Dating Services

PlentyOfFish.com has had some features updated last weekend and has dropped the paid virtual gifts. The virtual gifts lasted a little more than a month and a half. The only reason given according to Markus on his blog for dropping them was, "not really core to what we are doing". Markus has been looking for more ways to make money on his site and this was his first foray into offering a paid feature on PlentyOfFish.com. Obviously people didn't use the paid virtual gifts to often. I'm thinking the prices where to high. It cost between $12 to $30 to send a virtual flower to a member. Maybe lowering the prices by at least half would have made a difference?

I'm thinking Markus still has some ideas up his sleeve for other paid features on his dating site. Maybe charging for better placement in search results or a profile highlighted option?

David Evans of the Online Dating Insider, had an interview with Mandy Ginsberg who is the Match.com GM for North America. She let David know about a few things that will be coming to Match.com in 2009. The main thing we have to look forward too is the new Platinum membership package. Not much is know yet, but apparently Platinum members will be able to contact all member types, including free users. This means members now have the ability to communicate with anyone on Match.com and they will not have to worry if the user can reply back or not without paying first. Other dating sites have started to allow this and I am glad to see Match.com following suit.

I could of sworn I wrote about Match.com's Platinum package before but I couldn't find anything mentioned on my site. Through a Google search I did find what I was looking for. Match.com currently does have a Platinum package. You can find it here and I believe it was started a couple years ago. It currently is a premium matchmaking service offered by Match.com but is not directly tied to the dating site. The service is only available in Dallas, Texas where the Match.com head office is located. This is a personalized service where you and a matchmaker work one on one to find your ideal match. I wonder if Match.com will be either dropping this service or renaming it to avoid confusion?

Recipient of Gold
Match.com

Recipient of Silver
eHarmony

Recipient of Bronze
Yahoo! Personals

We closed the 2008 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll yesterday (Jan. 12) with a total of 600 votes from the public. This is almost 150 more votes than last year's Single's Choice Awards which ran roughly the same amount of time. I'm glad to see user participation up this year for our most important award. We started the 2008 poll in October, for 2009 we plan to start it in September as we did for 2007. This way we hope to get the Awards Summary finished by the end of the year instead of January like this year.

We did two things different this year. First we included 10 dating sites instead of 8 as with the year before. Second, we are giving the top 3 dating sites an award, Gold for first place, Silver for second and Bronze for third. We decided to do this since there is not a huge percentage difference between first and second place and it also gives an idea to the public what other dating sites singles also consider as a good choice to join.

The Gold 2008 Singles's Choice Award recipient is Match.com. This is the second year in a row that they are the winner of this award and it is also the second award for them this year as well. Match.com also won our Editor's Top Pick - Overall Award. Of the 600 votes received, Match.com got 160 votes which is over a quarter of all the votes. Smart advertising, a good designed interface and communication tools makes this site a popular choice for singles everywhere.

The recipient of the Silver Singles's Choice Award for 2008 is eHarmony. This dating site, which is famous for its automated matching system, won the award this year for the Editor's Top Pick - Match System Award. eHarmony has 132 votes which is 22 percent of the total vote and just 4.67 percent less votes than Match.com.

Finally, the Bronze 2008 Singles's Choice Award recipient is Yahoo! Personals. This is our first award for Yahoo. They had 12.83 percent of the total vote, less than half of what Match.com received but 5 percent more than 4th place which received only 7.83 percent of the vote. With the Yahoo name behind this dating service, a well designed service and a new 6 month guarantee this year, makes this online dating site our readers 3rd choice.

This year's standings for the Single's Choice award for all dating sites in the poll are (click the dating site name to read our full review):

1. Match.com
2. eHarmony
3. Yahoo! Personals
4. SinglesNet.com
5. FriendFinder.com
6. Lavalife
7. PerfectMatch.com
8. True.com
9. Chemistry
10. Date.com

We received 30 percent more votes this year for the Single's Choice Award and we would like to thank everyone for your participation.

Back in June 2007, a lawsuit was filed against True.com (TrueBeginnings) by Thomas Wong at the District Court of Dallas County, Texas. Mr. Wong at that time (and I believe he still is) was represented by the law firms Tycko & Zavareei LLP and Crews, Shepherd & McCarty LLP. The lawsuit is primarily about the billing and renewal practices of True.com and the difficulties members have in canceling their accounts.

The Online Dating Insider has posted new information regarding this lawsuit. True.com’s motion for summary judgment was denied on December 3rd, 2008 and Mr. Wong's class action lawsuit will now be able to move forward.

For information on the original filing in 2007 visit The Earth Times.

On Wednesday January 7th Lavalife announced their search for Canada's 10 most eligible singles. This is the third year in a row for the event.

All singles have to do is sign up for free to become a member of Lavalife.com, have a great photo and a creative and engaging "In My Own Words" profile. The deadline to enter is Tuesday, February 3, 2009.

On February 18, the judges will announce 30 semi-finalists. At this point the public can visit Lavalife and vote for Lavalife's 2009 Top 10 finalists. On March 11th Lavalife will announce the 10 winners.

The winners will receive a 3 day trip to Toronto and tickets to Lavalife's Red Hot Affair. The grand prize is $10,000 and the runner up will receive a all-inclusive trip for two to Negril, Jamaica, courtesy of Bel Air Travel.

For the full press release, read it at Newswire. For more information on this online dating site, read our Lavalife review.

Recipient
Passion.com

This award was an easy decision once again this year, no other site even comes close to what is offered by this dating / hook-up site. The Editor's choice for the Top Pick - Sexy Award goes to Passion.com. This dating community continues to blow away the competition with the features offered and the number of members they have, which now totals more than 25 million. At most times of the day there will be more than 100,000 men and women online looking for intimate encounters and discreet relationships. Passion.com is part of the FriendFinder Network which was recently bought by Penthouse.

Passion.com is a very active community and there are a number of ways for members to express themselves. There are currently 371 thousand personal blogs and over 125 thousand special interest groups of which 2.5 million people have joined. Web cameras have also become a large part of this adult dating site experience. Members can have video introductions as well as chat and IM with their webcams. Of course photos are a big part of the site as well. Most typical dating sites have members who post usually from 1 to 3 photos. At Passion.com you will find a large number of members who have posted 10 or more photos. This site just teems with activity and member participation. There is not another site on the internet where you will find more sexy personals.

At Passion.com they have a thriving international community. Besides English this dating site is available in 10 other languages. Countries that have at least a million members at Passion.com include the United States, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Read our review of Passion.com for more information about this dating service or visit Passion.com directly.

This Years Runner Up for this award is: Lavalife.