General News

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

Starting this Friday, November 20th, 2009, eHarmony UK (eHarmony.co.uk) is having a 4 day long free communication weekend. Until Sunday midnight (Nov. 23rd), all members of this dating service can review matches and communicate with all members for free. All that is required from you, is the time you need to try out this matchmaking service.

eHarmony places an emphasis on long term relationships that lead to marriage. If this is something that interests you, give one of the fastest growing dating sites in the UK a try.

The last free communication weekend for eHarmony UK was held at the end of October, just 4 weeks ago (see Story).

Read our review of eHarmony for more details and users opinions on this popular matchmaking service for British singles.

The Online Dating Insider had a good post about something I have heard of happening but hadn't really followed up on it before. Buying and selling of friends and fans on Facebook, and followers on Twitter. One such website which offers this service is uSocial.

For the low price of $87 you can have 1,000 twitter followers in 7 days or less. If that is not enough you can get up to 100,000 followers for only $3,479 in 365 days.

If Twitter is not your thing you can always opt to buy Facebook Fans or Friends. As of writing this story, buying Facebook Friends was temporarily unavailable but 1,000 fans of a Facebook page only cost $197. 10,000 fans comes in at $1167.30

Why does someone need to buy followers or fans? It is for marketing purposes and getting more traffic to your website. The more fans a page has, or followers your tweets get, the more supposed creditability you or your business has and the more people you can promote your products too. You can also buy votes from uSocial as well, to get your articles on the front page of Digg, del.icio.us and Propeller. I am sure Facebook, Twitter and Digg all hate these type of advertising services, as it undermines the value of what they are trying to offer.

Like it or not, the internet revolves around advertising. That said, there is the ethical way to advertise and then there is the other way. I think uSocial went the other way, therefore I would never recommend someone to use a service like this.

As Thanksgiving moves closer, we knew the next eHarmony Free Communication Weekend would soon be upon us. Starting tomorrow, Thursday, Nov 19 and to Sunday Nov. 22 all members of eHarmony (US and Canada) will be able to communicate and review their matches at no cost. These 4 day events are the best way for singles interested in online dating to give eHarmony a try and to see if this matchmaking service is the one that not only works for them, but fits their needs as well.

The last free communication event was held in late October, just 4 weeks ago (see Story). This is Free Communication Weekend number 21 for eHarmony here in the US.

Check out our review of eHarmony for more information on the dating site. We also currently have 72 user reviews which you can read that are available from our review page.