Online Dating

ChristianCafe.com is offering former Yahoo! Personals members 6 weeks of free full access to their dating service (includes communication). This is a fantastic offer since ChristianCafe.com is one of the leading dating sites for Christian singles. If you are a former Yahoo! Personals member, all you need to do is create a free trial profile at ChristianCafe.com. Once completed just, email yahoo@christiancafe.com with your ChristianCafe.com username along with a copy of the Match.com welcome notice you received as a Yahoo! Personals member.

Once you have sent the email with the proper information, you will be able to enjoy the full experience of ChristianCafe.com for 6 weeks. Plus, you still will be able to use your new Match.com membership as well which gives you 2 dating sites to use and help you find a relationship.

For more information about this dating site who has been serving singles for over 11 years, you can read our ChristianCafe.com review.

eHarmony here in the United States will be having a free communication weekend (FCW) starting this Friday May 28th, 2010 and ending in the late evening of Monday May 31st, 2010. As the name suggests, free communication weekends allow free members of eHarmony not only to create a profile and review matches, but to use the guided communication process to communicate with other members. This guided process allows matches to ask and answer questions so they can get to know each other better. In the fourth step, once you become more familiar with you match you can then go ahead and write your first mail message. eHarmony has found this communication approach greatly increases the chances of a successful long term relationship. Fasttracking the communication process to mail and profile photos are not included in this promotion for free members.

This FCW is happening on the Memorial Day holiday weekend so you can expect eHarmony to be the place online for singles who are serious about finding a long term relationship, to be.

This will be the 25th eHarmony free communication weekend with the last event occurring late in March (see Story). eHarmony waiting almost 2 months before having this free communication weekend.

Check out our review of eHarmony for more information on this popular matchmaking service.

Singles interested in the United Kingdom Free Communication Weekend, read this eHarmony News Story.

Singles interested in the Canada Free Communication Event which is 10 days long, read this eHarmony News Story.

I knew change was a foot on Yahoo! Personals.

I was visiting the site this morning and all was normal and then just a couple of hours ago we were sent official word that Match.com is now the exclusive online dating site for Yahoo in North America. We had hints of this possibility back in May of 2009 when the CEO of IAC (owners of Match.com), Barry Diller mentioned that they were in talks with Yahoo about acquiring their personals service. Yahoo and Match are also no strangers to partnerships. The dating sites for Yahoo UK, Germany, Taiwan are all partnerships with Match.com in Europe. Granted the Match.com European Operations were bought by Meetic last year but these partnership deals were in place long before the sale. It also looks like the partnership with eHarmony that Yahoo Australia had is over with Match.com taking the helm.

For current members of Yahoo! Personals, you will be experiencing a transition period. You have 3 options to choose from:

Markus, the CEO of Plenty of Fish, posted on his blog with word that they have updated their Chemistry Test. They now use a new and more advanced predictive statistical model which now will give you a list of 30 matches that you are most likely to end up dating and falling in love with. He mentions that they spent year's collecting dating from POF members of who they dated, who they broke up with, and who married. With this information in hand, Plenty of Fish used it to create a model which generates better matches than before for the average user.

As with the older test at Plenty of Fish, the new Chemistry Test still measures 5 dimensions of personality. They are Self-Confidence, Family Orientation, Self-Control, Social Dependency and Easygoingness. These factors were determined by POF to be essential for building a successful long-term relationship.

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

Quepasa.com is a social network website with over 13 million members that services the Latino online community. According to Compete their traffic has increased 5 times to 275,000 unique visitors a month, over the last 6 months. Last week an announcement was made that Quepasa has partnered with the dating site Zoosk to make their service for singles the primary option to all of Quepasa members. This partnership benefits both companies. It gives Zoosk a large, new, and relatively untapped singles market and it gives Quepasa an additional revenue generating service.

Members of Quepasa can expect the dating service from Zoosk to go live by the end of this month.

To find out more about the dating site you can read our Zoosk review.

Online dating has become one of the most popular ways for singles to meet in recent years. We no longer have to rely on networks of friends and family to find love. In fact, we can browse through potential suitors in the privacy of our own homes, and reach out to the ones who pique our interest.

Some companies have taken the convenience of online dating a step further, offering virtual dating services.

Many online dating sites provide instant messaging services for members to communicate when they are logged in, so you can bypass the email exchange. In addition, some such as SpeedDate.com offer video chats via webcam, so members can "meet" online without having to do so in person. WinkVid.com offers a virtual speed dating service, where members can sign up for a live video chat (Chatroulette-style), and meet 10 other singles in an hour, all over a laptop.

If you are into a true virtual experience (which may appeal to the gamers out there), you might also like sites like Smingle.com which let you create an avatar to go on virtual dates for you. You can pick the background setting for the date as well, from a sidewalk café to a trendy bar.

All of these developments lead me to ask, is it better to meet virtually than in person?

Some people prefer the convenience virtual dating provides. It doesn't take a lot of time or commitment (no driving, parking, money spent on drinks or dinner, or effort spent getting dressed up). This does make virtual dating an enticing way to meet singles, especially for those with busy schedules. Virtual dates take mere minutes, whereas more time is involved to meet someone in person.

But isn't there something to be said for a real date? Meeting face-to-face is still the best way to see if there is any real chemistry. This way, the online prospects that interest you can get a fair shot at seeing if there's a match.

So even if you enjoy the convenience of virtual dating, nothing gives better perspective than meeting someone IRL. The chance of a new relationship is worth the time and effort.