General News

Tom Shone decided to give internet dating a try after breaking up with his girlfriend a month before. Guess who was the first person to contact him on a dating site? If you said his ex-girlfriend, you would be right.

Loved your profile on Nerve. Glad to hear you’re feeling so “chipper” these days – Natalie.

Tom hadn't meant for anyone who really knew him to read his profile, especially his ex. You always put your best foot forward when writing a dating profile, which made it look like to his ex-girlfriend, that he had forgotten all about the heartbreak and tears from the month before. She did later apologize that day for the email, and said it was just a shock to see the profile. Tom told her that he wasn't using the dating site to go on dates, he was just window shopping.

There is not much to this Economist article but it does offer a few interesting statistics on the UK online dating scene.

Did you know 5 million singles visited British dating sites in September, 2009? On average about 4 percent of people have used a dating site in Europe. In Britain, online dating is twice as popular with 8 percent of the population having visited a dating service.

This is probably one of the main reasons why eHarmony now operates a dating service in the UK. Since it opened in June of 2008 eHarmony.co.uk now has more than 500,000 singles registered with them. To find out what makes eHarmony a popular choice among singles, read our eHarmony Review.

The Senate is cracking down on those Member Rewards Programs and Money Back Offers you see on hundreds of popular websites after you have purchased a product or service. Three Internet companies, Webloyalty, Vertrue and Affinion Group are currently under investigation for

exploiting consumers’ expectations about online shopping to trick them into joining their membership clubs.

Chairman Rockefeller states that the ads are purposely designed to mislead web shoppers since most do not realize they are being charged for the service. Information about any charges are buried in the fine print and these Membership Reward Programs don't ask for a credit card because they receive the information from the company in which you just purchased a product or service from.

This is a $1.4 billion industry and Webloyalty, Vertrue and Affinion Group have partnered with many well know websites. There was 19 partners who earned over $10 from sales of these membership programs. Some of the companies are 1-800-Flowers, Buy.com, Classmates.com, Columbia House, Fandango and Shutterfly. There are almost 75 partners who have earned between $1 million and 10 million. Some of these companies include 1-800-PetMeds, Avon, Barnes & Noble, Cheap Tickets, eHarmony, Tiger Direct, True.com, and Victoria's Secret.

Note: Unfortunately the source to the video and/or image which once was displayed here has since been removed by the authors for an unknown reason.

According to Webloyalty less than 1 percent of consumers have complained about the reward programs, but they have stated that they do plan to make it more clear that the service they offer is an additional charge. In the mean time watch out for those $10, $15, or $20 cash back advertisements or the coupons that can look like this:

For more on this story (including some senate documents), read TechCrunch and the U.S. Senate Committee press release.

While I think genetic testing can reveal biological compatibility, I do have problems recommending it as your sole source of information about your matches. Personality and your own likes and dislikes play a major role in matchmaking. Plus, all of the DNA testing dating sites memberships are too small to really be able to generate high quality matches for someone.

It looks like that one of the first dating sites we talked about which does DNA matchmaking, ScientificMatch.com, is planning to phase out the dating part of the site and concentrate on matchmakers and couples. I think that is a good idea for Scientific Match as their price tag of $995 was just too steep for them ever to gain any traction as a dating site. See this Story for more details on ScientificMatch.com.

Another genetic testing dating service we talked about was GenePartner. Back in the beginning of June they had run tests on 500 people, now after 5 months, they have doubled the number to 1000. This is still not a lot of people but it is the only DNA matching company to specify any numbers. Another advantage of GenePartner is they are much cheaper than other similar services. They only charge $99. GenePartner have also recently partnered with a dating site called Sense2Love.com (which is expected to open next month) to offer their service as an add-on to the regular dating site's service. I think partnering with other dating sites like this, is the only way for DNA matchmaking companies to be able to create a member database large enough to generate quality matches for singles. For more on GenePartner and how their service works, read this Story.

The one other thing I have problems with these type of matching sites is I would never really want to give up my DNA to them. You would never know if your DNA could ever fall into the wrong hands (like your insurance company).

Stella Magazine commissioned the research company, YouGov, to survey 2,000 men and women who lived in the United Kingdom and had been on a date in the last year.

What did they find out? Well, if you are 55 or older, you belong to the group who most actively dates online. 62 percent of men and women over 55 have joined a dating site. At the other end of the demographic age range, only 21 percent of 18 to 24 year old British singles had ever joined a dating site.

55 and older singles also went on more dates from online dating than other age groups, an average of 8.2 dates to be exact. They also formed more long term relationships because of these dates with the average 55 plus online dater having 2.1 relationships.

The 45 to 54 age group did find the most sexual partners online at 2.6 partners per person but, 55 year olds and older came in second at 2.4 sexual partners per person.

For more information on this story, visit Telegraph or, you can pick up a copy of Stella Magazine this Sunday.

For UK singles who are interested in finding a dating service to try, take a look at our United Kingdom Dating category and our Dating Over 50 category.

Back in March 2009, we reported 600 posts in all topics on Dating Sites Reviews (see Story). The site started in 2003 so it took us about 5 years to reach that point.

Well, it is 8 months later and this post right here, is number 1,000 😀

One of the goals this year was to offer more reporting on dating industry news, while still offering reviews, relationship advice and dating tips that our readers visit us each day for. I think we succeeded.

To our readers, I would like to extend our thanks, you make this all possible.

I would also like to thank our regular contributors E. Foley (view Profile) and Erika (view [user:RedheadWriting Profile]) who have been offering their advice, tips and insight on relationships and online dating this past year.

The next few months will be busy here at Dating Sites Reviews. You can still expect the quality and quantity of posts from Dating Sites Reviews but we also plan a few changes as well. The website will be getting a few theme and feature updates and our review and ratings system will also be getting upgraded. All of these changes are designed to make your surfing experience easier.

Here's to the next 1,000 posts!

Tom