General News

Features on dating sites come and go quite regularly as the dating companies test the market to find out what their members want. I have been updating a number of reviews recently and notice that Lavalife has removed their online speed dating feature. Lavalife first introduced speed dating last summer and in little over a year it has been removed from the dating site. I guess in the end, not enough singles used speed dating to warrant the feature.

Speed dating may have been removed from Lavalife but the "Online Party" feature has taken over. Online parties are scheduled real-time chatting events that actually have a lot in common with speed dating. With speed dating you are required to chat one-on-one with every single member at the event and then tell Lavalife if you wanted to communicate further with anyone. With the Lavalife online party, you can pick and choose who you want to enter a private chat with.

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

Here is a small bit of news regarding Zoosk.

According to the WSJ, Zoosk.com plans later this year to start matching singles based on their tastes in music, movies and books. This update to the matching system is in response to a survey Zoosk did of its members that found 57 percent of people found it a turn-on if someone else liked the same books as they did. Zoosk also confirmed that common shared interests like those of movies, music and books are great topics for initiating a conversation.

To find out more about this dating site, you can check out our review of Zoosk.com.

Craigslist has had major problems in the past with their adult services section (see Story). On September 4th they temporarily suspended all sex ads on Craigslist (see Story). On September 15th:

Craigslist told the House Judiciary Committee today that it had closed its sex ads section forever.

The reason for Craigslist backing down on having an adult services section is the mounting bad press from the media and pressure from a number of state attorney generals. Closing this section down is estimated to cost Craigslist $44 million per year. The company held nearly 70% of all sex ad revenue which totaled $63 million.

This leaves a giant hole in the sex ad industry in which I am sure Craigslist competitors will fight over to fill. I expect to see a lot more affair dating site and sugar daddy dating site advertising coming to a website near you.

To find out about this classifieds site, please read our review of Craigslist.

For those of you worried about using Twitter because of the strange messages and internet browser pop ups when you visited the social network early this morning, everything now seems to be back to normal. Twitter has reported that they have fixed the problem.

The hackers used an exploit found in Twitter's XXS (cross site scripting) that allowed them to insert their own scripts. As of 9:50 AM EST this morning Twitter has fully patched this exploit.

If you are still worried about potential problems by using Twitters web interface for viewing and sending Tweets, you can use a third party tool like Tweet Deck for extra security.

For more on this story you can read this New York Times blog.

eHarmony has recently set up an International Dating page on their eHarmony dating sites. You can now find links to all of the dating sites they own (or partially own) under the eHarmony and eDarling brands.

As of September 2010, there are 4 eHarmony dating sites, all are in English:

1. eHarmony USA (eHarmony.com)
2. eHarmony Canada (eHarmony.ca)
3. eHarmony U.K. (eHarmony.co.uk)
4. eHarmony Australia (eHarmony.com.au)

eHarmony launched a new dating site called Jazzed late last month. The site is currently free but we expect it to go paid once enough members have joined. In the past eHarmony usually keeps the site free for the first 3 months of operation.

So how is Jazzed.com different from eHarmony? Well, think of it as a less complicated version of eHarmony with searching. eHarmony is a very successful dating site but it is designed for someone looking for a serious relationship. The in-depth profile questions, communication process and matchmaking is not for everyone and eHarmony realizes this. Jazzed.com is more conventional, like the dating sites Match.com and PlentyofFish. The dating tools are simpler (when compared to eHarmony) and members are expected to search for their own matches.

You can expect a review of this new online dating site to be available soon.

To find out more about the parent dating site of Jazzed, please read our eHarmony.com review.