Dating Services

Janis Spindel, a matchmaker by trade for 18 years, connects right minded singles. One way she does this is by holding match parties. These are not your run of the mill single events. A dinner party in August at Ms. Spindel's Bridgehampton home was for 10 bachelors from Manhattan which shared a 5 course meal with 20 single beautiful women. Women, if they meet the qualifications can attend the event for free, but men are required to pay $10,000 for the privilege.

Her matching service which only accepts men as clients is called Janis Spindel Serious Matchmaking. Their annual fees start at $50,000 USD and can increase substantially depending on the client's location and bonuses like, if the client gets married. Ms. Spindel says she is worth the price,

If you want the Rolls Royce of matchmaking, you pay for it.

She has over 1,200 relationships and 800 marriages credited to her. Ms. Spindel has yet to hear of one of her marriages ending in divorce. She employees about 20 "scouts" which help find potential clients and matches all over the United States.

For the full story, visit 27East and you can find Janis Spindel's website here. For our complete list of personal matchmaking services (which cost a lot less money), check out our Matchmaking Services category.

The new OkCupid blog called OkTrends had an interesting first post which looked at members sending messages on their dating site. I was surprised by the fact that only 32 percent of first messages (the person who initiated contact) ever got a reply. This is less than a third of all first contacts, and this is on a dating site which is mostly free.

Based on crunching data from tens of thousands of sent messages OkCupid spotted a sweet spot on message length and the chance of a man or woman replying to your message. The first thing they found was that most single's first time messages are way too long.

Almost 16% of first messages are over 2000 characters (roughly 400 words), and the average is 743! At least in terms of using your time efficiently, your messages should be much shorter.

What they found is, on average for a man to write to a woman, a message should be about 200 characters in length. This will give him the best conversion rate of 17.1% based on the average amount of time it takes a man to write a message. For example at this message length the average male online dater can scan profiles and write 10 messages in 1 hour giving them on average, 1.71 replies to their 10 messages.

For women message length is even shorter. A message length of only 50 characters gives woman a conversion rate of 30 percent. This means they can send 11.4 messages per hour and expect on average to receive 3.42 replies from men. First contact message from women seem to more serve the purpose of getting the man to notice their profile, rather than convey any real information.

For the full dating advice article, read OkTrends and to find out more information about this dating site read our review of OkCupid.com.

An interesting press release went out claiming that the Chinese dating site Zhenai.com is now the largest in the world. Zhenai first started 11 years ago, in May of 1998 as a free dating site called 96333.com. In 2005 they rebranded as Zhenai.com (which means "cherished love") and now has about 20 million registered members and claims that daily, another 40,000 singles signup. Zhenai's largest demographic are singles who are 25 to 45 years old, who live in an urban area, and are white-collar professionals. More than 85% of these members have a bachelor's, master's or doctoral diploma. Zehnai expects its number of registered members to hit 30 million by the end of the first quarter of 2010.

Zhenai claims to be the world's largest dating site by surpassing Match.com which had 15,000,000 registered members and a daily increment of 60,000 new members in May of 2009 (Note: Match.com now claims 20,000 new members a day). The problem is Zhenai switched a few of Match.com's numbers around. Match.com actually claims to have had more than 100 million registered users between 2000 and 2008 (see Press Release). That doesn't even include the profiles registered in the 5 years from when Match.com first launched in 1995. In the Zehnai press release, they are using Match.com current number of members which accounts for 15 million. I believe Match.com defines a current member as someone who has logged in at least once during the last year. I have a feeling that Zhenai is including all registered members since the launch of their dating site and only used the lower Match.com current registered members numbers to highlight their claim that they are the largest dating site.

Match.com's Whitney Casey was on The Early Show Saturday Edition sharing some insiders secrets of what relationship experts find makes for a good online dating profile that will help you get notice and to avoid moves which will turn potential matches off.

First impressions count in online dating so your profile picture needs to be good. It should show your face clearly and smiling. Natural photos are best (instead of a head shoot from your local photographer). Black and white photos and photos cropped from others are not recommended.

Casey suggests to answer the who, what, when, where and why in your profile questions along with anything you feel strongly about like smoking or for example, you only date guys who are taller than you. Above all Casey says to be honest in your profile. Think of it as a type of resume.

For a video of this segment on The Early Show, visit CBS News and to find out more about this dating site, read our Match.com review.

We last looked at OkCupid's A-List membership when it was first launched in mid August (see Story). It is 22 days later and they still have T-Shits to give out to the first 1000 membership upgrades. If OkCupid is close to meeting 1000 paid users then they are averaging roughly 40 paid members a day which IMO are not exactly stellar numbers. I also notice there are no men's sizes left and only 3 of the 4 women's colors left. This shows that there are most likely a lot more men paid users than women. I wonder what the free membership gender split is on OkCupid? Quantcast estimates it at 56% male and 44% female for last month.

To find out more about this dating service which allows you to make your own dating tests, read our OkCupid.com review.

It has been confirmed for eHarmony here in the US and Canada that they will be having a Free Communication Weekend, starting this Friday (September 4, 2009) until Monday (September 7, 2009). In Canada this will be their Labour Day Holiday long weekend.

As the name suggests, eHarmony Free Communication Weekends mean all members can review and communicate with all matches for no cost. These promotional weekends have become extremely popular for eHarmony, so expect a flurry of matches if you decide to signup. If you have been thinking about trying this internet dating service for a while now, this weekend, is the time to try! Remember, no credit card is required.

By our count this is Free Communication Weekend number 19 for eHarmony. The last one was held in July on the Independence / Canada Day weekend in July (see Story).

Read our review of eHarmony for more information on this popular online matchmaking service.