General News

It is National Cyber Security Awareness Week in Australia and Cupid Media is using this opportunity to help online daters with a website called OnlineDatingSafetyTips.com. This website allows visitors to learn more about internet safety and how to protect yourself online. It also points out common dating scams and identity theft schemes.

Online dating worldwide and especially in Australia has become extremely popular in the last 5 years. This popularity has a downside though with the attraction of scammers. Most dating sites have software in place to combat scammers but if a scammer is determine, they will find a way around any system. This means the last line of defense always falls to the online dater. The Australian Competition & Consumers Commission (ACCC) released statistics showing that people reported 550 online dating scams in 2009. This is an increase of 30 percent from 2008.

For more on this story, read the press release. To find out about a Cupid Media dating site (they have 33 in all), read our review of Mulsima.com.

This is the fourth year for Lavalife's Top Singles Search. The last event was held over the winter and spring season in 2009 (see Story). This year the event is being held during the spring and summer. The top 30 singles in Canada has been selected and voting will start soon to narrow the top 30 down to 10 (5 men and 5 women).

When you vote you get a chance at winning $1000. Voting starts June 28, 2010 and closes on July 16, 2010. Voters need to register and be 18 years or older and from Canada.

To find out more visit the Lavalife's Top Singles page. For more about this dating service, read our review of Lavalife.

The Australian website Smart Company did an interview with the vice president of international marketing at eHarmony, Sean Cornwell. In the interview he was asked several questions which resulted in him giving us some new information and statistics about eHarmony in Australia.

eHarmony.com.au was launched in November 2007. In those 2 years, the matchmaking site has had over 650,000 single residents of Australia register. In the first quarter of this year (2010) they saw 123,000 additional people create profiles on eHarmony Australia. Part of the huge growth this year is due to a bigger marketing budget. By late 2009, eHarmony felt they had enough Australian members in which they could properly promote their service through the media.

eHarmony offers singles a chance to receive high quality matches. Singles who sign up to eHarmony will receive between

five and a maximum of seven compatible matches every day.

These matches offer the best chance for a relationship to develop, but it is still up to members through communication to see if there is any sparks or chemistry between them. eHarmony believes it is more important to receive quality matches than to receive a large number of matches that have little chance of creating a successful relationship.

For more information about this dating site, read our review of eHarmony.

Glamour Magazine has partnered with the online dating site Match.com. This is a good move for both companies. Of the roughly 3 million women who visit Glamour.com, 70 percent are single or divorced. This is obviously an ideal market for Match.com to offer their service too. Plus a large percentage of Glamour readers are between the ages of 20 and 50. This age range is the prime users of online dating sites. From this 2 year deal Glamour will receive a percentage of the revenue from people who sign up for this Match.com extended dating service called Glamour Matchmaker.

When singles log into Glamour Matchmaker they will find specially chosen profiles which are organized by personality types. These personality types will be created by the staff at Glamour and will include names like "Adventure Seeker" and "Foxy Bohemian".

Glamour Matchmaker is expected to go online sometime this month.

For more on the story, read The Wall Street Journal. To find out more about the dating site which partnered with Glamour, check out our Match.com review.

Here is another dating profile story. This one involves claims that 2 rival dating sites (Dating Network Limited and Xfactor Online Dating Limited) in the United Kingdom have stolen 9,000 profiles from the dating site Guardian Soulmates (which is run by the Guardian Newspaper). The Guardian has sued these dating sites in the High Court of Justice in London and says:

... that the actions violate its rights under EU law, which give the builders and owners of databases special protections over and above copyright law.

The Guardian has two main issues with the stolen profiles. First, they want to protect their member's privacy, and second, they do not people to think that they have a commercial relationship with the 2 accused dating sites.

For more on this story, read The Register.

The Online Dating Insider found a site that sells dating profiles to other dating sites. Apparently they have over 6 million profiles with pictures from 170 dating sites that they own. Not to be out done, there is another service which allows you to buy Facebook Friends/Fans and Twitter Followers if you want as well.

This is why you need to research a dating site before you join. No one in their right mind would want to join a dating site that is filled with profiles that were purchased and are not directly connected to real people.