Dating Services

Recipient
Match.com

Once again Match.com is the winner of the Editor's Top Pick - Over All, Award. This is the second year in a row for Match.com and, there are good reasons for this.

• While not as strong a pick as last year due to only marginal growth of members this year in North America, Match.com offers the largest number of high quality profiles by far. Internationally, Match has lept a head due in large to successful partnerships with a number of popular websites in South America and Europe. International members get a modified version of the dating site from North America. They tailor profile questions and searching criteria depending on what is important to singles in these countries and/or cultures.
• Match.com continues to innovate. Starting from last December, examples of this are; Match My Friends with testimonials, their foray into Facebook with the Little Black Book, the profile service MatchStudios, expanded cell service for Match Mobile, the Insiders Guide, and the Daily 5. Not everything was a success (The Little Black Book comes to mind) but they are one of the few dating sites to consistently offer their members major new features.
• Website design and interface improvements. Match.com's recent website redesign and their interface tweaks through out the year continue to improve usability. Their web interface offers new members a simple to use layout that doesn't get confusing, while still offering more experienced members the control they require over searching and profiles.

Match.com offers members a premium dating service. This has been their business for 13 years now, and year after year they have consistently been the dating site to join. People who choose Match.com will get the online dating tools required and access to one of the largest membership pools of singles looking to find their potential partner.

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

This Years Runner Up for this award is: eHarmony.

In the beginning of the year we took a look at a new Facebook application called the Little Black Book from Match.com. We were not overly impressed but, felt it did hold some promise. Being maybe a few weeks old at the time, the Little Black Book had 67 daily active users with about 600 total installed users. Our main complaints involved around the clunky user interface and browser compatibility problems.

A month later, David from the Online Dating Insider took a look at the application as well. At this time there was 240 daily active users. While not impressive numbers for a Facebook application, it was an improvement from when I had looked at it. In his review, David had a wish list of improvements and found the browser issues were still present.

Flash forward 11 months and the Little Black Book has disappeared from Facebooks application list. The last appearance I can find of it is a Google Cache page which was capture September 29, 2008. At this time there was only 100 monthly active users with a 1.6 out of 5 star rating. The reviews of the application were not pretty.

Did Match.com take down the application to redevelop and fix its problems or is it gone for good? I think it is in Match.com's best interest to forget about Facebook applications. A search for the term "Dating" on Facebook revealed that the most popular application has over 12 thousand active monthly users. Not a lot when you consider the 1.3 million paid users Match.com website had this past quarter. Match.com employees time would be better spent on other projects.

An article on The Wall Street Journal website reviews the negative side of eHarmony settling the New Jersey anti-discrimination complaint (see Story). The complaint was about same sex matching not being available on eHarmony.

Some eHarmony customers feel

that homosexual activists have succeeded in taking a private business hostage. Why should eHarmony have to serve every type of clientele? Do Jewish dating sites have to serve Christians? Can meat-eaters demand a hamburger at vegetarian restaurants?

These are all good points but are they relevant counter points in this same-sex matching case? It wouldn't really make sense for a Christian to join a Jewish dating site. The site is designed with the Jewish faith in mind and the members who joined it obviously want to find a partner who is Jewish and makes their religion an important part of their lives. If a Christian did join the site, there wouldn't be much there for them, plus there are plenty of Christian dating sites they could join instead. A popular Jewish dating site, JDate, doesn't allow you to select Catholic as your religious background but you can select "Willing to Convert" or "Will tell you later". I don't see this as discriminatory, towards Catholics, as there are plenty of Catholic dating sites to join. If there wasn't then, maybe it would be a different story. An extreme example of this type of thinking, would be going into a Jewish Synagogue and demanding they allow other religions to practice there.

This is a slippery slope. You shouldn't discriminate against race, age, sexual orientation, gender and religion. The question is what is not going far enough and what is going too far? Should we start cracking down on businesses that offer seniors discounts or ladies nights? I don't think so. Should eHarmony have offered same-sex matching? Probably...

Check out the full story at The Wall Street Journal.

A press release from Chemistry about the eHarmony New Jersey settlement, points out the fact that the dating matchmaking service Chemistry has always had an open mind and accepted singles looking for same sex partners. Thomas Enraght-Moony, CEO of Match.com and Chemistry.com is quoted as saying:

It's a shame that Dr. Neil Clark Warren's sudden acceptance came at the forced hand of the legal system.

With this release Chemistry is just taking advantage of eHarmony's reluctance with offering same sex matching. This issue has generated a lot of publicity in which Chemistry wants to be a part of. This is a marketing trend in which Chemistry started when they launched several TV commercials in the last year pointing out eHarmony only matches heterosexual singles.

The press release also points out, eHarmony has flip-flopped on the reasons why they don't offer gay matching. Reasons listed include that same-sex marriage is illegal in most states and eHarmony matching system is based only on information about heterosexual couples.

The Chemistry release mentions as well, gay users will still have to leave eHarmony and go to another site. I do have to wonder why eHarmony is starting a whole new site. Why not just make it a part of the main eHarmony dating site? Members of eHarmony cannot perform searches for singles and only receive matches from eHarmony themselves. So, members who want same-sex matches and members who want heterosexual matches would never mingle (if that is what they are worried about).

A judge in California has ordered eHarmony and the plaintiffs of a class action discrimination case into mediation. The two legal teams will now have to try and reach a settlement outside of court. Recently eHarmony settled a class action case in New Jersey (see Story) which resulted in some money to be paid out and a new same-sex matching site to be open called Compatible Partners. With the New Jersey settlement eHarmony has stated it makes the California case moot. The California plaintiffs say it doesn't go far enough. We will just have to wait and see what happens. The case is scheduled to go to trial October 2009, if no settlement agreement is reached. The lawyers for both sides plan to meet on December 3rd to decide on a mediator and the time required to reach an agreement.

For the full article visit PCMag.com.

November 18th, 2008 is the day that Match.com officially passed the 1 Billion winks sent, mark. A wink is used to notify other members you are interested in them without actually sending an email. Currently Match.com members send over 735,000 winks a day, worldwide.

A wink in my opinion is not the best way to notify someone you are interested. It basically puts the onus on the other single now to strike up a conversation through email (which almost never works). If you really want the best chances of getting someone's interest, send a well crafted email.

See our previous story on the subject . For more general information on this dating site, read our Match.com review.