Dating Services

Last year eHarmony.ca had a free communication weekend, on the Canada Day long weekend (see Story - it ran from Sat. June 28 to Tues. July 1). Some of you were wondering if there is a free weekend coming up this year for Canada Day. As July 1st, 2009 falls on a Wednesday, right in the middle of the week and we have had no official word yet, I have a feeling if there is one, it will be combined with eHarmony.com and the U.S. Independence Day holiday on the July 4th long weekend.

Check back with this story Canada, and we will update it as soon as we get more information about if and when there is a Free Communication Weekend.

Update #1: eHarmony Canada is indeed having a Free Communication Weekend. It starts July 2 and runs to July 5, 2009.

Update #2: For those of you looking for eHarmony.com (the US site ), the free weekend is on as well, check out this story for more information.

In the mean time, if you want some further insight on what makes this a popular dating site, read our review of eHarmony.

A Fox News broadcast called Kelly's Court (clip below) looks at the case which we talked about earlier this month regarding Sean McGinn suing Match.com for what he alleges is deceptive practices. His beef with Match is mainly about them not informing members who has paid, and who has not (see Story).

Sean is the man pictured in the still of the video below and in his Match.com profile he describes himself as having a cuddly but toned bod, is down to earth, and can pull off the dishevelled bed head look. Apparently he also mentioned in emails his favorite movie is Cocktail, starring Tom Cruise. Kelly's Court must of got some inside information and/or received full access to the court documents as this information hasn't been reported anywhere else. Plus, an extensive search of Match.com didn't produce Sean's profile. I am assuming Match.com has removed it.

Note: Unfortunately the source to the video and/or image which once was displayed here has since been removed by the authors for an unknown reason.

The panel of legal experts took Match.com's side in the suit and stated Sean couldn't have suffered anguish, emotional distress and anxiety due to a dating site. Especially, when you compare it to other cases where people have suffered. They did say that some of Match.com's business practices could be argued as deceptive but as far as this case is concerned, not enough for Sean to win his lawsuit based on what he suffered. The final hole in Sean's case was, in the end he did find a girlfriend on Match.com.

The legal experts did tend to joke around a lot at Sean's expense. They may have been legal experts but they certainly did not know too much about dating sites in general. As far as dating profiles go his didn't sound bad. I would like to hear how the Kelly's Court panel of experts would describe themselves (seriously) in a dating profile.

Back in early February, 2009 Date.com started offering Virtual Gifts for sale to its members (see Story). Members could send virtual flowers, chocolates, etc.. to someone they wish to date on the site by purchasing tokens for $1 to $5.

The parent company of Date.com, Avalanche LLC wanted to make sure they met any legal obligations to their members when dealing with Virtual Gifts and tokens. No real laws have been made in regards to virtual gifts in most countries. The closest comparison in the real world they could find was gift cards. Lawyers for Date.com

ultimately concluded that the consumer laws pertaining to gift cards didn't apply.

Date.com decided to make purchasing of gifts as clear as possible in their Terms of Service. Specifically this mainly deals with what happens if a user doesn't use their tokens. Date.com's policy for members inactive more than 365 days is to delete them. Unused virtual gift tokens are then deleted as well, with Date.com keeping the profits. Before your account is deleted from Date.com, multiple emails are sent out warning you of this fact and asking you to log in again.

For more about the dating site, read our Date.com review.

Last year eHarmony release a PDF of a summary of the Harris Interactive report for 2007 which showed how they concluded 236 eHarmony members get married every day. According to eHarmony's current Matching Advertisers with Buyers web page, Harris Interactive Research for 2008 still concludes 236 eHarmony members marry every day. From our count it also looks like the profile questions increased by 2 to 258 questions.

On average eHarmony Media of sites receives 3.6 million visitors per month and over 415 million page views with an average visit length of 5 minutes. In March 2009, 34 percent of visitors were male and 66 percent were females with the median age of 35 years. eHarmony Media includes the following categories Singles, Advice, Weddings, and Parenting. The sites included in these categories are eHarmony.com, Advice.eHarmony.com, ProjectWedding.com, Weddingbee.com, Justmommies.com and FertileThoughts.com.

For more demographic information read the eHarmony.com Statistics 2009 Adobe PDF file we have stored locally.

Read our eHarmony review for more general information on this dating site.

The latest video for the track Available by Flo Rida is featured only at Plenty of Fish. This song is off his new album R.O.O.T.S. and contains Flo Rida surfing the Plenty of Fish dating site on a laptop looking through profiles and singing about being a single man. Flo must be serious about dating since he was only viewing members who had upgraded their membership. 😀

I am not sure how this partnership between Flo Rida and Plenty of Fish came about? Did Plenty of Fish pay to be in the video? Both parties benefit from the partnership and increased media exposure. The video is on a site that gets millions of hits a month, which is good for Flo Rida anda younger audience than usual will be visiting Plenty of Fish to check out the new video and possibly create a dating profile as well.

For more information on this dating site, read our review of Plenty of Fish.

It seems to me, part of AshleyMadison.com marketing strategy is trying to buy ad time or space for advertising that they know will be rejected by the publishers. This way they get free publicity when the media write about AshleyMadison.com problems. Recently they had a Super Bowl TV ad rejected (see Story) and back in 2007 Microsoft denied their ads from showing on their Microsoft Network web portal (see Story). There have been other incidents as well, including a bill board in New York City.

The most recent print ad problem deals with a $20,000 ad in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The advertisement was suppose to run 2 days after U.S. Sen. John Ensign's confirmed an extramarital affair with a women who worked on his campaign. The publisher of the paper decided the ad was not right for their paper and did not run it.