General News

First came the Match.com App for the iPhone (see Story), and then the dating app for the Palm Pre (see Story). Now Match.com has released an application for the Palm Pixi. This phone is available now on the Sprint network.

This new Match application is designed for users in the United States and Canada. It allows Match.com members to search for matches, send winks, and email. You can also find other members by using the built in location based capabilities of the Palm Pixi. With the application you can also edit your profile and headline text.

The App is currently in Beta and can be downloaded from the Pixi's App Catalog. For more information you can visit this Match.com Palm Pixi page or read the press release.

For more information on this popular dating site, read our Match.com review.

I see eHarmony is getting more creative. I noticed this interactive Flash ad which prompts the reader to guess which man was matched with the woman. Dragging the man's profile photo to the blank box will reveal the answer.

While ultimately this is a guess on the participators part, the resulting message by eHarmony drives home the point that they don't use guesswork to determine matches. I thought this was a smart way to show potential members what is eHarmony's major selling feature, their matching algorithm.

eHarmony also has this ad which you need to guess one of their 29 dimensions of compatibility. By clicking on the letters in the correct order you can spell the dimension. This simple exercise engages the user before they even reach the dating site. If someone takes a few seconds for this puzzle, I bet most will continue once the reach eHarmony and fill out the profile.

To find out more about this dating service, you can read our in-depth eHarmony review.

I see that the iDate Awards voting is now open to the public. The iDate Awards is part of the Internet Dating Conference which takes place early next year in Miami. This is the first year of their annual awards and the third year for our DSR Awards (see Story).

The iDate Awards has 11 Categories:

• Best Dating Site
• Best Dating Site Design
• Best Software Provider
• Best Mobile Dating Site
• Best Matchmaker
• Most Innovative Company
• Best New Technology
• Best Payment System
• Best Affiliate Program
• Best Marketing Campaign
• Best Up and Coming Dating Site

Voters get to pick from 6 to 8 preselected nominees, which was decided earlier by vote and the conference organizers. I am a little surprised at some of the nominees, especially in the best dating site category (no mention of POF and eHarmony). What they did do though, which I thought was a great idea, was iDate included a "None of the above" option in the poll. This enables people to skip categories that they either know nothing about or, that they do not agree with the list of available dating services to vote for.

To vote, in the iDate awards visit their website and while you are at it, you should also vote in our Dating Sites Reviews Choice Awards. This year you can vote for your 2 favorite dating sites. You can choose 1 from 10 of the most popular paid dating sites, and for 1 of the top 6 free dating sites.

Every couple of months People Media release the results of a dating survey they have done (see Story). Their latest DatingData Poll is about the recession and if it has impacted people's attitudes towards dating.

Over 27,000 singles responded to the People Media poll across their selection of dating sites (BlackPeopleMeet.com. SeniorPeopleMeet.com, BBPeopleMeet.com, etc..) and 51 percent indicated that the current recession has not impacted their attitude about dating.

24 percent of the American singles who took the poll said that they would not date anyone who was unemployed. When you take gender into consideration for this answer, only 11 percent of men stated this fact while 37 percent of women did.

A further 17 percent of singles said that they are less motivated to date in the suffering economy and 6 percent viewed dating as networking to find a job.

Finally, only 2 percent of American singles are more motivated to date in the current economic conditions.

While not directly related to the poll, the press release also mentions that since the start of the year (2009), and according to ComScore, the number of unique visitors to People Media dating sites has grown by 15%.

To find out more information on some of People Media's dating sites, check out our BlackPeopleMeet review, our SeniorPeopleMeet review and our BBPeopleMeet review.

It looks like the featured fans of eHarmony's Facebook page (see Story) may also be a part of eHarmony's new TV marketing campaign. These new ads are a different format than we have seen before from eHarmony. They will contain web cam interviews of actual couples who got married because they met on eHarmony. We have seen eHarmony couples in ads before, but those ads were very polished. These new ads with the low quality web cam footage make the "commercials convey a high degree of authenticity and immediacy". The lower quality of the web cam videos lends to the credibility that these are real couples with real stories about eHarmony. To see one of the commercials you can visit the eHarmony Facebook page here.

Lucas Donat, CEO of Donat Wald, is the guy who has come up with the concepts for this new marketing campaign. He has been responsible for eHarmony’s television commercials since 2002.

If you have an eHarmony success story and want to be considered for one of their new commercials, visit this page to submit your success story and to send the eHarmony team a short video of you and your partner.

For more information about the new ad campaign, read the eHarmony blog here. To find out about this internet dating service, check out our eHarmony review. To date we have 73 reviews of eHarmony from our readers.

Jet is our third contributor here at DatingSitesReviews.com. She helps people write profiles by day and blogs by night. Luckily we were able to convince her to write for us here. Expect to see Jet put her own spin on the dating world and offer her own opinions, advice and tips.

To find out more about Jet, visit her Bio page. You can use this form to contact Jet and ask her questions or to suggest a topic for her next article.

Welcome, and thanks for contributing Jet.

Tom