General News

Match.com was featured on The Early Show recently along with 25 couples who met on Match.com. The video contains some footage of behind the scenes from the show along with the actual segment that aired.



The host Dave Price (The Early Show weatherman) mentioned 2 interesting online dating statistics. The first one was that 1 in 6 marriages (I am assuming in the United States) are the result of the couples meeting through online dating. The second stat Dave told us was that 25 percent of people currently in a relationship, met online through a dating site.

For more on this dating site, you can read our Match.com review.

CatholicMatch.com has acquired the 4 year old dating site TraditionalSingleCatholics.com. This is Catholic Matches third acquisition since 2007 when they acquired CatholicDaters.com and SingleCatholics.com (in 2008). Members of TraditionalSingleCatholics.com now get to experience a much larger, more active, and sophisticated dating site. CatholicMatch.com by our estimates is the largest dating site designed strictly for Catholic singles.

For more on the story, read the press release. To find out further details about the dating site, you can check out our review of CatholicMatch.com.

Early last month we learned that Easydate planned to list on AIM. Well, the company which launched in 2005 and brought us the UK dating site Cupid.com (see [story: Cupid.com-Reviews Cupid Review]), listed 3 days ago on London's junior stock market and raised about £9.8 million. It cost Easydate about £1 million to list and they expect yearly maintenance fees to be around £100,000.

William Dobbie (CEO) held a 49% stake in Easydate while Maxym Polyakov (COO) held 41% when it was privately owned. Now Mr Dobbie and Mr Polyakov will own 32.45% and 27.17% respectively. Shares opened at 60p which gave Easydate a market capitalisation of about £45 million. Currently the stock sits at 68.50p.

In 2009 Easydate earned just over £9.6 million giving them a before tax revenue of £2 million. Sales next year are expected to be double to £19 million. Each month Easydate is adding 200,000 new members. They employ a staff of 140 people with most working on the technical side of the business and online marketing in the Ukraine.

For more on this story, read the Telegraph.

The Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, has launched an investigation into an online dating site. While this is a Canadian probe it does not mean it is a Canadian owned and operated dating site, it could be a dating site that offers services in Canada. This is the first time the Privacy Commissioner has investigated a dating service, but they have investigated social networking sites before. Facebook was investigated last year (see Story) and was found to be in violation of Canadian privacy laws.

The unnamed dating site is being investigated on how it handles members profile information once the membership has been deactivated. This was the same reason Facebook was under investigation. A complaint filed 6 months ago prompted the investigation of the dating site. The privacy issue was not resolved through mediation with the company and the Privacy's Commissioners office, so an official investigation was started. More news about this case will be released soon.

eHarmony has teamed up with 80's band REO Speedwagon and launched a contest that allows couples who found each other on eHarmony to showcase their love by submitting a video of them singing one of REO Speedwagon's songs. Submitted videos will be voted on by the general public to determine the best one. There will be a prize package for 10 of REO Speedwagon's concert dates on their "Love on the Run" tour which the winners will receive a pair of tickets for the show and dinner backstage served by members of REO Speedwagon.

When contestants submit their video (on the eHarmony Youtube channel) you need to tag the video for the concert date you wish to attend. Videos can be sung or lip-synched and eHarmony encourages you to be as creative as possible (as long as it is rated PG).

For more on the contest including the full terms and what concert dates the contest is for, read the Official eHarmony Blog and for more details on this dating site you can read our eHarmony.com review.

Increase use of smartphones and the mobile internet has created growth in the mobile dating market. In the United States there currently are 51 million smartphone subscribers. This market is growing fast not only in the United States but Europe as well. In a little over a year mobile phone app use and surfing the internet on mobile phones has increased over 110 percent.

Texting or SMS is a popular function of all mobile phones. This business was worth $80 billion in the United States in 2009 and is expected to increase to $126 billion by 2014. This is one area of the mobile phone market that the dating industry could tap into.

For more on the story visit Online Personals Watch.