General News

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.

Online dating is becoming more and more popular, especially among older adults. Iowa State University researchers found in a study of 175 newlywed couples that those who met through social networking or online dating sites tended to be older than those who met without the help of the internet. These couples also had more of chance to be on their second marriage. The courtship for couples who met through the internet also tended to be much shorter at 18.5 months, when compared to 42 months for a relationship created by more traditional means.

An associate professor of sociology at the university, Alicia Cast, found that the main difference between couples who met online, when compared to offline, was time constraints. Older singles tended to have less time for finding relationships due to kids or jobs with longer working hours.

For more on the story, read Reuters. To find our list of dating sites with seniors in mind, check out our Dating Over 50 category.

Good news for eHarmony. They have entered into an agreement to settle a class action lawsuit about not matching singles that were looking for a same-sex partner. This class action was filed in Los Angeles in 2007 (see Story). The proposed settlement would require eHarmony to create a $2 million fund to pay gay, lesbian and bisexual people who can show that they were harmed by eHarmony's policies. They would also have to include a gay dating link on the bottom of the eHarmony homepage by the other links for different dating niches (Seniors, Hispanics, etc...). eHarmony would also need to allow singles to partner with same sex members on their dating site. This would allow bisexual people to be matched with both male and female partners on one dating site.

There will be a few changes with Compatible Partners as well, if the agreement goes through. The gay dating site would still need to continue operation and the “Powered by eHarmony” tagline would need to be changed to “Brought to you by eHarmony”. eHarmony's trademark logo would also need to be displayed on the Compatible Partners homepage.

A Judge will be looking at the agreement on February 3rd, 2010.

For more information on the subject, read the eHarmony press release. To find out more about the dating sites, read our eHarmony review and are Compatible Partners review.

There is more bad news for FriendFinder Networks regarding their IPO (see Story). FriendFinder was suppose to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange this Thursday under the symbol FNN. They now plan to launch sometime the following week. The dip in the market last week is said to take partial blame as well as some last-minute questions from the Securities and Exchange Commission. These questions are not uncommon and can delay the process of launching a deal.

For more information, read the Wall Street Journal.