General News

Ever wish you could get a date with that guy or girl in your friend's Facebook Friends list? Well, now you can with Thread, the latest revolution in online dating. It takes the "stranger" factor out of the equation!

Just over a year old, Thread is revolutionizing the way people date via Facebook. The app allows you to peruse your friends' Facebook Friends and request introductions. Hence, there's not more "creepy stranger" aspect of Facebook dating as you're actually introduced by a mutual friend who knows both of you.

With over 400 million users already on Facebook, Thread offers a few potential advantages to the world of online dating that current paid membership sites don't. Profiles are already existing, so you don't have to create yet another online profile. When seeking an introduction, you're asking someone who already knows you to introduce you to someone they already know - it's endorsement-based marketing at its best and the way we do business in many other parts of our lives (so why not dating?).

The company is already seeing a fair amount of traction from current Facebook users. Apparently, many people were already in the practice of cutting and pasting Facebook profiles of friends and sending them off to other friends. Thread has enabled and put into a convenient package the ability to do what people were already doing in real life: introducing people they knew to one another.

The site is currently free as the company is determining how they'll monetize their offerings. If you'd like to explore the potential behind Thread, just visit their site and connect with your Facebook profile. And yes - it's that simple! Report back and let us know how you like it. See if there's a common thread between your friends and their friends for your romantic life.

Compatible Partners is having a free communication weekend this Memorial Day holiday weekend. It starts Friday May, 28th, 2010 and will run to Sunday May 31st, 2010. If you are looking for a same-sex relationship then this would be a good time to try out Compatible Partners since you can not only review your matches but you can communicate with them as well through the guided communication process. FastTracking the guided communication process and viewing of members photos are only available to paid members during this event

We expect this to be a busy holiday weekend for Compatible Partners as everyone will be on trying out the service. The last event was held in March also proved to be popular (see Story). This is Free Communication Weekend number four that we have tracked for Compatible Partners.

For more information on this dating service, please read our Compatible Partners review.

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.