General News

Edward Butler, a senior analyst at IBISWorld, used Australian Bureau of Statistics data and industry surveys to review and crunch data on the global sex services industry. He determined that the $1.2 billion industry has seen a 6 percent ($74 million) decline since the global financial crisis started. Brothels, tobacco and alcohol are usually recession proof but that doesn't appear to be the case this time.

Some analysis like Butler think that the popularity of adult dating sites have taken business from the sex industry. Adult dating sites make it easier for consenting adults to be frank about what they want and need in terms of sex. It has never been cheaper for like-minded individuals to organise casual liaisons with the rise of adult and casual dating services.

About 1.5 million men and women now have accounts in Australia with sites such popular dating sites as RSVP, Match.com and eHarmony. Most of these singles are not looking for casual sex and are intent on finding a partner for a long term relationship. Adult FriendFinder, one of the more popular casual sex dating sites reports on having just over 892 thousand profile listings from Australia.

For more on the story, read The Sydney Morning Herald.

I see Singlesnet.com has been busy updating their dating service. Singlesnet was one of the first of the popular dating sites to allow free members to both send and receive emails from paid members. It seems like they want to top this feat by adding a new online chatting page, which all members can use.



Chat rooms are divided by region and a bar on the right side of the page contains a photo and a link to the profile of all members who are in your chat room. You can also block any members who you do not want to chat with. It looks like this new dating tool has become very popular on SinglesNet since it is completely free to use.

The other update Singles Net added to the dating site was message forums. There are 6 main discussion topics and 34 sub forums. You can discuss everything from life and love to sports and politics. The forums are also free to post in for all members.

To find out more about this dating site and what they offer singles, read our review of SinglesNet.com.

Have you ever been rejected by eHarmony? According to a recent article you are not alone, about 20 percent of people who sign up for eHarmony are ultimately rejected. (see Story) Have you ever wondered why? Here are a seven confirmed reasons why:

1. The main reason people are rejected by eHarmony are if they are still married or separated (but not divorced). Earlier this year if you entered one of this options as your Marital Status you where told this right away by eHarmony that they don't allow married people to use the service, but now I see they let you continue on with entering your profile.
2. This is related to point 1, if you answer that you have been married for more than 2 times (this may now be 4).
3. If you entered" I am a Man seeking a Man" or a "Woman seeking a Woman" would also get you the boot. This happened before eHarmony opened their same sex dating site called Compatible Partners. Now, you will get redirected to Compatible Partners.
4. Your answers don't jive. This actually happened to me. Randomly selecting your profile answers may speed up answering the questionnaire but it will most likely get you a rejection notice. A simple test for this one is to enter you are a Man seeking a Woman on the eHarmony homepage and then on the first section and question of the questionnaire confirming your gender as female.
5. Age. According to eHarmony's Terms and Conditions of Service " You must be at least 13 years old to use the Site (or the age of majority in your jurisdiction, if it is older), and at least 18 years old to register for the Services.".
6. That you have been convicted of a felony. While eHarmony does not conduct criminal background screenings, they do reserve the right to conduct such checks by using available public records. This one won't get you rejected right away but if someone complains about you, and they do a little digging and find a criminal record, you may get served a notice of rejection.
7. As reported by a number of other blog sites (I never did find the source), eHarmony will reject you if you score low on a number of different traits or dimensions. These can include your emotional status, character, conflict resolution and several others.

Sam Yagan indicated that an iPhone application was in the works for OkCupid earlier this month (see Story), and now it is out (much sooner than I was expecting). This is a full featured dating application that offers:

• Sending and receiving of your OkCupid mail messages.
• Instant Messaging with members.
• Updating your profile and photos.
• Spend time answering those famous OkCupid match questions.
• Search for users.
• Search for matches based on your current location.
• Find out who has been checking you out.

Have you always wanted to be able to start conversations with other members easier on OKCupid? Now you can as their new Ice Breakers feature is now in beta. Ice Breakers are a little different on OkCupid than on other dating sites (also called Winks, Flirts, Express Interest). Ice Breakers have their own page which when you visit will show you other people with similar interests. From there you can then write a short message to one or more of these people about those interests, an instant conversation starter.

Thanks to Online Dating Insider for the heads up. To find out more about OkCupid's Ice Breakers read our reviews of OkCupid.

The Unofficial eHarmony Blog sure knows how to dig for eHarmony news. They found this banner on the eHarmony US website:

under the URL "http://www.eharmony.com/static/images/diamondgiver/banner/".

From this banner it looks like eHarmony is creating marketing material for a possible new personalized matchmaking service where eHarmony Matchmakers select matches for you and possibly setup the dates (my thinking on this). All this is speculation, but it does sound close to how the China dating site Zhenai.com operates (see Story). They have a 350 matchmaker call center which sets up dates for clients.

The service looks to be called eHarmony Personal Matchmaker Service but the above banner image was found in a directory called DiamondGiver. In the service industry Diamond usually means the highest quality (and most expensive) service. We didn't see the word Diamond in the image so once again we are just speculating.

Match.com has done this type of service before in which eHarmony may be getting into. They called it Match Platinum (the old Platinum service not the new one, see Story). This Match.com service was only available in Texas and was not tied directly to the Match.com dating site. Match Platinum offered customers a one on one matchmaking service but it has since been shutdown (RIP 2006-2008).

To find out what other think about this dating site, check out some eHarmony reviews.