Dating Services

Online Personals Watch posted a short summary of an interview they had with the CEO of Meetic, Marc Simoncini. Among the things they discussed was the recent purchase of Match.com European operations (see Story). Currently Meetic in the UK runs the following dating sites; Meetic, DatingDirect and now Match. From the interview It looks like Meetic will be promoting only one brand per country or market. This means the Meetic dating site will be the only one of the three which is actively promoted in the United Kingdom. Will this affect DatingDirect and its membership numbers? Not really, since both sites look and function identically and they share the same member database. This means, if you sign up for one of the above mentioned dating sites, you really are then signing up for all of them as your profile will be available on all sites. On a related note, I am working on another article which I plan to further dissect how the large Dating Networks like Meetic work and if the end result is good for its members.

Here are a few more details from the eight year agreement that IAC (Match.com) and Meetic have:

1. Match has no right to manage the daily business in Europe. It will be managed by Meetic
2. There's a reciprocal right of first refusal for acquisition
3. And there will be two members on the board of Meetic, from IAC] Another interesting fact in the summary is Match Europe (not sure if this includes the UK) will have their member database merge with Meetic.

For the full interview of Marc Simoncini, check out Online Personals Watch

We just talked about live video chat and how it has not gained much ground on social networks a few stories ago. The website, All Facebook, broke the news that video chatting may indeed be coming to Facebook soon. Through surveying the JavaScript files Facebook uses for their website, a user of All Facebook found a number of notification messages which deal with video calling. With text instant messaging already in place on Facebook, it is the next logical step for them to offer a video feature. Plus, video would also then make their suite of communication tools complete.

According to an update in the article it looks like Facebook is indeed testing a video chat feature but have no cuurent plans to launch it for the general public.

For the full story, check out All Facebook.

Online dating services are being used more and more by soldiers, especially those stationed overseas. This isn't to say, the service men and woman are just using dating sites to find love with other soldiers stationed nearby. They use dating sites to meet new singles close to where they live at home in the US.

Both eHarmony and Match.com report that their dating sites are being used by soldiers while they are serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. eHarmony also reports that from 2006 to 2008, percentage wise, the number of military personal who are using their matchmaking site increased by 56 percent. eHarmony research psychologist, Gian Gonzaga says:

The life-altering experience of going to war often focuses the romantic mind ... When you are reminded of your own mortality, the theory kind of boils down to, you remember what's most important to you, which is relationships.

The off duty soldiers increase access to military internet cafes and the low cost of the laptop computers has made it much easier for them to cultivate a long distance romance. Military service people also tend to take online dating more seriously and invest a lot of time in online communication than your average online dater in the United States. This means, these type of long distance relationships tend to last much longer and are more meaningful. Online dating is the soldiers only real way to create a romantic relationship with someone while they are stationed in a war zone.

For more on this story, read USA Today.

Surprisingly over 2 percent of users on JDate are not Jewish. This doesn't mean 2 percent of users have lied on JDate, they have just answered profile questions like Do you attend synagogue? or Do you keep kosher? with the options "I will tell you later" or "Never". They usually also select “Willing to convert” under religious background as well. Anonymous non-Jewish JDaters have noted a number of reasons for using a dating site designed just for Jews. Reasons include having a number of Jewish friends and knowing a lot of the religion, to hearing about other single's success on the dating service.

Some of the Jewish members have complained about allowing non-Jews on JDate. They use the site specifically to meet other single Jews, and do not want to deal with any members who are not. I understand were these members are coming from but I do not see the harm in allowing non-Jewish members from joining if they are serious about meeting someone. All members, who don't want to see non-Jewish profiles, have to do is update there search preferences and deselect "Willing to convert" and "Will tell you later" from the Religion preference. Once the preferences are saved these members will never come up in a search again.

I don't think JDate.com will ever not allow non-Jewish members from joining. The percentage who do join is small and if they ever did prevent them then, JDate may get slapped with a legal suit by a unhappy member like eHarmony was in a similar case were they did not allowing same-sex relationships (see Story).

For more details on this Jewish dating community, read our JDate review.

The controversial Erotic Services category is being replaced on Craigslist. With the recent so called Craigslist killings and the legal suit which called Craigslist one of the largest sources of prostitution (see Story) the classifieds ad website started on Wednesday to reject any new ads for the category. Instead, a Adult Services category will be built to take its place. Ads for this new adult category will have to go through a manual approval process and cost $10, which is twice as much as ads for the old Erotic Services category. It is unknown if any revenue generated from this new adult category will go to charity as what was happening with the previous category. Current advertisements for illegal sexual activities in Craigslist Erotic Services category will expire Wednesday May 20, 2009.

Will this move stop prostitution on Craigslist? I highly doubt it. While the Adult ads may meet the websites new guidelines, I am sure the world's oldest trade will continue to use Craigslist to subtly promote their services.

For the full Craigslist story, read our Craigslist review.

On Thursday, an unknown number of the over 200 million Facebook users, gave up their passwords to hackers in an email phishing scheme. Hackers initially cracked passwords of a number of Facebook accounts and then, using these accounts, sent emails to the account holders Facebook friends telling them to visit the website. The link in the email actually sent them to another website which was made to look like Facebook. When the friends logged in, they unwittingly gave up their real Facebook username and password. It is thought that the attack was designed to spread SPAM and steal identities. The affected Facebook accounts have now been closed. Apparently Facebook faced a similar attack 2 weeks ago.

Last year a similar attack type of phishing attack happened to Facebook and MySpace users. The difference that time was a virus called Koobface, which users unwittingly downloaded, was used to generate a fake email.

Last month Match.com members faced a similar phishing expedition by hackers when they were sent emails that looked like they came from Match (see Story). The email asked them to log into a fake website to view pictures and a video which required a special video player. This video player was actually a virus.

For the full story, read Reuters.