General News

I was notified by a user and have just confirmed that the dating site Plenty of Fish is down. I tried accessing the website from a number of countries (using proxy servers) and received a connection timeout error in all cases for both Plenty of Fish domains (www.plentyoffish.com and www.pof.com). It looks like the website has been down for at least an hour now (8:30 am EST).

A connection timeout error with a website usually indicates a problem with accessing the web server (it took too long to respond). This means something probably happened to the internet connection or with the web servers hardware. The last time POF was down for a while was June of 2009. This was due to a power failure (see Story) and resulted in about 8 hours of downtime.

On a related note the owner of Plenty of Fish, Markus Frind just got married last weekend. This may mean he is on his honeymoon and not close to home which could result in Plenty Of Fish taking a little while longer to get up and running again. I expect Plenty Of Fish to be online again sometime late morning or early afternoon.

We will update this post when we get more news. If you have any news please comment on this story.

Update #1: That didn't take too long. PlentyofFish.com is now back online as of roughly 9:58 am eastern standard time.

The Archived tab is a relatively new feature of the eHarmony communication process. When you know you are not interested in communicating with a Match that eHarmony gives you, just click on "Archive this Match" link. The Match will then be moved from your New Matches section too the Archive Tab. There is also a new auto-archive feature that goes along with the tab that will (as the name suggests) auto archive any Match that closed communication with you. These archived Matches will still appear in the Match Updates list if any one of them updates their profile information or photos.

If you find a Match in your updates that you want to reconnect with because the update renewed your interest, eHarmony does allow you to un-archive any Match to continue on with the guided communication process.

If you want to find out more about this dating site, read our eHarmony review.

Match.com revenue for quarter 1, 2010 was down 1% to $89.3 million. In the same quarter last year revenue was $90.1. The acquisition of SinglesNet this quarter and People Media in late 2009 did not quite meet the loss of revenue from Match.com Europe sale to Meetic. Taking these transactions out of the equation revenue for Match.com grew 8 percent. Increase sales came mainly from business in the United States.

Here is the complete IAC Q1 2010 Report For more information on the dating sites owned by IAC, read our Match.com review and our Chemistry review.

Related Story: Match.com Fourth Quarter 2009 Financials

Spark Networks is one of the few dating companies to be a Better Business Bureau (BBB) Accredited business. They have been one since 1999. Being a BBB accredit business means that the:

... BBB has determined that the business meets accreditation standards which include a commitment to make a good faith effort to resolve any consumer complaints.

Why is belonging to the BBB important? The BBB is an international recognized independent organization that allows consumers to not only voice their own opinions about a company but it also allows them to file a complaint which will be monitored by the BBB on how the accredited business responds. If you check out Spark Networks BBB report you can see the number of complaints they have had in the last 36 months and the type of response which was given. The response of Spark Networks directly reflects their BBB rating. This doesn't mean Spark Networks has to comply with every consumer request but they do need to follow the contract they entered in with their customers or risk receiving a lower BBB rating.

Match.com released a interesting study on April 20, 2010 about America's dating behavior. Back in 2009 and early 2010 Match.com commissioned Chadwick Martin Bailey to conduct 3 studies. With these studies, 3 surveys were created to collect data:

• Marriage Survey - A survey of people who were married within the last 5 years.
• Online Dating Survey - A survey of people who have used dating sites within the last 5 years.
• General Survey - A survey of people who are single or are in a new relationship.

Over 11,000 people participated in these surveys. All are 18 years or older and live in the United States. The General Survey's participants also had income of at least $30,000.

From these surveys Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB) concluded several interesting findings.

Marriage Survey - 7000 participants

• 38 percent of couples who married in the last year met through work or school.
• 27 percent of couples who married in the last year met through a friend or family.
• In the last 3 years (and year), 17 percent of couples who married met on a online dating site. (1 in 6 couples)
• Bars, Clubs and other social events counted for only 8 percent of marriages.
• Churches counted for 4 percent of marriages.

Online Dating Survey - 3000 participants

• Match.com counted for 30 percent of all marriages of people who met on dating sites. The 2nd ranked competitor was at 16%, followed by the 3rd at 15 percent.
• 35 percent of Match.com members had a relationship of 3 months or more. The 2nd ranked competitor was at 17%, followed by the 3rd at 16 percent.

General Survey - 2525 participants

• 20 percent of single people have dated someone they met on a dating site. (1 in 5 singles)
• 20 percent of people in a new committed relationship met on a dating site. (1 in 5 singles)

Click here (pdf file) for the full Match.com and Chadwick Martin Bailey study. To find out more about this dating site, read our Match.com review.

Yahoo! Personals is offering a new promotion to members. You can now get these special prices below until May 27, 2010.

Yahoo! Personals Special Offer:

• $11.66 per month for 6 months, a 61% savings. $69.96 billed every 6 months.
• $14.98 per month for 3 months, a 50% savings. $44.95 billed every 3 months.
• $19.95 per month, a 33% savings. Billed monthly.

These prices are a significant savings over the existing $29.99 Yahoo! Personals charges for a 1 month membership.

To find out more about this dating site you should check out our review of Yahoo Personals.