Dating Services

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:

The online Jewish dating service JDate has been selected as an Official Honoree in the Social Networking category for this years Webby Awards. This is the 12th year for the awards. The Webby Awards recognize websites that are superior in quality and sets standards on the internet. To get your site nominated in the Webby Awards is very difficult, your website must stand out in all categories including functionality, usability and the over look of the site. According to the awards website:

Of the more than 10,000 entries submitted to the 12th Annual Webby Awards, fewer than 15% were distinguished as an Official Honoree.

The one thing I was surprised about was JDate was put in the Social Networking category. Since there is no Online Dating category listed at the Webby Awards I guess it was the closest match. A press release by JDate also calls their site an online community. While this is true, JDate's primary focus is still online dating. The community is a result of the dating. As social networking sites try to take away dating site members (just take a look at all the new dating applications available at MySpace and Facebook), dating sites are now including more social networking features to lure these members back and then some.

Read our review for more information on JDate, the online Jewish Community.

After the article “Navigating the One Night Stand” was published about a week and a half ago on eHarmony and through their newsletter angry members started to voice their opinions on blogs and/or cancel their memberships. The article described what to do if "you're a swinging single and you've had a one-night stand" and what the etiquette was after the fling. This article was a far departure from eHarmony and their Advice Blog which normally promotes long term relationships and Christian values.

On April 21, 2008, Stan Holt, Vice President of eHarmony published an apology on eHarmony Advice for the “Navigating the One Night Stand” article. In it Stan Holt states:

The advice contained in this column was completely inconsistent with our editorial guidelines and the relationship service that we offer to our members. The day after sending the e-mail newsletter, I was made aware of the column and it was immediately removed from our site.

It's not often you get an apology from a company and it shows eHarmony realized the mistake and they value their members enough to put an apology in writing. Most other companies making a similar mistake may have removed the article but I am sure most wouldn't have put up an apology.

You can find more information about the retraction and the complete text for the article “Navigating the One Night Stand” at the unofficial eHarmony Blog. For more general information about eHarmony, please read our review.

CNNMoney has an article about the marketing approach one dating site called TeamDating.com took to get free publicity. This was all done without hiring a PR firm or consultant. TeamDating has appeared on many popular national TV shows like The Today Show, Good Morning America and Extra . Print publications include newspapers like USA Today. Every show or news piece TeamDating has appeared in has given them a huge traffic spike like with over 600,000 visitors when TeamDating appeared on the Today Show. The article doesn't mention what their average daily traffic is now but it does say they have 60,000 regular visitors (what does regular mean? Weekly?) and over 20,000 registered dating teams

Ray Doustdar, who owns TeamDating achieved his PR success through his own hard work of reading, researching and contacting media people. He spends over 90% of his work day dealing with marketing his dating service. He knows where his customers are and who to contact to get a story out. He also knows what type of story each media outlet is looking for and who there readers or viewers are.

Now days most internet businesses need a detailed marketing plan, and dating sites are no exception. Gone are the days of "if you build it, they will come"! Competition is huge in the online dating market and any company wanting to create a service needs to realize that marketing is the most important thing to your sites success.