Dating Services

IT News mentions that research by Parship, a large dating service in Europe has found that more and more singles in the United Kingdom are looking towards the rest of Europe for finding love. Of Britain’s 15 million single people, 20 percent or 3 million would consider a serious long distance relationship. This is 3 times more singles considering a long distance relationship than a year ago. The article goes on to explain that a major reason for this shift of views in the relatively cheap cost of air travel when compared to train tickets in the UK. On average a flight to Europe is 40% cheaper than a return train ticket from London to any other major city in Britain.

The Consumerist has a post regarding eHarmony and their divorced policy. In it they talk about a woman who was separated from her husband for 7 years when she signed up to eHarmony. She took her time and filled out the hour long profile. At the end she was informed that she would not be able to join since she was not actually divorced. After a year and when the woman got her divorced finalized her daughter wrote to eHarmony for her to see if she could reopen her profile so she didn't have to spend another hour to fill it in again. eHarmony's response was:

Since you are divorced, please reply with the county and state of your divorce proceedings, the name of the judge, and the date your divorce was finalized. We hope you understand that this information is very important in order to protect the integrity of our matching process. Once this information is received, we will be very happy to reset your Relationship Questionnaire for you. You will need to retake the questionnaire so that we can accurately assess your relationship needs and provide matches who are deeply compatible with you.

First off I must say is I do applaud eHarmony for sticking to their guidelines and allowing only people who are not married or separated. Other dating services could learn from this and it is what makes eHarmony one of the top spots to go if you are looking for a serious long term relationship.

In my opinion eHarmony does need to make a few changes to make things flow more smoothly. First off all, one of the first questions they ask is if you are single, separated or divorced. If this is a deal breaker profile question for eHarmony, then it should stop the user from entering further information at this point. They should really have all the profile deal breakers up front so people don't waste their time filling out a profile that eHarmony will ultimately deny. This just makes potential members angry.

The other thing I didn't like from the eHarmony customer service response was that the woman had to provide proof of the divorce. Why can't they rely on her word? On everything else she wrote in her profile they trust her about. Plus if a new member says they are divorced, you don't have to go out and prove this. I'm all for verification of profile information but I think they should allow her to change her status and maybe for these type of issues have a verification logo or something for the profile. Just like how some sites are doing for photos. If she needs to prove she is divorced then all divorced members should have too.

After checking out eHarmony profile creation again I notice that eHarmony Canada still allows you to continue the profile creation if you select you are separated. eHarmony.com has improved on this and now has your current relationship status on the home registration page. If you select separated or married, the browser changes and asks you if you want to learn more about eHarmony Marriage, a service from eHarmony that helps married couples with advice on how to improve a struggling marriage. This is a much better way to go about it than telling you after you spent the time to fill out the profile.

Read our eHarmony review for more information about this online dating service.

Perfect Match has released a new Facebook application called "What's Your Personality Type?". This application is based on Perfect Matches Duet Total Compatibility matching system and allows users to find out their own personality types to help find out who they may be compatible with on Facebook. These personality types include Romantic Impulsivity, Personal Energy, Outlook and Predictability. There are 7 true and false questions for each type to answer before you get your results.

As far as Facebook dating applications are concerned, it is fairly simple and doesn't allow you to access your account on PerfectMatch.com or its members. If the application becomes popular I could see Perfect Match putting more effort into it. Right now it is just more of a marketing tool for their main dating site.

For more information about Perfect Match, please read our review.

I probably get close to 200 emails a year from owners of dating and related sites who want me to promote one thing or another. Only a handful ever catch my interest and the website "Why was I Dissed?" is one of them. It is a well designed website that offers 2 services. You can get dating advice by Dr. Craig April, a licensed psychologists in Los Angeles and (this is what caught my eye) you can try to find out why someone who you where talking to online just stopped with no explanation. Receiving advice about dating online is nothing new and their are many websites that offer this service but, finding out why someone stopped answering your emails, this is the first time I have seen this.

How does it work? It is pretty simple. You start an Investigation in which you give a few details about yourself, including your name, age and gender. You also choose the type of relationship you had and explain in more detail on how you know the person. You also include the persons email address and name with whom you where in contact with (they call them the Avoiders). From here WhyWasIDissed.com will attempt to contact the Avoiders through email. Here is a quote from the website:

After beginning your investigation, FREE OF CHARGE, we will contact the communication avoider with your investigation case number. They will be asked a series of personalized questions accompanied with multiple-choice answers and fill in the blank options. Once they’ve responded, we will let you know the results immediately.

If no response is forth coming WhyWasIDissed.com will then send a second email. If no response is heard within two weeks it is then assumed the Avoider will not.

When someone stops responding to your emails you are always left wondering why? Will a third party service work as a mediator to find this answer out? I'm not sure but, it is an interesting idea. The Avoiders may feel more comfortable explaining themselves in a structured manner but then again, they may be horrified that a third party knows about a failed relationship. As mentioned in the quote, Investigation are currently free but the website does say only for a limited time. I'm not sure when they will start charging and how much. IMHO WhyWasIDissed.com should keep it free since they are already charging for dating advice. I think the "Why was I Dissed?" service, could possibly be made into a great web viral marketing tool for the dating advice part of the website.

The Chicago Tribune has a story about some of the research going on to find out how attraction works between people, both gay and straight. The author takes a look at 4 aspects of this. These aspects are DNA matching with the online dating site ScientificMatch.com (see our other story on them), how physical attraction and evolution works, if there is a love hormone and finally, how your brain effects love.

More and more dating sites are pushing how they have the science and research behind their match system. eHarmony, Chemistry and Perfectmatch are the big 3 who promote their matching system and the science along with their relationship experts. All of these sites post a summary review of how their matching systems work as quoted by the experts. None as of yet (that I am aware of) have actually gone in great details on how their system works and made the research public to back it up. We also need peer reviews of these matching systems from an independent source to begin to fully trust these matching systems. We talked about this in a story we previously did where Chemistry may be one of the first sites to start actually doing this.

New Ads

As per this recent story, Chemistry.com to Spend $40M on TV Ads, it looks like Chemistry.com new TV ads called "Chemistry Vows" will be coming to a TV near you. The four new commercials will appear on the NBC network along with Bravo, HGTV, TBS and A&E. After viewing the commercials and seeing the list of networks the commercials will be aired on, Chemistry is definitely targeting the 30 and older crowd. This makes sense since Chemistry is all about the long term relationship, something that most 20 to 29 year olds are not looking for yet, either do to school or job advancement, etc.

New Feature

To improve members experience with online dating, Chemistry has added the feature "You've Been Noticed". This feature allows members to find out who has viewed their profile. According to Chemistry: