Dating Services

I have been poking around the FriendFinder Network of dating sites lately and have notice that they have modernized the user interface a bit. The improved site design doesn't look as busy now, which should attract more daters. FriendFinder has always been in the forefront of keeping their sites fresh and up to date with new features. They were one of the first dating sites to offer built in members blogs and interest groups. The one problem with a feature rich site is they tend to have complex user interfaces which can turn less tech savvy members off (just take a look at Facebook now).

I also notice that they have removed the advertising again from their dating sites home page and from the members pages as well. This improves the looks of the sites 10 fold and I applaud FriendFinder for doing this. A site without ads looks so much more professional.

While not directly related to dating, I notice this in my searches: "FriendFinder.com Games". It's a flash games site that has over 8000 free games to play. It looks like the FriendFinder Network plan to make money from the Google Ads on the site.

If you want to find out some more about a FriendFinder Network dating site, you can check out our review of FriendFinder.

Related Story: What is With Advertising on FriendFinder?

There is not much to this Economist article but it does offer a few interesting statistics on the UK online dating scene.

Did you know 5 million singles visited British dating sites in September, 2009? On average about 4 percent of people have used a dating site in Europe. In Britain, online dating is twice as popular with 8 percent of the population having visited a dating service.

This is probably one of the main reasons why eHarmony now operates a dating service in the UK. Since it opened in June of 2008 eHarmony.co.uk now has more than 500,000 singles registered with them. To find out what makes eHarmony a popular choice among singles, read our eHarmony Review.

Starting this Friday, November 20th, 2009, eHarmony UK (eHarmony.co.uk) is having a 4 day long free communication weekend. Until Sunday midnight (Nov. 23rd), all members of this dating service can review matches and communicate with all members for free. All that is required from you, is the time you need to try out this matchmaking service.

eHarmony places an emphasis on long term relationships that lead to marriage. If this is something that interests you, give one of the fastest growing dating sites in the UK a try.

The last free communication weekend for eHarmony UK was held at the end of October, just 4 weeks ago (see Story).

Read our review of eHarmony for more details and users opinions on this popular matchmaking service for British singles.

As Thanksgiving moves closer, we knew the next eHarmony Free Communication Weekend would soon be upon us. Starting tomorrow, Thursday, Nov 19 and to Sunday Nov. 22 all members of eHarmony (US and Canada) will be able to communicate and review their matches at no cost. These 4 day events are the best way for singles interested in online dating to give eHarmony a try and to see if this matchmaking service is the one that not only works for them, but fits their needs as well.

The last free communication event was held in late October, just 4 weeks ago (see Story). This is Free Communication Weekend number 21 for eHarmony here in the US.

Check out our review of eHarmony for more information on the dating site. We also currently have 72 user reviews which you can read that are available from our review page.

On November 9th Meetic released the financial results for the first 9 months of 2009. Revenue earned during this period totalled 117.2 million Euros (over $174 million USD). This is a 20 percent increase over the same period last year. From this income, the purchase of Match.com's UK site this year added 19 million Euros in revenue. 96 percent of all revenue was from sources in Europe.

Meetic's dating sites subscriber base totalled 970,623 as of September 30th, 2009. This is an increase of about 25,000 subscribers from the same date in 2008. No mention of Match.com's UK site is here so it is unsure if their subscriber numbers have been included in the Meetic 2009 numbers. We estimated that Match.com UK had about 291,000 paying subscribers as of quarter 2, 2009, at the time of the sale (see Story).

Earnings Before Interest, Taxes and Amortization (EBITDA) came to 24.1 million Euros over the first 9 months. This is an EBITDA margin of 20.5 percent. As of September 30th, 2009 Meetic had a net cash surplus of 41 million Euros and the only debt on the books was from the Match acquisition which is estimated at €7.1 million.

Expect the quarter 4 2009 financials and annual revenue for Meetic to be published on the 11th of February 2010.

News first spotted on OPW. For more information, read the full Meetic Q3 2009 Financial report.

OKCupid has released some interesting detailed reports and stats about their members. It looks like a member of Plenty of Fish (see the blog) is following suit by using a built in tool on PlentyofFish to check out the different demographics based on an interest you can type in. This tool is intended to inform potential Advertisers of Plenty Of Fish on what type of people use the site, so they can better target their ads.

POF will return a percentage result for the following attributes for any interest. This information is compiled straight from the members dating profiles and the percentages are based on the answers members have chosen for each profile attribute.