Online Dating

Match.com and Meetic have created an equal partnership together in Latin America where the two dating companies will be combining their resources. According to the CEO of Match.com, Greg Blatt:

By combining ParPerfeito's strength in the Brazilian market with Match.com's presence in the rest of Latin America, we believe we're best positioned to drive that expansion and create an asset of meaningful value. We're confident from our work together in Europe that further partnering with Meetic will be a productive experience.

The online dating market is less mature in Latin American than the larger North America and Europe markets. By making a combined push now both companies feel that they will come out ahead in this merging dating market. Match.com will control the new entity's operations and will pay Meetic $3 million in cash at the closing (March 15, 2010). I am not sure what Meetic's responsibility in all this is but, I will assume that they must be required to push traffic to the new venture. At the beginning of the fourth year of operations Match.com has reserved the right to buy Meetic's share of the entity at fair market value.

When we receive more news about this new entity (like the name of the website) we will be sure to pass it on.

For more on the story read the press release.

Match.com currently offers their dating application on the iPhone (see Story), the Palm Pixi (see Story) and the Palm Pre (see Story), or so I thought! While researching a story about the Google Android OS I see Match.com now offer a dating application for the Blackberry phone. As with the other Match.com smart phone applications you can browse for singles, send and receive emails and wink at members. Blackberry App users can also upload photos and edit their profiles. These smart phone apps for the most part allow you to do everything you can on the website. As far as I can tell the Blackberry Match.com dating application was released sometime late January, 2010.

We also just got news that Match.com is currently working on a dating application for Android phones. Once this app is completed in the coming months Match.com will have almost 90 percent of the world's smart phones covered with their dating application. When you combine this with their current matchMobile service (which has been around for a number of years now for regular cell phones) you can tell Match.com has taken a special interest in mobile dating.

For more on the story read Forbes. To find out more about mobile dating applications on Match.com, read out review of Match.com.

It's Just Lunch recently shared their survey about dating plans and dating etiquette for Super Bowl Sunday. Here is what the matchmaking service found out:

• 58% of singles say that they would bring a first date to a Super Bowl party.
• 74% of men and 82% of women stated that they will root against their date's team at the Super Bowl party.
• 65% of men and 72% of women will not stick to their diets during the game.
• Don't talk about anything except football. 52% of singles would try to turn the conversation back to football and if they persisted in non football talk, then 31% of singles would never ask them out again to a sporting event.
• If you had a ticket to the Super Bowl, 46% of men would prefer to bring a date rather than their best friend to the actual game. For women it was 37%.

For the full story read the press release and for more information on the matchmaking service which sponsored the survey, read our review of It's Just Lunch.

The winner of our Editor's Top Pick - Christian Award for 2009, ChristianCafe.com, has recently updated their dating service. Due to members requests this dating site has added additional options to the 'Children at home?' question on their dating profile. In addition to 'Yes' and 'No', members can now select 'Sometimes' and 'Weekends'.

ChristanCafe.com also have added a new question to their profile which asks members if they are willing to relocate. Answers to this question includes 'Yes', 'No' and ' Possibly'. Existing member's answers will default to 'Possibly'. Of course, existing members can always update the answer by editing their profile. This new field is also searchable when you are looking for matches.

The last new update is the 'Who's Viewed Me' list is now editable. This means if you don't want others to know you've viewed their profile, you can now remove entries from their 'Who's Viewed Me' lists. This is done on the Profile Settings page which is accessible from the Profile menu.

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

This coming weekend at Chemistry.com they will be offering all members the ability to communicate for free. This means starting Friday Feb. 5th, 2010 to Sunday, Feb. 7th, 2010 new and existing members will be able to email the matches Chemistry sends them for no cost.

Chemistry.com is a dating site which offers an in-depth matchmaking system. You don't search for matches on this dating site, Chemistry sends them to you based on what you entered in your profile and what combination of personality attributes their research shows creates a healthy and long relationship. Dr. Helen Fisher is a famous Biological Anthropologist who helped Chemistry.com create their unique matchmaking and communication process.

This is Chemistry's fifth time running this promotion with the last Chemistry.com Flirtathon happening in the beginning of December, in 2009 (see Story). For more information on this matchmaking service, read our Chemistry.com review.

It looks like the gay dating site ManCrunch.com took a page from AshleyMadison.com play book. Last year AshleyMadison.com created an ad for the Super Bowl which was rejected by the TV Networks (see Story). They received a lot of free press because of it. This year it must be ManCrunch.com's turn. Here is the TV commercial in question:

Note: Unfortunately the source to the video and/or image which once was displayed here has since been removed by the authors for an unknown reason.

While I was in no way offended by the commercial and I did find it comical, the problem is the production values are just not up to the standards for a show like the Super Bowl.

ManCrunch.com spokesman Dominic Friesen told the New York Post that CBS had said all the commercial spots for the Super Bowl were sold. Dominic Friesen felt this was not true and that there were being discriminated against.