General News

CEO of eHarmony, Greg Waldorf, hopes to be the market leader in the United Kingdom for paid matchmaking within the next 2 years. eHarmony UK launched 18 months ago and now ranks 11 overall in traffic to its dating service among UK singles. This equals to 1.79 percent of all dating traffic in the United Kingdom. While this is behind other paid sites like Dating Direct and Friends Reunited Dating they are gaining ground fast with over 1 million users since launch.

Their new TV marketing campaign should help too. With eHarmony's estimated $250 million earned in 2009, this revenue gives them a big advantage when it comes to spending marketing dollars for promoting their dating sites. Online dating is also on the rise. A internet research firm, comScore, says traffic to dating services (in the United States) rose over 13 percent in 12 months, ending in July. This outpaced normal internet use which rose 9 percent during the same time period.

For more on this story, check out The Guardian. For more information on the dating sites mentioned in this article, read our eHarmony review, Friends Reunited Dating review and our Dating Direct review.

To continue on our story about how 542 eHarmony Members Marry Every Day we dug up some more interesting statistics. Some of these fun facts are from the new Harris Interactive study while others were released by eHarmony to help celebrate their 10 year anniversary.

• By April of last year there had been over 400 million conversations on eHarmony since launch.
• By August of 2009 eHarmony had 30 million members register and had 30 million pictures uploaded.
• 43.99% of newlyweds who met through an online dating service were matched by eHarmony.
• 25.75% of newlyweds who met online (Social Network, Dating Site, etc...) where matched by eHarmony.
• It is estimated that currently there are 1,130,006 non-married, monogamous relationships started by eHarmony.

eHarmony also found that offline, Americans met their spouses 15% of the time through work and another 15% of the time through friends. The chances of meeting your spouse at school is only 9% and through your family only just over 4%. Bars and clubs came in at 5.4%.

To find out more about this popular online matchmaking service, check out our review of eHarmony.com.

Two years ago, New Jersey created the Internet Dating Safety Act. Now, New York State has done the same by creating a very similar act designed to make online dating safer for its single citizens. New York State now requires online dating services to post internet dating safety tips on their websites along with the fact if any criminal background checks are done on members.

eHarmony in both the United States and Canada will be offering free communication this Labor Day weekend (or as the Canadians like to spell it, Labour Day). This 4 day free event begins at 12:01 AM on Friday, Sept. 3rd, 2010 and ends at 11:59 PM on Monday, Sept. 6th, 2010.

Free communication weekends (FCW) at eHarmony allow all free members to not only take the relationship questionnaire and receive matches for free, but they have the chance to communicate with their highly targeted matches as well. This is all at no cost to you and with no credit card required. I have already seen a number of TV commercials advertising this FCW so you can expect eHarmony to be extra busy this long holiday weekend. Viewing of members profile pictures and Fasttracking the guided communication process is not included in the FCW events.

By our count this will be eHarmony's 28th free event. The last eHarmony free communication weekend occurred in July (see Story).

Update #1: It looks like singles in Australia are not being left out. eHarmony Australia is having free communication this weekend as well.

Check out our review of eHarmony for more information on the popular online match making service.

Feel like your dates are few and far between? Maybe you should consider your chances in another city.

According to a recent study by Match.com, Miami is the city that's heating up in terms of dating, at least during the summer. From June to August, more singles in this city winked, emailed and connected with each other than in any other city. Those in New York and L.A. fared well, coming in second and third respectively. Generally, the East and West coasts have the most active online daters.

Singles on Match.com are more active than ever. The popular dating site also found that this summer is the best in Match.com's 15-year history, with a 33% more winks and emails than last summer.

Mobile dating is also gaining popularity with singles looking for love, with a 92% increase in users since the summer began according to mobile research group Ground Truth.

Following are the top 10 cities for dating according to Match.com:

1. Miami, FL

2. New York, NY

3. Los Angeles, CA

4. Chicago, IL

5. Washington D.C.

6. Dallas, TX

7. San Diego, CA

8. Phoenix, AZ

9. Boston, MA

10. Houston, TX

Labor Day is also historically one of the most active days online. If you happen to live in one of the top 10 cities, make sure you log in and start communicating.

For more information on this popular online dating site, you can read our Match.com reivew.

“Japan's Fukui prefecture has the nation's biggest share of dual-income households, the highest ratio of working women, and the lowest unemployment rate. What it doesn't have is enough babies.”

With those arresting leading lines, Aki Ito, a reporter for Bloomberg News in Tokyo, opens “Japan's Government Plays Matchmaker,” an article that details an interesting new initiative that’s about to be launched in the island nation.

Introducing…the Fukui Marriage-Hunting Café, the government’s new online dating site for Japanese singles. The idea of government-sponsored matchmaking might sound crazy, but Japan is not the first country to set up a service with the intention of encouraging and aiding the love lives of its citizens. The Social Developmental Network of Singapore, for example, runs LoveByte, a Web site that doles out dating advice and has a search function that allows registered users to find other single users.

The Fukui Marriage-Hunting Café is a unique solution to a potentially-devastating problem Japan now faces: “At 1.34 children per woman, Japan's fertility rate is one of the lowest in the world, well below the 2.1 that is considered the minimum for a developed nation to maintain a constant population.” According to census data, 32 percent of Japanese women between the ages of 30 and 34 were unwed in 2005, a figure that is more than twice the number from 15 years earlier. As an increasing number of Japanese women postpone marriage, or decline to marry at all, the country’s birthrate is dropping to a dangerously low point with serious financial consequences.

Approximately “23 percent of the population is over 65, the highest ratio among the 62 countries tracked by Bloomberg,” which means that the “ranks of pensioners are swelling” while “the pool of workers and consumers is shrinking.” To combat this problem, Japan’s Democratic Party promised to lessen the burden of child rearing by offering families a monthly allowance of 13,000 yen ($150) per child and abolishing the fees for public high school. Naoto Kan, the current Prime Minister, also supported relationships and procreation in his former job as Finance Minister by encouraging his employees to leave work at 6 p.m. to go on dates.

The Fukui Marriage-Hunting Café will go above and beyond traditional online dating sites and Japan’s previous efforts to increase the country’s sagging birthrate by offering money or gifts to couples who marry partners they met using the site’s services. While government-sponsored matchmaking is an interesting idea, critics of the scheme note that “the central government's previous attempts to nudge up the birthrate have not met with success.”

So what do you think, readers? Should governments attempt to play cupid for their populace, or should they steer clear of citizens’ love lives?