Dating Services

Match.com UK will be powering Freeads.co.uk new dating service. This deal will give Freeads users access to millions of singles already on Match.com and it will offer Match.com access to the million plus monthly unique visitors at Freeads.

Duncan Horton, Freeads.co.uk chief executive, commented:

For us partnering with a company of Match.com's calibre to launch our dating section is a huge coup. Rather than relying on our users to populate this new section for us we are able to hit the ground running by offering them access to the millions of singles already registered on Match.com.

This makes sense to me since it is extremely difficult to get a new dating service off the ground these days with all the competition. There was no mention of the cost for Freeads users but I am assuming it will be the same cost as signing up normally to Match.com UK's dating service.

For more information or you can read our Match Review (match.com).

This press release notes that the CEO and owner of The Penthouse Media Group Inc. (Marc Bell) will be giving a presentation regarding their acquisition of Various Inc. Various owns the FriendFinder Network. This presentation will take place at the Internet Dating Conference which in running from January 31 to February 1, 2008 and is located at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

For more information on the Conference visit the iDate2008 web site. This should be an interesting presentation for those of us in the dating industry. I hope they will post a video of it.

Reuters has a piece regarding some U.S. Rabbis who are using Jewish online dating services like JDate to help their single congregants. They are offering subscriptions in the hopes of them meeting someone from the Jewish Faith. The US Jewish community are concerned over their dwindling numbers. Some people have estimated that half of the Jews who married in the United States have married someone from a different faith.

Currently Rabbi Donald Weber of Marlboro, New Jersey and his wife (a rabbi in the liberal Reform Movement) have setup a fund and offer JDate subscriptions to anyone over the age of 18 and who are single, in their congregation.

The unofficial eHarmony Blog got a little scoop regarding the possibility of a "Who has viewed me?" feature. SingleGuyInNC noticed the disabled option when it flashed briefly on his screen when he signed into eHarmony today.

If this is a new feature that eHarmony will be adding soon, it should help with the complaints in our user reviews regarding not been able to see which profile has had their member login recently. If some one has viewed you then you know it is an active profile. The only problem is, you still don't know if he or she is a paid member and can communicate with you. Still, I hope they add this feature in. Better yet, eHarmony should just tell us in the profile view when the member has last logged.

For more information on eHarmony, please read our review.

Oops, this one was left as a draft article for the last 4 days.

This Press Release on CNNMoney.com is about a poll done for Chemistry.com (conducted by Gfx Roper Public Affairs) which involves controversial dating subjects. Gfx concluded after the survey that America has an open mind when it comes to such relationship topics as premarital sex and same sex relationships. One statistic from the release states:

About eight in ten (79%) single Americans believe that gay people should have the right to find a meaningful relationship and (74%) of singles endorse the idea of gay marriage or civil unions

These numbers seem very high IMO, when you take all of America's view on this topic. Looking closer at the stat you notice that it says "single Americans". This also means younger Americans since the older you are the better chance you are married or seeing someone. Instead of Americas view point this is more of a young American view point.

For more information on Chemistry.com, click here for our review.

The Time website has an article called We Just Clicked. It talks mainly about the issues large online dating companies are going through when they expand from their own markets to other countries with different cultures. As example, one point talks about international dating sites having to rethink profile questions and what is culturally appropriate. In Japan, it was pointed out they don't really need to ask about hair color since almost all of the people have the same color.

I got a little bit of laugh out of this next point. eHarmony advertises on their site that marriages happen too their member on average 90 a day. According to "We Just Clicked", these unions have so far produced 100,000 children with a disproportionate number of them named Harmony.

Match.com was also talked about a fair bit in the article. It looks like in some countries Match.com is doing extremely well, while in others they have hardly made a dent. Match.com now is in 35 countries and of the 15 million, 1.3 million members pay for the full service and off those 30% live outside the United States. In the Scandinavian market, of the current 2.2 million online daters, 1.5 million have joined Match.com. It is unclear if Match.com counts the total number of members from all of Match.com branded dating sites from other countries in the 15 million they say are members. I always though, when Match.com US said they had 15 million members, that was the total number of members who joined the US site. The reason for my thinking this is Match.com dating sites for other countries look different and they don't allow you to use your US member account if you try to login.

In the U.S. alone, there are close to 1,000 dating sites. With competition so furious and with the growth in the North American market slowing, these sites are looking abroad for more revenue streams. For more information about eHarmony, check out our review and for Match.com please read this review.