General News

According to the Toronto Star, AshleyMadison.com has seen a huge influx of female newlyweds (women married 3 years or less). In March of 2009 there were 3,184 women in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) that were actively using the service. In March of 2010 the number had increased 4 times to 12,442.

When the service was first launched back in 2001 everything from the name to the color scheme of the website was designed to attract women. CEO Noel Biderman knew men would join the site easily enough; it was the women he was worried about. It seems Mr. Biderman did not have much to be concerned about. A number of experts are saying that the female infidelity rate has increased by 50 percent in the last 10 years. This is due to that fact that women now have much more exposure to potential partners through work and the internet than a generation ago. While men are cheating more as well, research suggests that about twice as many men on average cheat than women.

According to the Star, here are the Ashley Madison membership numbers as of March 2010:

Location	Females	Males	Total	Total in 2009
Greater Toronto Area	48,409	111,202	159,611	82,959
All of Canada, U.S., U.K. and Australia	1,511,879	3,898,468	5,410,347	2,802,664

Executive Director of BlackPeopleMeet.com, Ron Worthy, spoke with EurWeb recently about online dating and what makes his African American dating service stand out.

BlackPeopleMeet was launched in 2002 and has become very popular with singles aged 35 to 45. The dating site has almost 1 million unique visitors a month and now reaches 4 percent of the total Black population in the United States. There are currently a few percentage points more women on BlackPeopleMeet than men but when compared to the real world (as opposed to the online world) where you have 7 or 8 women per man, online dating for the African American women becomes a much better option to find a partner.

While ultimately BlackPeopleMeet was designed for black people looking for other black people, other races can be found on the dating service. BlackPeopleMeet does not discriminate and allows people of all races to join who are interested in meeting a single African American for a relationship.

BlackPeopleMeet is a dating site for people, to find people like themselves. For more information on this dating site, read our review of BlackPeopleMeet.com.

Last year was the year of adultery claims The Daily Targum. This is due to that several high profile celebrities like Tiger Woods and Jesse James got caught cheating on their wives. I would also add to this claim that dating sites like Ashley Madison which promote infidelity made this a hot topic in the media as well.

Chemistry.com's relationship expert, Dr. Helen Fisher, has said that adultery has roots not only in psychology but biology as well. Some of the psychological reasons for adultery she gives include:

• Solving a sex problem.
• Looking for more attention.
• Revenge.
• Supplement a marriage.
• More excitement.

Dr. Fisher also makes the point that there is a biological side to adultery. She states that the brain has two systems with one linked to attachment and love and one which is the sex drive. In some people these two systems are not well connected which enables people to more easily cheat without regard for their partner's feelings. Dr. Fisher research also indicates that a gene may be partially responsible for this. Researchers in Sweden have found a “cheating” gene in a study of 552 pairs of twins and their spouses. People without the gene were more likely to have a successful marriage. If people had two copies of the gene, the researchers found that the couples were more likely to have a crisis in the marriage.

To find out more information about the dating site in which Dr. Helen Fisher help design the matching system, read our review of Chemistry.

FriendFinder's Passion.com now offers a Gold and Silver membership guarantee. If you do not hook-up with someone in 3 months, you will get an additional 3 months for free.

Here are the rules for the guarantee as stated on the Passion.com dating site:

• Maintain a gold or silver account status for three months
• Log in at least once a month
• Send at least 3 emails a month
• Create at least one blog or group post each month

The rules seem pretty straight forward, since all they ask of the member is to actually use the site. If you have followed the rules and have had no success, then all you need to do to claim your 3 months is email Passion.com's customer service. This offer is valid once per customer. Please confirm the guarantee rules on Passion.com before you sign up to this dating service as they may have changed since the writing of this post.

To find out more about this dating site, read our review of Passion.com.

Executive Dating LLC seems to be in some legal trouble. Barrie Turner of British Columbia Canada is alleged to be in connection with the company which has over 200 dating sites offering executive dating services. Turner was arrested after he crossed the border to pick up mail at a U.S. post office box where customers are told to send payments.

In the last 5 years there have been more than 100 people who have filed consumer complaints about the company for fraud. They accused Executive Dating of not providing any legitimate matchmaking services that they had paid for. It is estimated that the Executive Dating sites received more than $1.2 million in revenue.

For more information check out our forum topic about the matter.

Early in March Great Hill Partners offered to take Spark Networks private by buying all of the shares they did not own for $3.10 per share (see Story). Great Hill currently owns about 25 percent of the stock so the deal would have cost them about $64 million. Spark Networks said they would consider the offer, much to the dismay of a number of share holders.

Yesterday, a Spark Networks special committee on the offer unanimously rejected the proposal from Great Hill Equity Partners. No reason was given about why they rejected the offer but they did say that they will continue to consider other alternatives.

For more on the story, read the Spark Networks press release.