General News

I found a news item on the eHarmony blog that was interesting. Researchers at UC Berkeley teamed up with a dating site to find out how important the photo headshot is for a dating profile. For both genders, researchers found that a photo in a profile was necessary for a member to be deemed attractive. Researchers also found that participants of the study said that the actual content of the profile was then used to determine if the member in the profile was a possible match and deserved to be contacted. The photo is the hook, but it is the content in the profile and how the person portrayed themselves that is the deciding factor for communication.

Finally, once the two online daters met face to face, looks became the least important predictor of a long term relationship. The overall attraction and the "connection" were deemed most important.

Find out more on the eHarmony Blog. For further info about this matchmaking service, read our eHarmony review.

I have just spent the last couple of hours updating and reformatting our Online Dating Industry Facts and Stats page. The main problem with the page was, it was getting way to long. With this in mind, I have moved all the online dating services information to their own pages. This cut the initial page size by about 80 percent. It also allows me to easier add new dating sites to the list in the future.

The one thing I wasn't sure on was how to deal with multiple dating sites owned by one company. I wanted to standardize everything with each dating site having its own page. The problem with this approach is a lot of the information released by these companies tends to be consolidated (they show the results of the company as a whole and not by each individual dating site). What I have done then is a bit of a compromise. The dating site which is the flagship of the company will get a facts page. Include in this facts page will be information not only about the dating site, but about its parent company and possibly other dating sites owned by that company. If I do get enough information for another dating site owned by the same company I will then move it to its own fact page (like how Match.com and Chemistry are). This is how I have decided to handle this issue for now, but it may change in the future.

Another new thing I added for each fact page of a dating site was a page to display traffic estimates. These can be accessed through the dating sites fact page. These traffic estimate pages include data and graphs from 3 different sources, Alexa, Compete and Quantcast. Since no single source is 100% accurate, having the traffic data all on one page makes it much easier to average out the estimates.

The next thing I have planned for our Online Dating Industry Facts and Stats page is more information about other dating sites. Expect to see data soon for PlentyofFish.com, Lavalife and Perfectmatch.com.

Since Zoosk received $30 million in funding in December (see Story), their dating site traffic has increased by 3 times according to Compete's estimate. In the graph below it shows that in August of 2009 unique visitors had just crossed the 500,000 mark for Zoosk. In January of this year they had reached 2.7 million unique visitors.

It looks like Zoosk is spending at least some of the money they raised on advertising to increase traffic to their dating site. In an interview with Online Personals Watch, Alex Mehr, CEO Of Zoosk also mentions that their dating site has just reached 50 million members. Just 5 months ago Zoosk members numbered around 40 million. That is a lot of growth, which goes to show how using Facebook and its users to spread information about the dating site has really worked for them.

For more information on this dating site, read our Zoosk review.

I was surprised when I learned that 80 percent of members at the dating site Mate1.com have never been married and have remained single. On the flip side this means on average at Mate1, 19% of men and 21% of women have been divorced. When you look at the data by country Ireland comes out on top at 94 percent for men and 91 percent for women who have never been married. Let's look at the data for other Countries:

• United States - 76% of men and women have never been married.
• Canada - 86% of men and 79% of women have never tied the knot.
• United Kingdom - 88% of men and 80% of women.

One other thing that I did find interesting was for all countries, there was always a higher percentage of men who were never married than women. Also, since Mate1 has such a high percentage of members who have never been married this seems to suggest that Mate1 members are more likely to be in their twenties and thirties.

For more on the story (including data for other countries) read Date Daily and to find further details about this dating site, read our review of Mate1.com.

Christiancafe.com is a Canadian success story. Eleven years ago today (February 26, 1999) they officially launched. Since then the dating service has successfully matched Christian singles in the United States, Canada and around the world.

One of the best things about this Christian owned and operated dating site is, it offers singles a ten day free trial which gives you almost full access to the service. You can search, view profiles and pictures, and email other members. You can do this all without giving your credit card. Most dating sites offer a free trial but put limits on the trial (like no emailing) which can make the free membership almost useless.

For more information about this dating service, check out our review of Christiancafe.com.

Happy Birthday ChristianCafe.com!

It looks like the rumor was true (see Story), Match.com released a press release yesterday which confirm that they have made a deal to acquire the dating site Singlesnet.com. Financial terms of the deal have yet to be released but Match CEO Greg Blatt did state that Singlesnet will continue to be run largely as a standalone business. Adrian Ong of Match.com will be taking over the helm from the previous owner of Singlesnet, Quinn Lipin. Mr Lipin will still continue to work for Singlesnet.com as an executive.

Singlesnet was once the most visited dating site in the USA back in December 2008. Since then traffic has slowly declined with a major drop happening in February 2009 from 7 million unique visitors to just under 5 million.