General News

We got official word that Compatible Partners is having a free communications weekend this December 30th, 2009 to January 3rd, 2010. For those of you who haven't heard of Compatible Partners before, it is a dating site that eHarmony setup for singles who want a same-sex relationship. Basically Compatible Partners is the Gay and Lesbian communities version of eHarmony, with all of the same features and technology.

This is an extra long Free Communication Weekend (FCW) this time around. It is a full 5 days starting on the Wednesday after Christmas and ending on Sunday in the New Year. For those of you who haven't heard of the FCW before, it is where Compatible Partners allows not only viewing of all your matches for free but you can communicate with them as well. Free members get almost all of the benefits of a paid subscription. One of the few exceptions is, not being able to fast track the 4 step guided communication process.

I know Compatible Partners has had one or two free weekends before but this is the first one we have blogged about. We are currently working on a review of this dating site and hope to have it up before the new year. If you would like to check out the dating site before this, please visit Compatible Partners.

We are virtually positive eHarmony will have their free communication weekend as well, for the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom during the same time as Compatible Partners. For those of you interested, stay tune for a future blog post...

eHarmony announce a new site feature that is designed to help you set your geographic range with greater understanding, ease, and accuracy. The feature lets the user visualize an area in a 30 to 300 mile range from where your matches will be chosen (as seen in the right image for the city of Los Angeles). This new feature works in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Now eHarmony members can visit the account settings page and use the map to see with the location range they set, from what cities and towns their matches will come from.

For more on the story, read the eHarmony Blog and for further details about the dating site, read our eHarmony review.

I found that missing press release I mentioned in a previous post about the new Spark.com dating site (see Story).

A quick read through doesn't really reveal any additional information. It does confirm what we assumed in the previous post that Spark is made up of the members from AmericanSingles.com and Date.ca. Spark Networks hope that the new clean and easy to navigate interface of Spark.com will give it a more global appeal. The release also mentions the new features of Spark.com (when compared to the old dating sites). These features are the free Color Code Personality Test, the Keyword Search and the "Who's Searching for You?" feature. While these features are new at Spark, they can be found on another Spark Networks brand of dating sites called Mingle Match.

To find out more about this dating site and the new features listed here, you can check out our review of Spark.com.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) court action against Scott Mark Moles and Jobspy Pty Ltd have seen fines totaling $6.5 million AUD over a mobile phone dating scam.

The scam generated more than $2 million in revenues and involved employees of Jobspy Pty Ltd creating fake profiles on legitimate dating site with the purpose of obtaining cell phone number of other members. The scammers would then conduct text message conversation with these members via a so-called "safe divert" service to keep their mobile phone number private. In reality the members who were being scammed, were being charged $5 per text message. They were told by the scammers that the "safe divert" service was part of their dating site membership fees.

For the full news item, read News.com.au.

Television and film actress Ashley Madison Myrick (no she is not a Porn Star, that was a mistake by Fox) most famous role was becoming James Woods' boyfriend for a while. Recently she has filed a lawsuit against online dating site Ashley Madison for the “humiliation’ she has endured over having the same name as the site which promotes having an affair. Apparently she wants the site to change its name and to take her picture off of a related site, AshleyMadisonbio.com.

According to a $1 million counter-suit filed by AshleyMadison.com against the actress, the website has had the name “Ashley Madison” trademarked since 2002. The actress Ashley Madison Myrick only started going by the name Ashley Madison 3 years later in 2005. AshleyMadison.com also claims that they do not own the website AshleyMadisonbio.com and have no control over it (whoever does own it, has taken it down anyways).

The infidelity dating site is suing Ashley Madison for using their trademark to “inappropriately garner goodwill” to support her acting career.

More on this story can be found at Fox News.

I received a bit of surprise this morning when I read the following email from a reader:

Hello....

I was wanting to join AmericanSingles.com but cannot get to the site no matter how I try......

through your website or any other way. I keep getting sent to the Spark.com dating site.

It is like they have high jacked their website address. Can you tell me what is going on?

Thank You

First of all, don't worry the AmericanSingles.com domain did not get high jacked. It looks like a number of the Spark Network dating sites, including AmericanSingles.com and Date.ca, got rebranded and combined into a new dating site called Spark.com.