General News

The owner of Match.com and Chemistry, IAC, reported their second quarter financials for 2010 today. Over all the search and dating company saw growth increase by 18 percent to $402.9 million when compared to $340 million from Q2, 2009. This increase beat analysts’ estimates by well over $20 million.

IAC owned dating sites brought in $97 million in quarter 2 this year which is an increase of 10 percent over quarter 2 in 2009 ($88.3 million). Removing acquisitions not available in Q2 2009 (People Media and Singlesnet) revenue grew by 4 percent domestically.

A big thing to happen in quarter 2 was Match.com on Yahoo! Yahoo decided to close their own dating site and instead allowed Match.com to be the exclusive provider of online dating on the Yahoo Network.

For the complete public financial IAC Q2 2010 report read this page. For more information on the dating sites owned by IAC, read our Match.com review and our Chemistry review.

Related Story: Match.com First Quarter 2010 Financials

I heard about this movie being made a couple of months ago but this is the first time I have seen a trailer for it which was released on July 15th. The movie is titled "The Social Network" and it is based on the founders of Facebook and the trials they faced making the social networking website what it is today. The leading actors in the movie include Jesse Eisenberg (from Zombieland) who plays Mark Zuckerberg, and Justin Timberlake who plays Eduardo Saverin.



The movie's expected release date in theatres is October 1st, 2010 for North America.

For more information on The Social Network, you can visit the official movie site.

Dating Sites Reviews would like to welcome our new Blogger, Elyse, to our website. She is a dating coach from New York and enjoys studying how attraction works as well as what is needed to create a successful relationship. Elyse will be contributing regularly to our Dating Advice and Tips topics bringing her expert knowledge to bear.

You can already find some of Elyse's dating articles online now which you can find available here.

If you have a dating or relationship question, or topic, for Elyse to cover in a future article you can contact her here. For more information on Elyse you can read her Bio page.

Almost 2 months ago Zoosk reported that their Facebook Fan page had over 1 million fans. I checked today and they currently have 1,612,923 Facebook Fans. Here is a YouTube video that Zoosk put together to mark the milestone.

That certainly is a large number of fans and the increase of 600 thousand fans in under 2 months is an achievement itself (that is roughly 10,000 Facebook Fans a day). This is by far the largest number of Fans any dating site has on Facebook. Two other popular online dating sites only have about 6,000 each.

For more information on this popular dating site, read our review of Zoosk.com.

Popular online dating site eHarmony.com is catching the eye of more than just those looking for love - venture capital firms are falling in love with the online dating site. With revenues expected to exceed the $250 million mark in 2010, it's one of the fastest growing online dating properties on the web.

Match.com and eHarmony represent the largest audiences for online dating. Match hold just over 35% of the market and eHarmony hovers at about 20%. Audiences for both continue to grow, with Match staying ahead for it's eHarmony-like sister site, Chemistry.com's features.

Business is solid for eHarmony, however. They've raised over $110 million from Sequoia Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures and Fayez Sarofim & Co and are not looking for any more funding. There's no real talk of an IPO, but growth remains steady and that keeps venture capitalists in love with this innovative online dating property.

What will likely be the turn of events as eHarmony continues its forward surge? Acquisition by another online media giant. Potential suitors like AOL are considered likely as they have the balance sheet to support a successful purchase effort. Others like Yahoo! Don't figure into the mix, especially following their outsourcing of their Personals service to Match.com. Google is also unlikely as its growth efforts have taken them more towards developing their own platforms as of late than acquiring others.

It's the business of love, and we all contribute to its profitability. The upside for these business owners and VC firms? Once the people reading this article find love, there's always someone right behind you who is still looking. They've found a way to monetize the search for love, creating a business model that's sure to thrive so long as people can still say the words, "I do."

JetPlace, the owners of the Australian dating and swinger site Red Hot Pie, was ordered by the federal court to remove 1,371 fake profiles that they had on their website. Jetplace must also disclose to its Red Hot Pie members that they had misrepresented the number of users on the dating site. Members who registered between December 2004 and November 26, 2008 will also receive notices via email of this information. These same users can also apply for a refund if they can show that they were mislead by these fake profiles.

These fake profiles created by Jetplace contravened the Australian Trade Practices Act of 1974 since the dating site engaged in misleading conduct. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said they would have gone after Red Hot Pie in civil court where penalties are more severe but the conduct of the dating site happened before the new Australian Consumer Law. In their defence, Red Hot Pie said these profiles were created over a 4 year period and only a small number were active at any one time. They were used by the dating site's User Security Suite.

For more information on this story, read The Sydney Morning Herald.