Dating Services

Television and film actress Ashley Madison Myrick (no she is not a Porn Star, that was a mistake by Fox) most famous role was becoming James Woods' boyfriend for a while. Recently she has filed a lawsuit against online dating site Ashley Madison for the “humiliation’ she has endured over having the same name as the site which promotes having an affair. Apparently she wants the site to change its name and to take her picture off of a related site, AshleyMadisonbio.com.

According to a $1 million counter-suit filed by AshleyMadison.com against the actress, the website has had the name “Ashley Madison” trademarked since 2002. The actress Ashley Madison Myrick only started going by the name Ashley Madison 3 years later in 2005. AshleyMadison.com also claims that they do not own the website AshleyMadisonbio.com and have no control over it (whoever does own it, has taken it down anyways).

The infidelity dating site is suing Ashley Madison for using their trademark to “inappropriately garner goodwill” to support her acting career.

More on this story can be found at Fox News.

I received a bit of surprise this morning when I read the following email from a reader:

Hello....

I was wanting to join AmericanSingles.com but cannot get to the site no matter how I try......

through your website or any other way. I keep getting sent to the Spark.com dating site.

It is like they have high jacked their website address. Can you tell me what is going on?

Thank You

First of all, don't worry the AmericanSingles.com domain did not get high jacked. It looks like a number of the Spark Network dating sites, including AmericanSingles.com and Date.ca, got rebranded and combined into a new dating site called Spark.com.

Zoosk let us know a few holiday trends that they experience on their Facebook Dating Application last year. The busiest week for online dating activity was the week before Christmas. The second was the first week of January. Christmas Eve was the busiest day of the year for Zoosk. Throughout the year, on average Mondays are the most popular day to visit a dating site.

In a recent online survey conducted by Zoosk, 63 percent of Zoosk members are looking for long-term relationship. 33 percent of respondents are just looking for a holiday party date and 4 percent will not date this holiday as they find it too stressful. 19 percent of men from this survey also stated that they would invite a women on a first date to their office holiday party, while with women, only 10 percent said they would do this. In total, 39 percent of singles would prefer at least 3 dates before considering taking someone to their office party.

For more on this subject, read the Zoosk press release. To find out more about Facebook dating, check out our review of Zoosk.

Logging into Facebook last week, I was greeted with a Facebook Privacy Announcement:

We're making some changes to give you more control of your information and help you stay connected. We've simplified the Privacy page and added the ability to set privacy on everything you share, from status updates to photos. At the same time, we're helping everyone find and connect with each other by keeping some information—like your name and profile picture—publicly available.

I knew this update was coming and am excited about it since it gives you more control over who can and cannot see your Facebook information. This includes the following fields in your profile; About Me, Family, Photos, Email Addresses Religious and Political Views.

Combining these new privacy controls with Friend Lists allows you to specify who can see most of your information. I have already setup my account with the following Friend lists; Co-Workers, Friends, Buddies and Family. This way when I add photos, post on my wall, etc... only the people I want to share the information with, get to see it. I think the photo album privacy settings are especially important. A picture tells a thousand words and I have to wonder why some people post those drinking and partying pictures for all to see. These always makes a great first impression with a potential employer, NOT.

This change is also important for dating on Facebook. Most singles I know like to keep their day to day dating information pretty private. They probably only want to share this information and comments with a few close friends. With this new update they now can.

The real problem now is, Facebook just has to make the Friend lists and Privacy controls easier to use. The tools are there but it can take a while to figure out. This is not a problem with a Facebook Junkie who is on the site everyday, but it is not easy for the general person who may not be tech savvy, or is only on the site once every couple of weeks.

If you are interested in using Facebook for dating, check out our Facebook Dating category which lists the popular Dating Apps currently available.

As part of a $250,000 advertising campaign, Ashley Madison wanted to wrap ads on 6 street cars in Toronto, Canada. The ads read "Life is Short, Have an Affair AshleyMadison.com". The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) rejected the ads last Friday, due to the ads violating TTC advertising standards.

The Ashley Madison CEO, Noel Biderman, disagrees with the TTC committee because the ads conform with Canadian laws. He further states that the TTC shouldn't be making morality judgments, they are in business to run transit lines. This also comes at a time when the TTC is in the red financially and, will be hiking user fees in the near future to hopefully cover losses.

I don't think the National Media has caught on to the real Ashley Madison's advertising campaign. Ashley Madison makes their ads just racy enough that they know most established media companies will reject them. They then let it be known that their ads were rejected, and the rest of the media reports on it. This is FREE advertising for them. I counted no less than 3 Toronto newspaper articles on the topic of the Ashley Madison TTC Ads being rejected, plus several mentions on TV during the news hour and discussions on talk radio.

This is a publicity stunt by Ashley Madison and it has become a pattern for them. We saw it earlier this year when a Canadian TV Network (CTV) rejected an Ashley Madison commercial that would have aired during the Super Bowl (see Story). Another example of this pattern is when they offered Tiger Woods $5 Million for an endorsement deal (see Story).

I don't know to much about Mamba.ru but, it is reported to be Russia's most visited dating site. Mamba announced recently that their membership now exceeds 11 million profiles and that on average, there are usually 100,000 active users online at any one time. This dating site is most active at the end of the work day, with the early morning being its least active period (25,000 or so active users from 4am to 6am).