General News

Chemistry is having another popular free communication weekend soon. Starting this Friday March 25 you will be able to communicate for free on Chemistry.com for 3 days. This means every single member will be able to communicate for no cost and with no credit card required during this time period.

To start, all you have to do is signup as a free member and take the personality test. Once the test is complete you will then start to receive matches based on the results of your test. These matches you receive from Chemistry are generated from a matchmaking system designed by famed Biological Anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher. From your matches you can then choose which ones you would like to start up a conversation with. With communication being free from March 25 to March 27 you can expect the dating site to be extra busy during this time. This means you will have a greater chance of finding the one!

The last free communication weekend was just before Valentine’s Day (see Story). For more details about this dating service for singles who wish to find a long-term relationship, you can check out our Chemistry.com review.

It looks like FilipinoCupid.com has become pretty popular in the US and UK. According to information supplied by the parent company Cupid Media, the dating site has had over 2 million members since launch. This Philippines niche dating service also has over 2000 members joining everyday worldwide.

According to the traffic analysis website Alexa, FilipinoCupid.com is the 13,633 most visited site on the internet which is pretty good considering Alexa keeps track of millions of websites.

For more information on this story you can read the press release. For information on a similar Cupid Media dating site you can read our Asian Dating review.

I notice Dave over at the Online Dating Insider had a few scoops on the free dating site OkCupid which was just recently bought by Match.com.

First up is that there has been an update to the A-List Features. If you are an A-List member at OkCupid (costs $9.95 per month) you will now also be able to browse other profiles anonymously (i.e. members will not find out if you viewed their profile), hide your A-List status and change your username (only lasts as long as you are a A-List member).

The second bit of news is that OkCupid has removed their personality badges. A source at OkCupid told Dave that they were confusing members and that they did not improve the ascetics of the page.

To find out more about this online dating site, please read our OkCupid.com review.

Spark Networks dating site Single Seniors Meet (SingleSeniorsMeet.com), was renamed earlier this month to SilverSingles.com. This is the second name change that we know of for this seniors dating site. The last name change happened in November of 2009 when it went from PrimeSingles.net to Single Seniors Meet.

We have now updated the old review with this new information. To find out more about this dating site, you can check out our SilverSingles.com review.

I see you now can sign into Match.com by using your Facebook account. This works for new or existing Match.com members. Existing Match.com members can link their account in 2 ways. While logged into Match.com they can visit the Account page and follow the instructions to link accounts, or if they are not currently logged in they can click on the "Sign in with Facebook" button on the Match.com sign in page and then link their existing Match.com account.

For more information on this dating site, you can check out our review of Match.

Online dating isn’t the only game in town anymore. Now that we have Facebook to help us meet people in our social media networks and mobile dating apps to hook us up with someone in a five-mile radius, why limit our options? Enter the latest dating innovation for those of us addicted to checking our Twitter streams: Luv@FirstTweet.

This Twitter-based dating service was just launched last month, and prides itself on its efficiency. Instead of creating an online dating profile that you don’t revise for weeks or months at a time, or scanning candidates on some dating site for hours, you could answer a few simple questions about yourself in 140 characters or less. Then let the Tweeple come.

When you follow Luv@FirstTweet, they will send you a variety of questions that you can choose to answer anywhere, anytime. Questions like: "What is your favorite thing about the city where you live?" or even "Is there anything you feel you must accomplish before you die?" When you reply, you are matched with other Tweeps who answered similarly. Sounds easy enough.

While it seems we are branching out in the ways we meet people, I’m still uncertain about these quick ways of connecting. If you’re like me, you still want to see pictures, a profile, a Google search’s worth of information before handing over your phone number. It seems that if we don’t put a little work into the process, how can we expect any work to be put into starting a relationship? Wouldn’t it just be another hook-up?

We’ve yet to see how effective these new methods of connecting with Twitter, Facebook, or mobile dating apps are in leading to long-term relationships. If you do try them, keep your expectations in check and do it to have fun and expand your network. My advice is: use the same precautions you would in online dating. In other words, take your time, do your research, and always let a friend know who you’re with and where you are.

To find out how to use Twitter for dating you can also check out our review of Twitter.com.