General News

In late October Zoosk was celebrating 40 million members (see Story) and had already received $10.5 million in funding over the last year or so. On December 3rd they announced that they had secured an additional $30 Million in Series D Funding. This round of funding was led by the oldest venture capital firm in the United States, Bessemer Venture Partners. David Cowan, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners will be joining Zoosk's Board of Directors as part of the deal.

Zoosk was launched 2 years ago in December of 2007 by Shayan Zadeh and Alex Mehr (who are now the co-CEOs). They plan to use the additional dollars to continue to build and expand the dating service. Money will also be spent on both online and offline marketing campaigns to increase Zoosk's exposure. Plus, there are rumors of expanding Zoosk to new platforms on the mobile front, including an iPhone App.

For more on the story you can read the press release. To find out more about this social dating community, read our review of Zoosk.

I visited Date.com this morning and notice one major change right away. They now allow you to login to their dating site using one of 12 different 3rd party accounts you may have. This means it will be easier for new members to create a profile, as information may get pulled from these 3rd party accounts. Some of the accounts you can now associate with your Date.com account includes Google, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, AOL, OpenID and Windows Live ID.

What I was hoping to see, but I didn't, was more integration with some of the Social Networks. It would be nice to see the friends of some of these Date.com members on Social Networks, endorse their single friend.

I also came across Date.com's parent companies (Avalanche, LCC) website, I hadn't found it before this, since no direct link was available on their dating sites. You can find Avalanche's website here.

The only dating sites that I can think of right now that allows members to log into of their dating site with a 3rd party account, is Match.com and Zoosk. Though, Match.com only allows Windows Live ID accounts.

To find out more about this dating site, read our review of Date.com.

You have tried the free membership at Catholicmatch.com and you liked what they offer but, you want a better deal when you subscribe as a paying member. Try entering this coupon code on the membership upgrade page at Catholic Match.

Coupon Code: CMDATE

With this promotion you will receive an additional 15% off of any membership plan. This offer expires on June 30, 2010.

For more information on this Religious dating service you can visit our review for CatholicMatch.com.

I heard on the radio today that loneliness is contagious, and like a bad cold you can spread it around.

I wasn't sure if I believed this or not and after a quick search on Google, I found this recent article at The Globe and Mail.

After studying 12,000 people, researches from 3 Universities (Harvard, Chicago and California) concluded:

that lonely respondents “infected” remaining friends with their loneliness before the relationships crumbled, perpetuating a cycle of isolation.

Believe it or not if you are lonely you can affect people (spread your loneliness) up to 3 degrees of separation. At one degree of separation, 52 percent of people have a greater chance of being lonely if they are directly connected to someone who is. At two degrees of separation the chances of you being lonely drops to 25 percent and at three degrees, it is 15 percent. At 4 degrees of separation the effect disappears.

The online personals site, Match.com has recently partnered with eBay Australia. So from now on, when you click on the dating menu item at eBay's Australian website you will be directed to Match.com's Australian dating service. eBay AU has about 8 million members and Match.com wanted to tap into this pool of internet users.

To visit eBay Dating, see this page and for more information on the dating site and how it works, read our Match.com review.

This coming Friday, December 4th is the start of Chemistry.com's FREE Weekend. All members can flirt, communicate and connect for free. This promotion lasts only 3 days and ends Sunday, December 6th, just before midnight.

Chemistry is a matchmaking service created by the minds behind Match.com. While Match.com serves the general online dating community, Chemistry.com is geared towards singles who wish to be matched based more on personality traits and attributes. Filling in a Chemistry profile usually takes from 30 minutes to an hour. Once completed your profile will be used with Chemistry's complex matching algorithm and compared against millions of other profiles. This matching algorithm is based on Dr. Helen Fisher's (a leading relationship expert) research and will only returning members that our considered compatible with your personality, and meet your criteria of a perfect partner.

This is Chemistry's 7th free communication weekend, with the last Flirtathon happening in October (see Story). For more information about this dating service, read our review of Chemistry.