General News

The free dating site DownToEarth.com was officially launched in January 2009 by IAC, the parent company of Match.com and Chemistry (see Story). Down To Earth's target market was the College-aged crowd of 18 to 25 and their goal by the end of the year was to have 250,000 members. Well, it looks like they didn't make it. OPW reports that the dating site DownToEarth.com has been relaunched as Stir.com.

DownToEarth.com reached their traffic peak in March at almost 250 thousand unique visitors, since then the dating site's traffic has fallen by over half to 96 thousand unique visitors in September:

Free dating site OkCupid recently did several studies about online dating emails, looking at over a million of their members. They took a look first at the words that people wrote to one another and how those words correlated to response rate. (Here's a hint: Use proper English and not netspeak if you want replies.) But probably their most controversial article related to how your race determines the amount of replies you will receive.

We all want to assume that people are a lot more colorblind than they used to be, but OkCupid has found that's simply not the case. Even if we say that race doesn't matter, the numbers don't lie - it really does.

OkCupid's CEO, Sam Yagan, told NPR's Michel Martin that they were intrigued by the idea that they could get some answers to the questions people have about the role race plays in online dating. After all, when people are asked to state their dating preferences in their profile, they check off certain boxes. Do those boxes match up to the emails they deem worthy of a reply?

A little late notice but, we just confirmed that eHarmony in the United Kingdom is having a free communication weekend starting today, Friday Oct 23rd, and ending Monday Oct 26th.

All members during this timeframe will be able to not only review their matches for free, but communicate with all of their matches for free by using the 4 step guided communication process. No credit card is required. So, if you are interested in finding out what all the buzz on eHarmony is about, now is a good time to join!

The last free weekend for eHarmony.co.uk was held at the end of August, just over 7 weeks ago (see Story).

Read our eHarmony review for more details on this popular online dating service for British singles.

Larger singles do not necessarily have an easy time dating online or off. MSNBC wrote about several women who are plus sized and are online looking for love. Both women, Christie Hyde (age 33) and Cynthia Colby (age 55), tried most of the popular dating sites between them, including Match.com, eHarmony.com and PlentyofFish.com with no luck. They did not hide the fact that they where over weight and mentioned it in their profiles and included photos of themselves. They did communicate with men on these dating sites but, sometimes before a first date, when they reminded them in a email messages about their size, they never heard from them again.

An assistant professor of communications at California State University, Laura Triplett, studies fat discrimination. She found that in a lot of cases once a plus sized women meets a potential match in person, societies taboo's take over and she is rejected. With online dating, Laura recommends using niche dating sites that promote overweight singles. She also suggests not to include your weight or your size in your profile. You should focus on other positive features about yourself.

For more on this story, read Today MSNBC and to find dating sites which cater directly to plus sized singles, check out our new Plus-Size Dating category.

People Media, a provider of online dating communities like BlackPeopleMeet.com and SeniorPeopleMeet.com was ranked on Technology Fast 500, Deloitte LLP`s ranking of 500 of the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in the US and Canada. People Media came in at number 359. Ranking is determined by the percentage of fiscal year revenue growth during a five year period. People Media grew 342 percent during 2004 to 2008.

To check out some of People Media dating sites, read our review of BlackPeopleMeet.com and our review of SeniorPeopleMeet.com.

In a surprising move, eHarmony is having a Free Communication Event (not weekend) starting Wednesday October 21 to, and including Sunday October 25. Normal free communication weekends at eHarmony are usually only 4 days long and start the Thursday or Friday. With this next one 5 days long I am sure eHarmony is bracing for the surge of new members.

This eHarmony communication event allows all members to not only review their matches but communicate with them as well for free. The only option you can't use is FastTrack. FastTrack allows members to bypass the 4 step guided communication process and go instantly to email messages.

This is Free Communication Weekend number 20 for eHarmony. The last one was held in September on the Labour Day weekend (see Story).

Read our eHarmony review for more details on if this is the ideal dating and matchmaking service for you.