Date.com, Amor.com and Matchmaker.com (all owned by Avalanche, LLC) will soon be available in multiple languages. Enlaso will be doing the translation services for Avalanche. They offer enterprise language solutions to companies who not only need translation services but business and cultural perspectives as well. In the press release they mention "localizing" the dating sites, I wonder if this means a redefining of the profile depending on the country and the culture? Match.com International does this with great success, they ask dating profile questions that are more relevant to where you live (see The Issues with International Online Dating).

By the end of 2008 all 3 dating services will be translated and localized into Spanish, Portuguese and German and by 2010 there will be another 15 languages added. With online dating growth leveling off in North America, Avalanche is looking to international markets to help grow its subscriber base. Since 1997, Avalanches largest dating site, Date.com, has had more than 20 million members worldwide.

The Consumerist has a post regarding eHarmony and their divorced policy. In it they talk about a woman who was separated from her husband for 7 years when she signed up to eHarmony. She took her time and filled out the hour long profile. At the end she was informed that she would not be able to join since she was not actually divorced. After a year and when the woman got her divorced finalized her daughter wrote to eHarmony for her to see if she could reopen her profile so she didn't have to spend another hour to fill it in again. eHarmony's response was:

Since you are divorced, please reply with the county and state of your divorce proceedings, the name of the judge, and the date your divorce was finalized. We hope you understand that this information is very important in order to protect the integrity of our matching process. Once this information is received, we will be very happy to reset your Relationship Questionnaire for you. You will need to retake the questionnaire so that we can accurately assess your relationship needs and provide matches who are deeply compatible with you.

First off I must say is I do applaud eHarmony for sticking to their guidelines and allowing only people who are not married or separated. Other dating services could learn from this and it is what makes eHarmony one of the top spots to go if you are looking for a serious long term relationship.

In my opinion eHarmony does need to make a few changes to make things flow more smoothly. First off all, one of the first questions they ask is if you are single, separated or divorced. If this is a deal breaker profile question for eHarmony, then it should stop the user from entering further information at this point. They should really have all the profile deal breakers up front so people don't waste their time filling out a profile that eHarmony will ultimately deny. This just makes potential members angry.

The other thing I didn't like from the eHarmony customer service response was that the woman had to provide proof of the divorce. Why can't they rely on her word? On everything else she wrote in her profile they trust her about. Plus if a new member says they are divorced, you don't have to go out and prove this. I'm all for verification of profile information but I think they should allow her to change her status and maybe for these type of issues have a verification logo or something for the profile. Just like how some sites are doing for photos. If she needs to prove she is divorced then all divorced members should have too.

After checking out eHarmony profile creation again I notice that eHarmony Canada still allows you to continue the profile creation if you select you are separated. eHarmony.com has improved on this and now has your current relationship status on the home registration page. If you select separated or married, the browser changes and asks you if you want to learn more about eHarmony Marriage, a service from eHarmony that helps married couples with advice on how to improve a struggling marriage. This is a much better way to go about it than telling you after you spent the time to fill out the profile.

Read our eHarmony review for more information about this online dating service.

I notice over at Yahoo! Personals that they have 14 different job position openings with categories ranging from User Experience and Design, Engineering, Marketing and Business Development and Finance. Each position has an in depth description of what you would be required to do at the job and what schooling and work experience you must have. There is also a link so you can apply online. So if you are a Designer, a web developer or a Product Manager why don't you give Yahoo a try?

On a side note, if you are a web developer and get the job at Yahoo Personals, the first thing you can work on is the "Things not looking quite right?" notification I received when viewing the job openings page. I am using Internet Explorer 7, one of the browsers Yahoo Personals does recommend!

Senior FriendFinder is our fifth dating review to pass the 100,000 page views milestone. It actually now has surpassed the main FriendFinder site in the total number of hits (over 105,000). This is the first seniors site to reach this mark and is also the winner of the 2007 Dating Sites Reviews Choice Awards - Senior.

Check out our Senior FriendFinder review for some of the reasons why this is such a popular dating site for seniors.

PerfectMatch.com relationship expert and professor of sociology at the University of Washington, Dr. Pepper Schwartz has been in the news a few times late last month. She was interviewed on Oprah & Friends XM radio show in a live segment in which she discussed matchmaking and online dating. Then a few days later a WebMD article called The ' Good Enough' Marriage' was publish in which Dr. Pepper Schwartz was asked for her expert opinion on, if it is ok to settle for Mr. or Mrs. 'Good Enough'. This article was also featured on CBSNews.com.

Dr. Pepper Schwartz played a leading role in designing PerfectMatch.com singles matching program called the Duet Total Compatibility System. For more information please read our Perfect Match Review (Perfectmatch.com).

According to JupiterResearch (a respected service which creates detailed reports from analyzing internet traffic) online personals is expected to have steady growth in the coming years of roughly 16% per year. As a whole it has been estimated that the online personals industry revenue for 2007 was $900 million. By 2012 revenue is projected to be $1.9 Billion, more than doubled. This is all happening when according to some experts Social Networking was going to have taken over online dating by now.

See the full press release here.