General News

It looks like the domain name Dating.com was sold yesterday at auction on DomainFest for $1.75 million US. The domain was sold by Oversee.net to an unknown buyer. Currently the Dating.com domain hosts a World Dating Partners while label dating site. I wonder what the new owner plans on doing with the domain? I am going to assume they have plans to launch a dating service since that type of website potentially could generate the most profits. With the money the buyers spent on the domain it looks like the new owner plans to invest a fair bit of money in the new service. It should be interesting to see what they come up with.

For more on the story read TechCrunch.

PerfectMatch.com has added a News feature to their member's homepage. It is similar to how Facebook news feed works. Anytime you get a new match or if your existing matches update their profiles or pictures a news item will be added to the feed with a thumbnail image and a link to the member's profile. Other member actions including if a member adds you to their bookmarks, sends you an email or sends you an ice breaker will get added to this feed as well. Ordering all of these news items by date and listing them on the home page makes it easier for members to find and interact with each other.

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

The popular Christian dating site, ChristianCafe.com, released an iPhone dating app (which also works on the iPad) this week. With this App, members can search and view profile information and photos of other singles. They can also send and receive messages and winks as well. Non-members who have never visited the website before can download the app and use it to create a basic profile and sign up for the 10 day free trial. To download the ChristianCafe.com app for your iphone visit iTunes.

Here is a short video of the ChristianCafe iPhone Application in action:

Members on the go who have a Google Android phone are in luck too. ChristianCafe expects to release an app soon for Android.

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

There have been numerous studies as far back as 1858 which looked at if marriage is good for people's health. Most of them concluded that on average, married people appear to be healthier and live longer than unmarried people. Studies on marriage in Sweden and Netherlands found that married people are less likely to develop cancer, have heart attacks, die from a violent death and be in a car accident. Studies like these have even affected government policy. The "Healthy Marriage Initiative" was setup by the US government and received $150 million a year from 2006 to 2010. This program worked on projects like reducing divorce and these projects routinely mentioned the health benefits of married couples.

Recent studies have found a flip side to all this though. If you have a troubled relationship with your partner the health benefits disappear. This marital stress actually can lead to a person's health being worse off than before he or she was married. One study even suggested that stress in a marriage can be as bad for the heart as smoking.

Find out more about how marriage affects your health by reading the New York Times. For dating sites where people look for long term relationships and/or marriage, check out our Popular Match System category.

There are many articles online which talk about dating safety and scammers. I found one recently which had a number of good points on how to protect your credit. We have talked about most of these tips before but it is always good to review them every now and then, not just to protect yourself online, but offline as well. I also included some additional safety tips of my own.

Leave the Income Field Blank

Most dating sites allow you to specify your annual income and your area of employment. Revealing this information may make you a potential target of some scammers.

Style of Writing

Constant spelling and grammar mistakes combined with broken English are a sure sign that the person you are emailing may not be the person he or she says they are. If they are from a city you are familiar with, ask them a question about it that someone only living there would know.

We talked briefly about TangoWire's new Virtual Dating feature last month. This week we learned some stats from the free Virtual Dating Thursday held at TangoWire on April 8th. This successful promotion resulted in 30 times more virtual dates on Thursday than on an average day. The dating site also received a 20 percent boost in new registrations showing that people are interested in trying new online dating technology. From a revenue generating business perspective, the free Virtual Dating Thursday also resulted in 50 percent more sales that day as well as continued increase sales in the days following.

For those of you interested in trying out TagoWire you will be glad to hear that free members can use the communication tools to reply to all emails and accept invitations to Chat and Virtual Date requests. For more information on this dating site, read our review of TangoWire.