Dating Services

Our choice for this years Top Pick - Canadian Award for a dating site is Lavalife. This Canadian owned and operated dating service first got it's start as a Teleclassifieds in Toronto and the quickly moved to become Telepersonals in 1988. By 2001 the company had changed its name to Lavalife and expanded it's target audience to not only in Canada but in the United States and Australia as well. Since then it has become the most popular paid online dating service in Canada and one of the more popular choices in the United States (based on several ranking systems, including Hitwise). Of all our reviewed dating services, Lavalife has, by far, the most Canadian Members.

With 20 years in the personals business, Lavalife has the experience to deliver an excellent matchmaking opportunity to its members. One of the unique features with Lavalife is the ability to create up to 3 different profiles. One for each of the following dating relationship communities: Casual Dating, Relationship and Intimate Encounters. This allows Lavalife members to receive 3 services in one. Where a lot of other dating site companies tend to create 3 different sites so they can charge members 3 different times. Another major feature of Lavalife is the ability to reply to emails as a free member, this means if someone spots your profile when you are using a trial membership and they send you a message, you are able to reply. Most sites don't allow any type of communication unless you are a full member.

Lavalife has put a lot of effort into updating their site recently with a new interface and tweaking of features (chatting, instant messenger) to make using the dating site easier for singles. As competition in the dating industry remains tough, Lavalife has stayed on top by offering a dating service that works!

Read our review of Lavalife for more information about this dating service or visit Lavalife directly.

This Years Runner Ups for this award include (in no particular order): Date.ca and Canadian Personals.

First we wish to congratulate Match.com for winning our Editor's Top Pick - Over All, Award. It was a tough decision with so many good dating services available to choose from in our reviews. In the end, Match.com stood out. There are several reasons for this:

• First off, one of the main reasons is the general popularity of Match.com. Combined with their years of experience in the dating business, an excellent feature rich site and well placed advertising, single men and woman have been flocking to this online dating service not only in North America but in Europe as well.
• I don't plan on going over all the dating features of Match (you can read our review for that) but one which stands out is matchMobile. While not the first in the dating industry to allow members to use there dating membership with cell phones, with a recent update to matchMobile it has become one of the best mobile phone dating services. With more and more people using cell phones and with them becoming more powerful, the mobile phone dating services are predicted to explode in popularity over the next several years.
• Make Love Happen Guarantee, is the first dating service guarantee that I have heard of. It shows Match.com is confident in their service and is willing to back it up with a guarantee. If in the first 6 months of your membership you don't meet someone special, then Match will give you the next 6 months for free. The terms for this guarantee are not too bad either. The main condition to be eligible is, you must contact at least 5 different members each month. This is to show you are at least participating and trying to find someone. While not a money back guarantee it is a step in the right direction and as other dating sites start to offer something similar I am sure these types of guarantees will get better and better.
• The last point which made Match.com our Over All Top Pick was their recent site redesign and ad campaign. The new interface is very slick and modern looking. Plus, they incorporate actual members into their ads and entrance web pages, not just young good looking generic models. The new trend in dating sites lately has been to use implied sex in ads to try and lure singles to join.

Read our review of Match.com for more information about this dating service or visit Match.com directly.

This Years Runner Ups for this award include (in no particular order): PerfectMatch, eHarmony and Yahoo! Personals.

Spark Networks just released their third quarter financial results. Spark Networks owns AmericanSingles.com (there flagship dating service), Date.ca (for Canadians), JDate.com (Jewish Dating) and a fair number other specific niche oriented dating services. With most of their dating services membership numbers holding steady, JDate.com saw an increase in paid members by 3% for a total of 74,078. This shows well for the service in this increasingly more competitive niche market. Overall Spark Networks have a healthy bottom line and will continue to be one of the driving forces in internet dating.

For more information on the dating services which Spark Networks owns, see our reviews of AmericanSingles.com, JDate.com, and Date.ca.

According to this article and a few others on the internet, Charlie Sheen and girlfriend Brooke Mueller have gotten engaged this week. The couple met over a year ago on the popular Sugar Daddy dating site MillionaireMatch.com. This is an online dating service where wealthy singles can join who are looking for younger unattached people to enjoy there wealthy lifestyle with.

A new PerfectMatch.com CEO interview is available on Online Personals Watch, this is (I believe) Mark Brooks second interview with Duane Dahl. In it they discuss PerfectMatch's matching process, instant messaging and other features of the site. One interesting point which was made is PerfectMatch.com core member base is with singles in their 30s and 40s, but lately they have been making strides into the 50s demographic.

Mark also asks Duane about comparisons with their rival dating service, eHarmony. Among other things they brought up the fact that PerfectMatch allows members to still search for singles instead of completely relying on just the matching process, the way eHarmony does. This reason alone IMO, makes PerfectMatch dating service a much better choice than eHarmony.

Read the full interview with Duane Dahl - CEO PerfectMatch.com

It seems like a fair number of the major dating services have been updating there services recently. The latest dating site to do this is, Lavalife. Along with new features, Lavalife has also received a facelift. Though not a major interface overhaul, Lavalife did make their site cleaner looking and easier to navigate.

The major new features which Lavalife added include:

• While you are Instant Messaging with a single, it is now easier to view profile information on the person. This was complained about before and I am glad Lavalife listen to their members.
• The photo gallery now allows you to share up to 30 photos with the ability to assign the pictures to one or more of Lavalife's 3 communities (dating, relationship and intimate encounters).
• Members are now also allowed to upload high quality videos (up to 6).

According to Hitwise (Oct. 2007) Lavalife is the top Canadian dating site and is one of the top ten worldwide. You can read our Lavalife Review and user submitted reviews or go directly too Lavalife.com for more information on this dating service.