Dating Services

I noticed a feel good article at the MiamiHerald.com today about how a couple met using Match.com. The small twist in this story is the woman, Cheryl, is in a wheel chair. She has been in a wheel chair her entire adult life. When Cheryl first tried online dating she go a lot of email replies stating that the single men she had emailed couldn't handle her situation. That is until she met Mathew. He was hesitant at first but thought he should give it a try. Now 3 years later they are married.

About.com noticed that Lavalife offers a free Profile Doctor service to all of it's members. Once you are logged into Lavalife, click on the link for LavaLifes Magazine, Click. Once you are viewing the magazine you now then can go to the Profile Doctor signup page in the left hand column. The profile doctor will help you improve your headline and the "In My Own Words" descriptions by giving you pointers and informative comments on each section of your LavaLife profile.

Login to Lavalife to try out Profile Doctor or read our Lavalife review for more information.

I noticed on CNN.com today, an article on dating niche sites. They mention MillionaireMatch.com, a site we have reviewed which allows singles "a pre-screening process" to find a wealthy mate.

For the complete article go here.

Seven years ago today, eHarmony was launched (August 22, 2000). Today more than 17 million singles have registered as members. eHarmony's unique scientific approach to matchmaking has made it very popular, allowing them to increased there membership base by at least 30% every year. eHarmony is one of the few succesful dating services which only displays potential matches to members and do not allow them to search for matches themselves.

For more information of what eHarmony has to offer, check out our review.

To update an older story we did on Paying For Perks at dating sites, I noticed on Online Dating Insider that Match.com has added a few more perks above and beyond what a normal paying membership covers. Their main push is still MindFIndBInd with Dr. Phil but, the new perks included:

• matchMobile - Allows you to access features of Match.com right from your cell phone. Includes viewing profiles and instant messaging singles. Costs $4.99 per month for 3 months.
• Email Read Notification - Find out when and if singles from Match read the emails you send them. Costs $3.99 per month for 3 months.
• matchTalk - Speak with other Singles on the phone but keep your phone number anonymous. Completely integrated into Match. Costs $4.99 per month for 3 months.

I wonder if these new features will work out. If they do, this is where paid dating sites will start to out shine there free counterparts. By having services that truly offer added value and are just too expensive to be implement by the free dating sites (costs couldn't be covered by on site advertising).

The only service I don't agree with here is the Email Read Notification. In my opinion, this service should be included with a normal paying membership. It should be part of the Hot Lists functionality like, who has viewed your profile. There also should be a privacy option here for members to disable notifications being sent out when you read someone's email, and not a paid option either!

One perk I did miss from my last article was:

• Highlighted Portrait - Your profile picture is highlighted with a border so it stands out in search results. Costs $2.84 per month for 3 months.

This perk may be worth it for some members since it does make your search listing much more noticeable, and the price for it is not bad either.

CNN Money has an article called "Voice-over-IP powers online love connections". This article talks about a new service eHarmony plans to offer which allows for members to place actual phone calls to other members without giving out personal information. Here is quote from the article that describes the service in more details:

"Using voice-over-Internet Protocol, or VOIP, technology, eHarmony's service enables potential partners to speak on the phone without disclosing personal contact information. If one of the interested parties wants to initiate a call, he or she clicks on a special link on the eHarmony site, and eHarmony then sends an e-mail indicating the caller's interest to the intended call recipient. The eHarmony service, designed by VOIP provider Jajah, then initiates a call to the recipient's preferred phone number, only that data (as well as the phone number of the caller) is completely masked by the site."

eHarmony plans to offer this service for an additional charge of $5.75 which give them an unlimited number of calls to its members. At this point there is no mention of when the service is planned to start.

This type of service is a good idea, especially for people who are not into using Instant Messenger or similar tools. These singles tend to be older and not as technical savy, which fits right into eHarmony's demographic. I like the fact you don't need a VOIP phone that plugs into the internet, a normal phone can be used, which keeps it very simple. The one thing eHarmony needs to allow with this additional service is insure paying members can contact other non paying members. This is my major complaint with a number of dating services. When a member is a paying a fee they should be allowed to contact any member in the system.