General News

Unusual, Strange, weird and wacky dating sites have been making headlines lately. Here is our top ten (or so) list:

Date Someone from Jail

You got a couple of choices here. There is Women Behind Bars for all of you single law abiding men out there. Not to be out done, there is also Meet-an-Inmate which has personal ads for both men and women who are incarcerated.

Science

If you think your DNA can be your matchmaker, try Scientific Match.

Adult Fetish Anyone?

While I will not link to these sites directly, a Google search should find them for you easily enough. We have three for you. There is Daily Diapers and Diaper Mates which attempts to match up people interested in acting like babies, and Pounced, which is a personals site for people who like to wear furry costumes.

Health

On one end of the spectrum you have EcoDater which is for singles who are vegetarians and all around environmentally friendly. At the other end you have 420 Dating for those people who like to smoke. You then also have Gothic Match which is designed for Goth and Vampires (which is not too healthy as far as their victims are concerned 😉).

Your Job and Hobby

Finally, you have those dating sites for people who share a profession or hobby. Farmers Only is probably the most funny one out there, and then there is Date Craft which is dating for gamers (think Warcraft).

The Wrap Up

While it is fun to look for weird and wacky dating sites, I am not sure how popular any of these services really are. While researching a few of them on the internet I can't imagine any of them having more than a few hundred active members who are currently using the site in any one month.

Entrepreneur Magazine has released their Annual 100 Brilliant Ideas list. For the Seniors category, Florence Hendersons FloH Club received a nod for offering telephone based tech-support service designed for seniors. A dating site called "Dating for Seniors" (DatingForSeniors.com), was one of 9 other ideas put on the watch list for this category. This was the only dating site mentioned on the entire list.

I can understand why a dating site for seniors was put on the list since this online dating niche is a growing market (thought not a new idea). What I am not sure on is why this particular seniors dating site was picked. There are other much more popular senior dating services like SeniorPeopleMeet.com and Lavalife Prime.

For more information on this story, visit Entrepreneur Magazines 100 Brilliant Ideas list. The senior category is on page 4. For other dating sites which are designed for single seniors, check out our list of Dating Sites for Seniors.

The other eHarmony dating sites had their free weekend at the end of May. eHarmony Australia is celebrating theirs this weekend. Starting today, Friday June 11th and until Monday June 14th, 2010 eHarmony Australia (eHarmony.com.au) is having their free communication weekend. During this time all members of eHarmony Australia will be able to communicate with each other at no cost (with no credit card required). This 4 day event is happening during the Queen’s Birthday holiday which makes it ideal for singles to try out the dating site as it will be extra busy this weekend. Fasttracking the guided communication process and profile photo's are not included in this promotion.

The last free weekend at eHarmony Australia was 4 months ago on Valentine's Day. Check out our eHarmony review for more information on this popular Australian dating service.

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.