Dating Services

We haven't had a new review in a while so I took the time this weekend to try out ChristianCafe.com. This matchmaking site has been on my radar for a while. I've heard many good things about this site and for the most part I would have to agree, Christian Cafe offers a friendly Christian enviroment to meet singles. Plus, with their 10 day trial, anyone can try it out for free.

Read our review here.

CNN Money has an informative article about how the online matchmaking service eHarmony was started 7 years ago. eHarmony is one of the few dating sites which was started by a psychologist, Dr Neil Warren, who had years of experience counselling married couples. This enabled eHarmony to present a scientific approach to matchmaking. They continue to do this by having on staff "five Ph.D. researchers who are constantly tweaking the matchmaking software based on their latest findings". eHarmony takes the conservative approach to online dating and believes in Christian values. A lot of other dating services currently are pushing a sexier image.

The author explains as well the process of how eHarmony works, from signups, to creating a profile and then the matchmaking process. The article further goes through the ups and downs of eHarmony's success, including their latest negative press regarding gay singles being not allowed to use the site.

The Motley Fool has an interesting point of view regarding eHarmony's charges against Chemistry before the Better Business Bureau's ad council. The charges are in response to Chemistry's new TV and internet ads that mention eHarmony has rejected over a million singles.

The article goes on and explains that the Chemistry ads are free advertising for eHarmony and they don't necessary reflect them in a bad light. It can be a good thing for a dating service to be choosy over which singles can join.

According to the New York Times, True has a huge advertising bill from the last six months which they have not paid. In March True.com was ranked as the number one most visited dating site according to Hitwise. Since then it has fallen too number six and the main reason for this most likely is only a few True dating ads can be found on the net now. True's big advertising push most likely got them in financial troubles with ad spending out pacing paid members sign ups.

Hot or Not has decided to abandon their free dating format. The main reason the dating site suggests, is because the number of spammers and fake profiles increased to the point of being out of control and slowing down the system. In my opinion Hot or Not is switching back to a paid dating site because it is more profitable. A couple of months ago they switched to a free dating site system hoping to draw in more users. Free dating sites make money by selling ad space on their site or by the number of users who click on these advertisements. Hot or Not was hoping with their current user base and the additional users they would receive for being free would off set the cost of loosing membership fees. This was obviously not the case.

You must remember running a good dating site, with some sort of quality control of profiles and customer support costs money. Not only that, online dating is a very competitive market and dating services must be constantly upgrading their services and adding new and useful features to their site to help attract more singles, which again costs money. With Hot or Not going with basically the same paid format as before, will benefit singles on the site more in my opinion, than being free.

Yesterday Canada's number 1 ranked dating site (among the top 10 in the world) Lavalife released a press release regarding there partnering with Playboy. Lavalife members who belong to the Intimate Encounters section of the dating site will get access to content from Playboy.com, while Playboy members will receive access to Lavalife's online services. Lavalife's other dating sections include Casual Dating and Relationships.

While at first I was surprised with this partnership since Lavalife image has always been more low key (until the recent internet ads anyways). Playboy has been hit hard with intense competition from the internet becoming so popular so they are obviously looking for other ways to expand. With Lavalife's Intimate Encounters becoming more popular I can see where this may bring in more business for Playboy while giving Lavalife access to more young adult males.