Online Dating

We have had a run of press releases over the last week or so dealing with dating services. I found one for eHarmony in which they have chosen to use the fraud-fighting technology called the Interceptas platform, from Accertify. eHarmony reviewed several fraud detection systems and found the platform from Accertify would enhance their fraud-fighting capabilities the best. Interceptas is a tool for e-commerce websites and it:

provides comprehensive fraud-fighting tools and components in a single, integrated system that allows merchants to integrate more data into the fraud-fighting process for improved screening success. The platform can be used to manage a variety of data management challenges across the enterprise. In addition, its automated workflow features strengthen fraud defenses and reduce the manual effort involved in fraud protection.

Incereptas is just one of the many systems eHarmony uses for a multi-pronged fraud protection strategy.

For more information on the dating site mention in this article, check out our eHarmony Review.

On June 5th, 2009, IAC completed the deal previously announced in early May with Meetic (see Story). IAC sold Match.com European operations for 27 percent equity stake in Meetic along with a 5 million Euro promissory note.

The Online Dating Insider pointed out that Hannah Schwartz of the Australian dating site RSVP said that their membership is up 31 percent this quarter when compared to the same quarter last year. Schwartz states in the following video (around the 6 minute 27 second mark) that the membership increase is driven mainly by woman and the total membership number for RSVP is now over 1.4 million.



She further states that when surveyed, members have turned to online dating due to the recession, and the need to cut back expenses.

For more on this popular Australian dating site, read our RSVP review.

On Tuesday, Match.com was sued in New York federal court by Sean McGinn for $5 million. This New York man alleges Match.com deceives its members by posting profiles of dates who cannot respond to communication requests, since they have not paid for a subscription. McGinn attorney, Noah Hart says people leave the dating site feeling completely "ignored and rejected" since no one replies to their emails. Hart is hoping to turn this suit into a class action.

Online dating sites have been sued a number of times lately. eHarmony has been sued at least twice, over gay rights issues (see Story) and in March True.com was forced to pay a $1.5 million settlement in regards to their auto billing and renewal practices of memberships (see Story).

Starting this weekend, Saturday June 13th at 12:01 am EDT Facebook users will be able to choose a username for your profile. What this allows is your identity to be easily seen in your Facebook URL which up to now is just a number, as example:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1234567890

The new look will be similar to how Twitter does it:

http://www.facebook.com/your.username.here

There are several reasons for Facebook adding this new feature, with the main one being to allow for easy identification of a profiles URL. This will also make it easier for search engines like Google to identify and index web pages.

This is a first-come, first-serve basis so if you have a name in mind, I would reserve it early Saturday. Full detail instructions are available here and will also be present on your homepage starting this Saturday. Privacy isn't a concern since your new username will have the same privacy settings as your profile name.

For more information, read the Facebook blog post.

According to The National, there are as many as 40 million singles from the United States who are looking for love on social networking sites and online dating services. With the recent bad press online personals has received lately due in large part of several murderers meeting their victims through Craigslist, The National decided to take a further look at the dangerous side of online dating.

The article brought up several cases, including the 2 Craigslist ones mentioned above.

In April a Boston medical student, Philip Markoff, dubbed the “Craigslist killer” by the media, was arrested and charged with murdering a masseuse who advertised on the popular website’s erotic services section.

Two months later Craigslist was hit with another scandal when it emerged that a North Carolina man used the site to hire a man to rape his wife while the husband watched.