Dating Services

I've added another coupon code to our coupons page. You can now save 15% off any Lavalife subscription when you sign up using the code 780121.

For more information, read our review of Lavalife.

USA Today had an article about singles finding love and marriage through online dating after the age 45. The article focuses mostly on older singles who have not married before. In 1990 only 0.4% of woman and 0.6% of men married for the first time between the age of 45 to 49. According to the U.S. Census, In 2006 on average men married for the first time at 27.5 years of age and woman at 25.5.

Recently dating sites have started to track this demographic of later life first marriages. Match.com reports an increase of 10% of new members since 2005 who are over the age of 45 and never have married. Currently this demographic makes up 14% of their members. Yahoo! Personals also has seen a increase of 33% in this demographic for 2006 and 2007.

Online dating has made it easier for these singles to meet. According to Craig Wax of Match.com:

As people get older, they tend to find themselves in fairly established patterns, so the ability to meet new people goes down over time. They've got to do something new if they want to meet different people.

By doing a new activity, it allows these singles to easily reach out beyond their circle of friends, family and co-workers and meet someone new. If you want to find love, online dating is your obvious choice since these services offer an environment that is geared towards matching compatible singles.

For more information about the dating services mention here, visit our Match Review (match.com) and our Yahoo! Personals Review (Personals.Yahoo.com).

Lavalife's latest dating service called LavalifePRIME for mature singles celebrated its first anniversary last week. Lavalife calls this site "one of the world's first social dating sites", since it is a combination of online dating and social networking features (which dating site isn't these days). This free site is geared towards singles 45 years or older and has gathered more than 40,000 members since it opened May 2007.

LavalifePRIME includes forums where members can discuss almost any topic. You can post unlimited photos, send messages, chat with other members in groups or message one on one. Since this site is free there are a fair number of ads displayed on most pages you visit. LavalifePRIME is still in beta and I have to wonder if they plan on keeping the site free (will they make enough with the online ads to cover costs) or once they have enough members will it become a paid service? This site does compete with Lavalife itself so, I wouldn't be surprised if it does become paid eventually, especially since income from paid advertising isn't as profitable as it use to be.

Related Stories: Lavalife Looking for Older Singles

I found a news piece that contains some predictions that the number of singles who will pay to use online dating sites may have reach its limit. They mention several statistics to support this including one from ComScore which saw unique visitors to all dating sites fall in the month of March, even though Internet traffic grew by 6%. The author also pointed out that Match.com subscriber growth slowed and only increased by 1% in 2007 where as it increased by 25% in 2006. There was also several other points mention to support his theory.

My view on things is that the glory days of online dating in North America where the main online dating sites posted double digit subscriber growth numbers is probably over. There are so many options available now in the United States for singles to join. They have the choice now to join numerous social networks and free or paid dating sites to find a match. The thing is, It is very difficult for anyone to figure out what the best choice is for them when even a high school kid can buy a cheap but fully functional dating script, install it on a web server and make it appear that the dating web site offers everything a single needs (except other members).

I don't think it is all bad news though. Of the roughly 90 million singles in the United States, only 3 million are actively using an online dating service. 87 million customers is still a huge target market. Dating Companies now, are also expanding into Europe and Asia where online dating is just starting to catch on.

The unofficial eHarmony Blog noted a small announcement on eHarmony Canada that RelyID will be available soon. RelyID on the US eHarmony site allows members to validate their full name, age and address (see eHarmony now has an Online ID Verification Service for more info). eHarmony Blog does wonder if a company that isn’t covered by Canadian privacy laws well have success in getting Canadians to hand over their private identification information to be verified on a dating site.

Being a Canadian myself, eHarmony Blog has a good point. The thing is, I would of never of thought of the problems dealing with an American company who may not be governed under our own privacy laws. I doubt this point would have been made apparent to those who will sign up for the RelyID Canadian service. eHarmony or RelyID should make sure we are covered by our own privacy laws (maybe open an office in Canada?) or at least inform us if we are not.

Wow this is 2 weekends in a row now that eHarmony is offering a free communication weekend. Usually they only have one every couple of months.

So it is pretty simple, starting today May 23rd, 2008 to the end of Monday May 26th, 2008 all new members who join eHarmony can use the site for free for the same time period. There are no special promotional codes or coupons needed. Visit our review for more general details about eHarmony (including actual user reviews).