General News

Santa Monica City Council is preparing to lift a ban from 1954 that prohibits:

... personal introductory service, marriage bureau, lonely hearts club, or other business of a like nature from operating within the city limits ...

This means online dating websites can now operate along with matchmaking services, but escort services would still not be allowed in Santa Monica. The newly allowed businesses would still require a police permit and criminal background checks though.

The CatholicMatch forums are a popular place for members to communicate about a variety of topics. On average every day there are 6,000 readers, 500 posters and from 1,000 to 2,000 posts. Well, a new community support forum has now been added to the list of topics. Here members can search and ask the staff any questions about the dating service. This includes topics ranging from "How To" questions, to resolving technical glitches some members may be experiencing.

CatholicMatch have also started to introduce forum moderators handpicked right from the CatholicMatch community. Their main job will be to answer any questions new members may have, and to moderate the different topics.

The final piece of forum news includes a new voting system for individual forum posts. This allows readers to give a "thumbs-up" or a "thumbs-down" to a particular post. This feature is designed to help the new moderators find any post that could cause some trouble or complaints.

To find out more about this dating site, read our review of CatholicMatch.com.

PerfectMatch will officially launch their new video profiles for members on October 20, 2010. For this new dating tool, they have partnered with Dating On Demand which allows PerfectMatch.com members too be featured on television along with other singles in your area. Dating On Demand services are available across the United States through "Cox Cable" and Comcast Digital Cable".

So how do you get your profile on Dating on Demand? All you need to do is attend a free Perfectmatch / Dating On Demand video event which are held in major cities across the United States (for an up to date event calendar visit Perfectmatch). During these events, the professional production crew will video tape your interview where you are answering questions about who you are and the type of person you are looking for. Once completed, your 2 to 5 minute video will be edited, produced and featured on Perfectmatch and Dating On Demand at no cost to you. If you cannot make it to a video event then you can create your own video and send it to Perfectmatch for review. All PerfectMatch's Dating On Demand videos are professional produced and linked to the members Duet Compatibility System results.

For more information on this dating site, please read our PerfectMatch.com review.

AshleyMadison.com has now opened their affair website to married men and women in the United Kingdom. For those of you who haven't heard of this site before it is described as a traditional dating site but for people who are already married. For UK members it costs £49 for 100 credits. With these credits members can email someone for 5 credits, chat in real-time for another 30 credits and send a virtual gift from 20 to 50 credits.

Apparently there are plans to spend upwards of £10million in advertising if Ashley Madison can get their ads approved by the Advertising Standards Authority. With this type of marketing budget Ashley Madison expects to have 1 million UK members in 3 months.

For more on this story read TNT Magazine.

A recent post from Markus, the owner of PlentyofFish.com, over on his blog commented on Mark Brooks view that free dating sites are going to kill off paid dating sites. It looks like Markus doesn't see that happening (which I agree) since he mentions the fact that the rankings for dating sites over the last few years have remained relatively stable.

What he did say is Facebook has been taking traffic from all dating sites. According to Markus, his Google Analytics account shows that page views per user (a free dating sites bread and butter since they make money on displaying ads) have declined 30 percent in the last 2 years. He also reported that PlentyOfFish.com's traffic increased by 15 percent on September 23 when Facebook went offline for 4 hours.

I was actually surprised to see Markus refute Mark Brooks in public like that since he was a client of Marks dating consulting business for a while a year or two ago. It looks like their working relationship may not have ended on a high note.

For more information on the online dating site mentioned in this article, read our review of PlentyofFish.com.

The online dating site Chemistry is having a free communication weekend starting this Friday October 8, 2010 and ending Sunday October 10, 2010 at midnight. During this 72 hour period all visitors will be able to create a profile and take the personality test to become a Chemistry.com member. Once completed, you then will receive personalized matches. From here you can communicate with these matches at no cost, by expressing interest and sending emails.

This is Chemistry.com's 10th time they have run a free communication weekend. The last one was held in late August (see Story). For more details on this popular matchmaking service please check out our review of Chemistry.com.