Dating Services

I heard on the radio today that in Canada, the television network CTV is not airing The Ashley Madison Agency commercial during the Super Bowl. The commercial has been approved by The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to contain no false advertising and meets with the standards set for a commercial airing in that time of day.

Known worldwide, Ashley Madison is a dating site which allows married people to find each other and hook-up. According to the web site they have over 3 million members. AshleyMadison.com is based in Canada and has run several late night TV and radio commercials on such US networks as FOX. The owner also has appeared on CNN several times for interviews.

Here is the banned Super Bowl commercial with the tag line "When Divorce isn't an Option"

There is nothing wrong with the commercial except for the fact of how the husband and wife are treating each other. Of course, there is also the message that it is ok to cheat on your husband or wife if they are treating you badly. The problem is, I don't see this commercial being much different than daytime soaps or TV shows like Desperate Housewives which one of their main reoccurring themes is people cheating on their spouses.

I am in the midst of setting up a new category for free dating sites and it will initially include reviews for the following 3 free dating services.

• DownToEarth.com
• OkCupid.com
• PlentyOfFish.com

These dating reviews will be setup the same way as our other reviews and users will have the ability to submit their own reviews of these dating services as well. I hope to get everything together by the end of February.

I just notice that Chemistry is going to offer a 48 hour Chemistry Flirt-a-thon. Starting Wednesday, January 28 to Thursday, January 29 all members will be able to flirt, communicate and connect for FREE. This means tomorrow, as a free member, you will have almost all the features a paid member has. I can't think of a better time to try out see if this popular matchmaking service would be a good fit for you.

This is the first time, as far as we know that Chemistry has run this type of promotion for all of North America. Chemistry's main competitor, eHarmony, has run similar free promotions but there's usually fall on the weekends or holidays. The one difference between the two promotions is Chemistry's is open to all users and not just new members like with eHarmony.

Read our Chemistry.com review for more information on this popular dating site.

India’s largest online matrimonial services, Shaadi.com announced a partnership with Star Plus (an Indian entertainment television channel) to create a new entertainment and reality TV show that helps singles from India to find a partner for marriage. The show will document the participants from the initial meeting, until the wedding, and everything in between.

The show is open to all eligible single male and female Indian residents, who can speak fluent Hindi and are aged between 22 to 25 (for females) and 22 to 30 (for males) ... To register for the show, eligible participants can log onto Shaadi.com and fill in a simple form online. Registrations will be open from 15th to 30th January 2009.

I'm not sure why Shaadi.com released the press release today since the registration time is almost up (3 more days).

For more information on one of India's most popular online dating and matrimonial sites, read our Shaadi.com review.

According to NewMediaAge, eHarmony is going to be doing a big marketing campaign in the United Kingdom. This is the first major marketing campaign for the UK version of the dating site, which launched last July (see story). For the first month or so eHarmony UK was offering free 90 day memberships to help populate their database with profiles. The digital marketing agency which eHarmony hired called Essence, will soon be launching a display, search and affiliate campaign. NewMediaAge also estimates eHarmony's US marketing budget at $160 million.

To find out more information about this popular dating service, read our eHarmony review.

Dr. Helen Fisher was at the iDate conference which was recently held in Miami. Dr. Helen Fisher is Chemistry's chief scientific advisor for their match system. David Evans of The Online Dating Insider shared with us some information he learned from her keynote speech:

• Dr. Helen Fisher studied 178k people on Chemistry.com.
• The Chemistry questionnaire has been taken by 7 million in 39 countries.

Chemistry currently has 4 million paid and registered users (info from their about us page on IAC) so it looks like just under half never signed up after the profile questionnaire.

For more information on this personality matching dating site, read our [staticpage: Chemistry review].