General News

Last week JDate officially announced the launch of JDate Mobile in Beta. JDate Mobile is compatible with any web enabled phone, including all of the smart phones like the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry. When you sign up for JDate Mobile you will get instant text alerts when:

• You receive email or some other form of communication.
• Someone views your profile.
• If you get added to someone's Hot List.

These text alerts are free to all members. Current subscribers of JDate will also be able to send and receivie email messages right from your phone.

For more information on this dating site, check out our review of JDate.com.

We heard that OkCupid has sent some emails out to their better looking members letting them know that they have been placed higher in the search results because of their attractiveness. They will also be matched with other members of similarly rated attractiveness.

Say it isn't so OkCupid!

For a dating site which prides itself on its unique way of matching singles through the use of quizzes, this approach makes OkCupid seem more like a hook-up site instead of a dating site which values real relationships. Obviously attraction plays a role in relationships but to automatically push a profile higher because of how well a photo is rated seems one-dimensional.

To find out more about this dating site, read our OkCupid review.

Recently Yahoo! Personals members were told that Match.com will become the exclusive dating service of Yahoo. Members could either migrate to Match.com or continue to use Yahoo Personals until July 21st, 2010 (when the site will close for good).

Spark.com has extended an offer to ex-Yahoo! Personals Members. They can receive a 1 month free membership to Spark.com. With this membership you will be able to use the entire site for free, including communication. One thing Spark.com has over most other popular dating services is they allow free members to communicate with paid members. This means if you are a full member of Spark.com you know that all members can communicate with you. To take advantage of this offer all you need to do is log onto Spark.com and create a free profile. You then need to email the Match.com Welcome Notice along with your Spark.com username to freecommunication@spark.net and within 24 hours you will receive your free membership.

This is a good deal since Yahoo members now can have a membership not only on Match.com but Spark.com as well. Plus you can also take advantage of a similar free offer at ChristianCafe.com. This means ex-Yahoo Personals members have the option to receive 3 memberships at 3 of the more popular dating services for the price of one.

To find out more about this dating site, read our Spark.com review.

USA Today revealed that the Zoosk TV commerical we talked about last week will begin airing this evening. Expect to find it on such TV channels as Animal Planet and ESPN.

We also learned that the Zoosk Dating App on the iPhone is in the top 30 of the most popular free applications for the month of May (it is actually #30). We also found out that an Android version of the dating app is due out in July.

Finally, we also learned something about where the name Zoosk came from. Founders Alex Mehr and Shayan Zadeh had wanted a word that contained 2 Os like other popular internet companies like Facebook, Google and Yahoo. They liked the sound of the made up word Zoosk, which does not have any specific meaning.

To find out more about the dating site, read our review of Zoosk.

We just got word and have confirmed that Plenty of Fish is currently down at the moment. It looks like it has been offline for at least the last hour (6:30pm EST). If you visit the dating site now you will receive one of the following server error messages:

• Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)
• Server is too busy

It looks like the server is accessible (hence the available error message) but the web service (IIS) is down.

We will update this post when we get more information.

Update #1: As of around 12:00am EST (May31) we have had reports that POF is back up. Though it still appears to be down for us.

Update #2: As of 7:00am Plenty of Fish is back up again. Not sure what happened but everything seems working normally. According to our estimates POF was down for approximately 10 to 12 hours.

For more details on this free dating site, check out our review of Plenty of Fish.

Match.com's free dating site DownToEarth.com was launched in early 2009 but by October of the same year the dating site was taken down and replaced by Stir.com. Stir was aimed more at the college age crowd as it allowed singles to more easily find each other and meet up at bars (think a social networking website for the club scene). Well, as of the middle of this month both Stir.com and DownToEarth.com redirect to SinglesNet.com, which Match.com just recently acuired.

For the moment It seems Match.com has stopped with experimenting with new dating and social networking type sites and instead has opted with acquiring other dating sites and creating partnerships (like the latest one with Yahoo! Personals).