General News

CheckedProfile.com is a new service designed to allow people to have their photo's and email address verified. They soon plan to have 5 levels of verification which will allow people to verify Name, Age, Country, Phone, Address and Net Worth. Only the first level is available now and prices range from free to $99.99 USD for all levels of service. CheckedProfile is aimed at people who use dating sites and social networks. The problem of profile and photo dishonesty is not new and there are already several other companies offering similar services which we have talked about before (see Story).

The way CheckedProfile works (at least for the level 1 photo verification) is you create an account an upload the photo you want verified. The service then gives you a custom alphanumeric code which is unique to your picture. You then need to put the code on a piece of paper and take a picture of yourself holding the paper. This new photo then is uploaded to CheckedProfile. Once verified (by an actual person) you will then get your original photo back with a verified stamp integrated into it along with a code. People interested in you, can now visit CheckedProfile.com to type in the code from the photo to verify that the photo has indeed been verified (along with any other information).

As with most of these type of services there are a few holes in the verification process that if people wanted to, they could circumvent. For one thing, a scammer could just steal someone else's photo that already has been verified and pass it off as his own. A scammer could also mock up a photo with the verified information, it may not pass the test when someone checks it on the website but I bet not everyone will understand that they need to do this. The last problem I see is, someone could just get their good looking friend to do the process for them. While CheckedProfile's verification process is not 100 percent it is a step in the right direction. If they improve on the verification methods maybe it will become one I would recommend.

Visit CheckedProfile.com directly and for more services designed to help you succeed in dating, take a look at our Dating Profile Help category.

A couple of weeks ago we talked a bit about eHarmony's seven new profile questions which dealt with common traits and interests (see Story). Last week eHarmony posted a bit more information about this feature called Something to Talk About. As the name suggests, this feature is designed to highlight what each profile has in common and to help matched couples by breaking the ice and giving topics of conversation. When you view a match and if you share some common interests, you will see these interests appear in the area titled "Something to Talk About".

For more on the feature, visit the official eHarmony Blog. Tto find out more why this is such a popular matchmaking service, read our eHarmony review.

Forbes has ranked their top cities for singles a litter earlier this year. We usually expect the results sometime in September. In 2007 San Francisco held the honour of the best city for singles, in 2008 it was Atlanta, and this year the honour goes to New York City. Looking at this list when compared to other years it seems that the recession has juggled the cities rankings quite a bit. For example, in last year's best city for singles list, New York City was in 8th place.

Here is the top 5 cities for Singles in 2009:

1. New York City
2. Boston
3. Chicago
4. Seattle
5. Washington D.C.

Unfortunately Spark Networks has continued their downward trend. Revenue for Q2, 2009 was $11.2 million, which is a 25 percent decrease when compared to $15 million from Q2, 2008. This is also a 7 percent decrease in revenue from Q1, 2009. Revenue dropped due to continued declines in subscriber numbers from JDate and the General Markets dating sites. Average paying subscribers for Spark Networks as a whole in quarter 2, 2009 is 163,217. This is a 3 percent decrease when compared to the last quarter and a 14 percent decrease when compared to the same quarter last year.

JDate saw revenue drop 18% to $7,1 million when compared to the same quarter in 2008. This is the result of subscribers falling 10 percent to 82,769. The Other Affinity Networks had revenues which totalled $3.3 million and 65,409 subscribers. Compared to the same quarter last year, revenue fell 3 percent while subscriber numbers increased 3 percent. General Market Networks saw the worse of it. Revenues dropped 68% to $701,000 and subscribers fell 58% to 14,022 when compared to quarter 2, 2008.

The planned decrease in revenue for General Market Networks is largely attributable to an 85% decrease in the marketing spend for this segment in the second quarter of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008.

For the full 2009 Q2 release visit Spark Networks News Room.

Related Story: Spark Networks First Quarter 2009 Financials

I notice this statistic on PlentyofFish tonight:



The image is a little small to read but, it says that a Serious Membership Upgrade at PlentyofFish.com will increase your chance of a relationship by 230%. There is no note or link to a page explaining how this statistic was calculated. Plus what are my chances of finding a relationship without paying for an upgrade? It looks like POF is joining other dating sites who like to use statistics to entice users to join. Unfortunately stats produced by dating sites lately are getting a bad name (see Story).

For more information on this dating site, read our PlentyofFish review.

First the largest free dating site PlentyOfFish.com, decided to offer a paid upgrade service 6 months ago (see Story) and now the second largest free dating site, OKCupid is doing the same. Members who upgrade their free membership on OkCupid are called A-List users. As an A-List user you get the following 10 perks:

• The ability to attach photos to messages.
• Create both public and private photo albums (reminds me of an adult dating site).
• Store up to 5000 messages.
• Send messages to users who have a full inbox.
• Save multiple search settings.
• Access to A-List forums.
• Ads removed from the website.
• Advanced search features.
• Give awards to other users and read and write reviews about them (testimonials).
• A little more exposure (you may be placed in the special A-List Matches column of results).

A few of the perks have left me scratching my head. First of all I am not sure why someone would want to store 5000 messages. I know there are some OkCupid fanatics who will want this but, it is not really a selling point for general use users. Sending messages to users who have a full inbox is also a little weird, at first I thought, why would I want to send messages to someone who doesn't even check their mail? On my second read through, I realized this feature is aimed more for users who file away all messages they receive (for the 5000 message users) and not for the user who's mailbox is full because he never logs in.

In terms of advance search features, A-List members can now filter by Match Questions, Data Persona and Popularity Ratings. You can also custom order your search results by personality traits. Another nice feature is the Similar Users option. If you have found someone you liked and they are already taken you can use this option to find other people who are just like them.

The cost to become an A-List user is $9.95 USD per month and you will be auto billed every month until you cancel. The first 1000, users are also offered a free T-Shirt in a number of different colors. I was offered one today when I visited the signup page. Dave over at Online Dating Insider blogged about OkCupid A-List users on August 12th, which was 5 days ago. I guess this means that the A-List user memberships are not really flying off the shelf yet.

It appears that free dating sites are hitting a wall in terms of revenue generation. Online advertising dollars were in decline before the economy turned south and since then, we have seen the 2 largest free dating services start to offer a paid membership on their websites. Both of these dating sites offer their paid members some useful feature but I think they missed the point of online dating, as I had mentioned in a previous post about Plenty Of Fish going paid. Users of online dating sites want to be noticed. They are on a dating website for a reason, to find a partner. The best way for a dating service to do this is by displaying their profile to more interested members. Both dating sites visibly mark members who have upgraded but as far as I can tell none allowed me to search just for these type of members. I also think these members should be displayed higher in search results than free members (if they fit reasonably within the search criteria). This not only would give upgraded members more responses, it is also a winning scenario for free members since they would be seeing members who are most actively seeking a partner first.

To find out more about this dating site, read our review of OkCupid.