General News

Kelli Grant, a consumer reporter and the author of an online dating article that appeared on SmartMoney.com (part of the Wall Street Journal) took a look at a couple of strategies which could help online daters. She also appeared on CBS News summarizing the information she found about dating online, which you can watch below.



Kelli's straight forward approach to how to succeed with online dating is refreshing but I do have to question her on a few of her facts. One of the things she mentions in the video and the article is to check the dating sites traffic (unique visitors per month). This is a good approach but probably something most users will not know how to do. If you are new to online dating (and are not really sure about finding traffic stats) I always suggest checking out the following 3 popular dating sites eHarmony, Match.com and PlentyofFish.com. All of these dating sites receive well over a couple of million unique visitors each every month. Keli Grant also mentions that a dating site with less than 10,000 unique visitors a month is probably not worth getting a paid subscription for. I agree with her on this but I do think she vastly under estimated this number. I would say any dating site that doesn't have at least 50,000 unique visitors per month is not worth joining. This is true, unless the dating site is a real small niche or is specifically for your home city. With a dating site that has 10,000 visitors a month, the chances of finding someone close to you to date is relatively small.

One of the other things she suggests is to read site reviews. This is important as well but her suggestion of using Yelp.com to find dating site reviews is not very good. I like Yelp.com but they concentrate more on reviews for restaurants, shopping, and other locations in the real world. I also have to ask, where is the mention of DatingSitesReviews.com? 😉

She also suggests looking up the dating site in the Better Business Bureau (BBB). This is a good point as well but people need to know how the BBB works. First of all it can be hard to find businesses on the BBB website, I know I did a article on dating sites and the BBB (see Story). Plus, a lot of dating sites do not belong to the BBB, take for example, the mostly free dating site Plenty Of Fish. They are not in the BBB but this doesn't mean they are a bad dating service. The second thing is the Better Business Bureau is for customers who wish to make complaints and to show if and how these complaints were handled by the company. You will not find much positive information on a BBB report since that is not its purpose. The other thing you need to know about a BBB report is a company with few complaints doesn't necessarily mean it is a good company. You need to look at how the complaints were handled plus how large the company is. For example, Microsoft and Apple have many more complaints than the leading dating services Match.com and eHarmony. Does this mean Apple and Microsoft have bad products and poor customer service? Not really. They just have a much larger customer base, so naturally they will receive more complaints.

To find out more information about the dating sites mention in this article, read our eHarmony review, our Match.com review and our PlentyofFish.com review.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, eHarmony here in the United States and Canada is planning to have their 23rd free communication weekend (FCW) starting Thursday February 11th, 2010 to Monday February 15th, 2010.

During this 5 day eHarmony free communication weekend, all members will be able to review matches and to communicate with these matches for no cost. The month of February and especially around Valentine's Day is when dating sites are the busiest. This means if you haven't tried eHarmony yet, this is your best chance to see how it works and what type of matches they have in your area. As with previous FCWs, members will not be able to FastTrack the guided communication process. Member's photos also are also not viewable for this promotion.

The last eHarmony free communication event occurred during New Years Eve (see Story).

Check out our review of eHarmony for more information on the dating site.

Singles interested in the United Kingdom Free Communication Weekend, read this News Story.

Update: I see that the Australian eHarmony dating site is having a FCW as well but it runs from Friday Feb.12th to Feb. 15th.

We would like to welcome Moxie as a new contributor here at DatingSitesReviews.com. She has been writing her own online dating and sex advice column called "And That's Why You're Single" for over 5 years now and has shown she has valuable insight on relationships and what makes men and women tick. You can now expect to find Moxie offering the same valuable advice and tips here, which can be used to help you with dating, both online and off.

To find out more about our fourth writer, Moxie, visit her Bio page. You may also use this form to contact her, if you wish to ask her questions or to suggest a topic for her next article.

Tom

Match.com and Meetic have created an equal partnership together in Latin America where the two dating companies will be combining their resources. According to the CEO of Match.com, Greg Blatt:

By combining ParPerfeito's strength in the Brazilian market with Match.com's presence in the rest of Latin America, we believe we're best positioned to drive that expansion and create an asset of meaningful value. We're confident from our work together in Europe that further partnering with Meetic will be a productive experience.

The online dating market is less mature in Latin American than the larger North America and Europe markets. By making a combined push now both companies feel that they will come out ahead in this merging dating market. Match.com will control the new entity's operations and will pay Meetic $3 million in cash at the closing (March 15, 2010). I am not sure what Meetic's responsibility in all this is but, I will assume that they must be required to push traffic to the new venture. At the beginning of the fourth year of operations Match.com has reserved the right to buy Meetic's share of the entity at fair market value.

When we receive more news about this new entity (like the name of the website) we will be sure to pass it on.

For more on the story read the press release.

To help celebrate Valentine's Day, eHarmony in the UK is planning on have a Free Communication Weekend starting Friday February 12th, 2010 to Monday February 15th, 2010. New and existing members will be able to review their matches and then use the guide communication process and email others for free. During a FCW promotion FastTracking of the communication process and viewing your matches' photos is only available to paid members.

The last free communication weekend for eHarmony UK was held in January (see Story). I have gotten word that eHarmony here in North America will also be offering free communication this weekend as well. Expect a post soon about this news as soon as I have confirmed the exact dates. For more news on eHarmony's FCW in the US read this Story.

To find out more about this popular dating service for singles interested in long term relationships, read our review of eHarmony.

Match.com currently offers their dating application on the iPhone (see Story), the Palm Pixi (see Story) and the Palm Pre (see Story), or so I thought! While researching a story about the Google Android OS I see Match.com now offer a dating application for the Blackberry phone. As with the other Match.com smart phone applications you can browse for singles, send and receive emails and wink at members. Blackberry App users can also upload photos and edit their profiles. These smart phone apps for the most part allow you to do everything you can on the website. As far as I can tell the Blackberry Match.com dating application was released sometime late January, 2010.

We also just got news that Match.com is currently working on a dating application for Android phones. Once this app is completed in the coming months Match.com will have almost 90 percent of the world's smart phones covered with their dating application. When you combine this with their current matchMobile service (which has been around for a number of years now for regular cell phones) you can tell Match.com has taken a special interest in mobile dating.

For more on the story read Forbes. To find out more about mobile dating applications on Match.com, read out review of Match.com.