General News

You want someone special in your life but, you don't want to use online dating and your circle of friends have limited social networks, what do you do? You could try a Professional Matchmaker. They bring singles together by offering a personal touch with face to face interactions. A professional matchmaker is ideal for you if you have a very busy schedule and you don't want to spend inordinate amounts of time searching and viewing online dating profiles of potential partners. The 3 most popular matchmaking services available in most major cities in the United States are The Right One, It's Just Lunch and Great Expectations. Both The Right One and It's Just Lunch state that:

... the majority of their clients are in their 30s, 40s and 50s, and come from all walks of life. And while there are fluctuations in the number of males to females who use the service, both sexes, for the most part, are evenly represented.

Members of these services tend to be the busy professional who wants to have a partner in their life but don't have the time to find one. For this premium type of service don't expect to pay online dating site prices. Prices start at around $1000 for a year of service with a professional matchmaker (this depends on the level of service you want), about 3 times as much as the average major dating site for the same time period. For this price all you need to do is give details on yourself, your personality and what type of person you are looking for. From here, most of these services will take this information and your schedule for the month, figure out who suits you best and setup some dates for you.

The Right One matching service is the oldest and has been around for 34 years (1975) and promotes the fact that nationally, they are responsible for, on average, 1 match every 17 minutes and 1 marriage per day. They also belong to an independent organization called the Matchmaking Institute which we discovered recently (see Story). The Matchmaking Institute was established in 2003 to set strict quality standards and a code of ethics in the matchmaking industry.

It's Just Lunch International has been matching singles for the last 18 years (1991). They offer their service not only in the US, but in Australia, Canada, and parts of Europe and Asia from 100 different locations. It's Just Lunch has about 30,000 members in total. who on average go on 50,000 dates a month. About 70 percent of dates lead to a second date.

Great Expectations has about 30 years of experience in matching (1980?) and over 50 locations nationwide. According to their website they have 100,000 members across the US. Currently, we do not recommend this service, do to the Arizona Attorney General filing a lawsuit against them in 2008 (see Story).

Professional matchmakers usually always are in major cities and have a smaller pool of daters than the major dating sites. What professional matchmakers may lack in number of clients (when compared to online sites) they make up in servicing the customer. You also are paying for the human intuition of the ability to size people up to determine what type of person would make a good match for them.

For more information on matchmaking professionals, check out our Matchmaking Services category.

The Unofficial eHarmony Blog let us know with a post that eHarmony has updated their interface based on feedback from users. There are now 3 tabs which organize your eHarmony matches. The New tab shows all new matches. The Communicating tab shows all matches you currently communicating with or have requested communication and the Closed tab shows all matches you have closed or have been closed by the match. A search field also has been added to find your matches easily, with a built in auto complete. Communication also has been streamed lined to make things faster and simpler to use.

For more information on this popular matchmaking service, read our eHarmony review.

According to a few reports, the dating site OKCupid.com went down late last night (May 28, 2009) for a couple of hours as apparently a cup of coffee was accidentally spilled on a router. When we tried accessing the dating site ourselves earliy this morning we received the following message:

So...We thought it would be cool to get a cat for the office, but we needed a litter box, and there wasn't really room in the bathroom, so we put it next to these servers in the back, and everything would have been fine, but the A/C repair guy was allergic and the cat reacts badly to loud noises and there were all these wires hanging back there and a bunch of surprisingly flammable packing material...

Erik thought it would be JUST AWESOME to put a paperclip on the end of a rubber band and shoot it at Vinay's eye, and it would have just been Erik and Vinay's problem except Vinay had a cup of coffee and was standing over James, who was fixing our router at the time...

Anyway, we'll have things back up soon. Sorry for the inconvenience. - Worker

Here's hope it is backup soon.

Update - May 29, 2009, 9:15 am - I just tried OK Cupid again and everything seems to be back to normal. Happy Testing!

CNN did a post about virtual currencies and economies. It is estimated that at least $1 billion USD were transferred into virtual currencies last year. The biggest use of virtual currencies are online games, followed by social networks and virtual worlds. Some websites even earn more revenue through virtual currencies than online advertising. The massive online multiplayer game, World of Warcraft (or WoW for short) uses WoW Gold. Even though it is against the rules set by Blizzard, this currency is bought and sold on the black market. This currency is so sought after, workers in China have been known to play the game just to earn the virtual WoW currency to sell to players in Europe and the US.

Social networking sites like Hi5 and MyYearBook have created their own currency as well. Hi5 has the Hi5 Coin and MyYearBook calls their currency Lunch Money. Hi5 Coins are mainly used to buy virtual gifts while with Lunch Money you can buy virtual gifts, play games and even donate it to charities. Facebook is looking into a unified currency since all the games and application on their platform that use a virtual currency has been created by the application developer. The problem with this for members is, the currency is only good with that one application. Facebook also doesn't see any revenue from these virtual currencies. This could be a way out for Facebooks revenue problems. If they create one unified Facebook currency for the entire site, not only could members spend it through any Facebook applicationg they want, Facebook would get a cut from each transaction.

The virtual world Second Life also has a currency called Linden Dollars. You can trade real currency for Linden Dollars which you can then buy whatever is for sale on Second Life (virtual real estate, entertainment, stores, etc..). Just like with real currencies, the Linden Dollar fluctuates daily against the USD. The buy and sell prices are set by the residents of Second Life on the LindeX Currency Exchange.

Some dating sites have a form of virtual currency called points. While you can't trade or buy something from other members, you can purchase virtual gifts, features and extended memberships from the dating site itself. Usually the way you earn points is by using and / or participating in the dating site. Two dating sites that I know of who use points this way is, Plenty Of Fish and, the FriendFinder Network of dating sites. With POF, every time you log into the site you earn 60 points, with a maximum of 60 points total every 24 hours These points can be used to buy virtual gifts for other members. With FriendFinder you receive points for participating in the site by adding or voting on articles, replying to questions and voting on topics. When you have earned enough points you can then purchase membership upgrades with them. This can include adding extra months to your membership and having your profile highlighted.

Check out CNN.com Technology for the full story. Read our FriendFinder review for more information on this dating service.

From the Spark Networks quarter 1, 2009 financial results, it shows the dating networks revenue has declined 20 percent to $12 million, with $300 thousand in net profit. In Q1, 2008 revenue was $15 million, with a net profit of $1.6 million. Quarter 4 in 2008 saw $13.2 in revenue. Adam Berger, Chief Executive Officer of Spark Networks, Inc. stated that revenue is down due to the turn in the economy and the lower than expected total average paying subscriber.

Background Checks and Identity Verification on members of dating sites have been getting a lot of attention in the media over the last year or so. This attention came to the forefront due mainly to New Jersey passing legislation called the Internet Dating Safety Act, which requires dating sites to notify visitors who live in New Jersey if they conduct criminal background checks or not on members.

Criminal Background Checks and Identity Verification both require the user to submit additional information so a search can be done. One of the many problems with most Criminal Background Checks is they don't verify the identity of the member they are dealing with. I am sure most criminals, especially when the dating site promotes the fact that they do criminal background checks, do not give out their real information. They will either give fake information or just find a name and address on the internet and pass that off for their own. Scanning criminal databases for a fake user will just return zero results, which to them means the member passed the check. The other problem with criminal background checks is (at least in the United States and Canada), there are hundreds of law enforcement databases out there and most are not communicating with each other. So, if the crime is not Federal then the chances it will be found remains small by most Background Check services.

Identity Verification relies on public record databases to do the job. Usually users are required to give their name, address and birthday. From there the verification service will search government databases for your information. When found, the service will ask you additional information on file to ensure the identity is yours. These additional questions are not always the same for every person. Questions can include, if you are married, your occupation and where you work, to the name of a relative. If this is all completed successfully then the user will have a verified status. The problem of Identity Verification services is websites like Intelius (US only) offer the same information to the general public from the same government databases for as low as a couple of bucks. A scammer could just perform one of these searches before he has to do an Identity Verification on a website.

The third type of related product is a Trust or Reputation service like the one from Iovation called ReputationManager. Here it is not necessarily the user who is trusted but the computer or electronic device they use. A unique ID is generated for each device (how this ID is generated is kept secret), and from their they can track if any previous fraudulent or suspicious activities have happen before on the computer. This can range from knowing if a previous transaction made from the computer was successful, too spamming activities like someone creating multiple accounts on a website within a certain time period.

All of these services have their problems and workaround but the best solution for a dating site would be using a combination of all these services to stop scammers. When you combine a Identity Check, with a Criminal Background Check, with a Reputation Service you can ensure maximum protection for your members. A website that offers a paid service or products can offer even further protection since they will have the additional knowledge of knowing if your bank or credit card information was verified by a financial institution.