the winner of the Editor's Top Pick - Over All Award. This is the third year in a row for Match.com to win this Award.

A large part of the criteria for this Award is how popular the dating site is. Singles like using Match.com, and this is reflected in the dating sites membership numbers. In 2009, the United States and the world faced a recession that was the worse financially since the great depression, and yet Match.com was still able to grow their membership base by almost 5 percent. Match.com also continued to grow their brand awareness in 2009 by partnering with other websites like eBay, MSN and The Naked Chef's.

Mobile Dating got a big boost this year, thanks to Match.com. This dating site released online dating applications for 3 different types of cell phones. This includes the Palm Pixi, the Palm Pre and the iPhone. With these devices and your cell's internet connection a user can search for members, check out profiles and send messages. The great thing about these Apps is that they are usable. The user interface is clean and well designed and the App contains most features found on their website (plus, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to send someone a message). You don't even really need to use the website anymore, if you are comfortable with your phone. Match.com also added a feature to the Apps not found on their website, location based dating that uses the phone's built in GPS. With this feature enabled, members now can find other members who are currently near their location.

Since Match.com launch in 1995 they have continued to grow and lead the dating industry. With their well designed and easy to use dating service, they continue to be the number one pick for people looking to find love online.

Read our review of Match.com for more information about this online dating service or visit Match.com directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: eHarmony.

eHarmony Australia is having a Free Communication Weekend starting this Thursday, December 31st, 2009 to Sunday, January 3rd, 2010. For some reason it is a day shorter than the North American event (see Story) but it still offers the same great value. All eHarmony members can review their matches and communicate with them for free during this 4 day event. No credit card is required.

The last eHarmony Australia free communication weekend was held at the beginning of October (see Story). By our count this is eHarmony Australia's 3rd event.

To find out why Australian singles have made this a popular online dating destination, read our eHarmony review.

Skout, a mobile phone dating service, recently did a survey of 1000 of its users. The survey participants had an even number of men and women in their 20s. Here are some of the results of the survey:

• 51% have met another single in the real world that they first contacted on their phone.
• 69% of all surveyed are comfortable in meeting up with someone they met online.
• 40% use the Skout service while out at restaurants, bars and clubs.
• 35% have used Skout at work.
• During the holidays 29% would prioritize spending time with their family while 71% would prefer going out on at least one date or hook-up.

It also looks like 20 percent of those surveyed on Skout have a significant other, with half knowing about their partners activities on these social dating sites. I don't know if this is a good statistic to advertise since it means one fifth of all Skout members are cheaters.

For more on the story, read The Washington Post. You can also find other dating sites which offer a mobile phone service here.

Ever since Zoosk received the additional $30 million in funding (see Story) they have received a lot of publicity. Even the famed Reuters Media division took notice and wrote this article. It gives a good overview and history of the company in which we have discussed before here on this site.

The article does mentioned a couple of new pieces of information about Zoosk member demographics. According to Reuters sources, about 65 percent of Zoosk's 40 million user base is under the age of 30. 24 percent of Zooskers are in their 30's and only 11 percent are over 40. This shows how popular social networking sites are for young adults. The Zoosk dating application can be found on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, and Friendster. The more traditional dating sites, like Match.com and eHarmony, usually attract older singles who are looking for long term relationships, and not necessarily the quick hook-up that Zoosk provides.

If you would like to find out more about this Facebook Dating Application, you can read our Zoosk review.