Online Dating

For 14 days eHarmony Australia is running a free guided communication event starting April 13th and ending on April 26th, 2011. This means starting tomorrow for a fortnight, singles in Australia can visit eHarmony.com.au, create a profile, receive matches, and then communicate with those matches through the guided communication process at no cost.

As winter approaches in Australia it is a good time for singles to check out their local online dating site since this is typically the busy period for dating and matchmaking services.

To find out more about this online dating site in Australia, you should check out our eHarmony review.

Spark Networks reported their fourth quarter financial results this month. Revenue for the last quarter was down 9 percent to $10.1 million with a net income of $600 thousand. Net income is up substantially this quarter though since in quarter 4 of 2009 they reported a loss of $9.6 million. For the 12 months of 2010 revenue decreased 10 percent to $40.9 million with net income at $3.7 million when compared to 2009. In 2009 Spark Networks reported a net loss of $6.4 million.

For q4 2010 the number of average paying subscribers for the entire company was 160,744. This is a decrease of 5 percent when compared to the same quarter last year. For the entire year of 2010 the number of average paying subscribers was down 2 percent from 2009 to 162,311. Breaking average paying subscribers down by segment for quarter 4 2010 you can see all experienced a decrease when compared to the same quarter in 2009:

• Other Affinity Networks - 65,172 (-4%)
• Jewish Networks - 89,723 (-1%)
• General Market Networks - 5,174 (-46%)

For the full 2010 Q4 release visit Spark Networks News Room.

Related Story: Spark Networks Third Quarter 2010 Financials

Cupid PLC head office is located in the city of Edinburgh in Scotland. They employ about 15 people at the head office and another 200 or so in the Ukraine.

Cupid made a few announcements earlier this month about their final results for the year 2010:

• Revenues increase by 202 percent to £25.7m. In 2009 revenue was £8.5m
• Pre-tax profits for Cupid rose to £4.16m from £983,000 in 2009
• 42 percent of Q4 revenues came from outside the UK
• Their goal is to have more than 50% of revenues coming from North America by the end of 2011
• When you combine all of Cupid's dating sites they have 13 million customer profiles registered worldwide

For more information on this story you can read the announcement on the London Stock Exchange. To find out more about Cupid PLC dating sites you can read our Cupid.com review.

First of all let me say, I do not think so 😉

GeekWire recently found a Microsoft patent filing from 2009 which explains a matchmaking system based on matching peoples private affinities:

The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can leverage private affinities in order to facilitate or enrich relationships between people. In particular, the architecture can receive a profile associated with a user wherein the profile includes a set of private affinities that are cryptographically protected from public inspection. The architecture can decrypt and/or cryptographically compare a private affinity from the profile to an affinity in a disparate profile (associated with a disparate user) in order to identify a matching affinity. Once a matching affinity is identified, a message indicating such can be provided to the user along with a request to publish certain revealed information to the disparate user, possibly based upon a mutual exchange of commensurate information from the disparate user.

So basically this sounds like a matching system based on a person’s attributes that are not available for public viewing. I doubt Microsoft would run with something like this directly (i.e. create a dating site) but I could see them maybe eventually incorporating it into Windows Live profiles.

I have been reviewing Match.com again recently and found a few mail message features that I had missed. It looks like both of these features where added in the first half of 2010 (at least that was when the information was added to help).

VIP Email

A Very Interested Person or VIP Email message can be sent by a subscriber to indicate that they are particularly interested in the person who is receiving the message. What makes this email different is that a Match.com member can send only one a week. With a VIP Email, Email Read Notification is included for free (there usually is an upgrade charge for this). The message will also be bolded and highlighted green in the receivers email box so it is easier to identify. Plus, your profile will be highlighted on the receivers Match.com's Connections page for 30 days.

In May of 2010 ChristianCafe released their iPhone dating app. Well, this month the Christian dating service has released a version for Android phones. Those of you with Android base mobile phones can now enjoy dating on the go. The new app integrates directly with your account on ChristianCafe.com and for those new to this dating site have the option of signing up for a free trial right from your phone.

Features of this new dating app include performing basic and detail searches, viewing profiles and seeing who is online in your area. Photo uploads are a snap to do along with communicating with your matches via email and winks.

For more information about the app you can watch the video tour:



To find out more about this dating site, read our ChristianCafe.com review. To download the app visit the Android Market and search for 'christiancafe'.