Dating Services

Tom Smiley recently released on October 31, 2008 a case study in which he examines the number of fake profiles found on Craig' s List. Specifically, he took a look at all personal ads for woman seeking men in all United States cities for one day. This totalled 6,590 individual ads. In total he claims to have found that 5,564 of these personal ads appeared to be fake. This means only 16% of the ads he examined where real. Tom Smiley used 5 different methods to figure out if a personal ad was a fake. These methods were:

1. Dismissal of ads with pictures posted in multiple ads.
2. Dismissal of ads with three point randomizers.
3. Dismissal of ads with typical verbatim occurrences indicating variables in form letters.
4. Dismissal of ads that are obvious fraud.
5. Dismissal of ads that simply don't match headline w/content.

More Details can be found here on his methodology including examples. I'm not a big user of Craig's List and always thought their personals section wasn't the best place to visit to find someone to date. After reading Tom Smiley's case study I definitely wouldn't recommend Craig's List for dating to anyone.

For the full case study see Online Personals Fraud and you can view our Craig's List review.

In mid October we reported about (see Story) Perfect Match's Dr. Pepper Schwartz on the Bonnie Hunt Show. She was helping Bonnie's friend Holly by reviewing her profile and pictures and giving her some pointers to improve her online dating adventure. Starting last week and for the next 5 weeks Holly and her online dating experiences with PerfectMatch.com will be regularly featured on the Bonnie Hunt Show. Holly currently has 3 matches she really likes and can't decide which one to go on a date with. Voice your opinion and vote on which 3 of these PerfectMatch.com guys Holly should go out with.

If you want to find out what all th fuss is about with this dating service, read our Perfect Match review.

Just got back from a mini vacation and I have loads of emails, articles and websites to check up on.

The first bit of news I want to relate is I have 2 new reviews in the works. Based on our 2008 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll and the number of votes SinglesNet.com has received, I have decided to do a review of the service. I initially look at doing a review of the site a few years ago and didn't like what Singles Net was up to or the style of online advertising they were using. Their ads tended to be much more sexually suggestive than it needed to be, especially when this theme doesn't appear to be the focus of the dating site itself. Maybe some things have changed with SinglesNet.com, I guess I will find out (I know their ads have not).

The other site we plan a review on is It's Just Lunch. This dating service is different than your average dating site. The service has been designed with the busy professional in mind. At It's Just Lunch, they find you a match, coordinate your schedules and setup a lunch date for you at a convenient location. We will get into more details when the review is released.

The young men lifestyle portal, AskMen.com announced an alliance with Match.com this week. While not yet available on the Ask Men website, Match will offer readers access to their singles database through a quick search form. This will enable visitors to view profiles and pictures on AskMen.com before registering with the dating service Match.com.

Match.com has been partnering with a number of websites lately to help generate more members. This allows them to target markets with better results than traditional internet advertising. AskMen.com readers are typically young single men who are employed and, have no dependants. This is a perfect target market for Match. eHarmony is another popular dating service which also has been doing similar partnerships (their latest with AOL). eHarmony also has been taking this a step further by buying up some of the more popular independent wedding and dating websites.

Visit Marketing Week for the full story. For more information on Match.com, read our dating review.

eHarmony is planning another Free Communication Weekend this Friday October 31 to November 2. New eHarmony members will have complete access to the dating site, which includes reviewing of matches, photos, profiles and the ability to communicate with other members. The last Free Communication Weekend was Labour Day (see story).

Visit our eHarmony review for more information on this popular dating service.

A press release from PlentyOfFish.com takes a look at some of their membership numbers and how more women now seem to be looking for intimate encounters. Currently members on Plenty of Fish looking for long term relationships have a male to female ratio of 55:46. Women looking for a casual dating experience when compared to men is 5 to 1. While men still out number woman, the situation is much better than in 2004 were the male to female ratio was 10 to 1. The release also predicts within a decade the ratio of men to women looking for intimate encounters online will reach 1 to 1.

For more reviews on dating sites that offer casual dating, check our our Sexy Singles Dating Category.