Online Dating

It looks like PerfectMatch.com will be making an appearance in the new Adam Sandler movie called Paul Blart: Mall Cop which stars Kevin James. Previous films in which Perfect Match was the dating site used in the movie by relationship troubled characters include "Must Love Dogs" and "Failure to Launch". This approach to marketing has been very successful for Perfect Match which few other dating sites have tried. PerfectMatch.com also gets mentioned fairly regularly on TV by such popular shows as Dr. Phil and the Bonnie Hunt Show.

The new movie is due out in mid-January. Visit the official Paul Blart: Mall Cop website for more information on this movie and a preview. Read our PerfectMatch.com Review for more details on this online dating site.

The economy is in reverse but online dating site Match.com is speeding ahead. They had their largest membership growth for November in 7 years. Match.com started 13 years ago in 1995. According to a press release Match.com attribute the growth to:

The combination of a new matching service, the Daily5, and the daily drumbeat of bad economics sent consumers to Match.com looking for love.

Match.com members initiated over 400,000 more connections this November (when compared to Nov 07) thanks to in part the new Daily 5 feature (see Story). November also produced the third busiest week of the year. Usually the weeks in January and February leading up to Valentine's Day see the heaviest use of dating sites.

For more information on this popular dating site, read our Match.com review.

I saw this article on December 1st at CNet News. It talks about a recent ruling regarding a cyber bullying, suicide and MySpace.

The specifics of the Lori Drew case are messy and emotional. The important fact is that there is no federal cyber bullying statute, so the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles turned to a novel interpretation of existing computer hacking laws to try to punish the woman. The general idea is that in creating terms of service, a Web site owner specifies the rules of admission to the site. If someone violates any of those contractual terms, the "access" to the Web site is done without authorization, and is thus hacking.

A jury found Lori guilty of 3 misdemeanor violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This means she could get up to $300,000 in fines and a year in prison.

At the moment, (unless it gets overturned) using this case as a example, a websites Terms of Service currently have the power of US federal hacking laws. As the article points out most companies have strict Terms of Service. Google is used as an example. Their terms do not allow people under the age of 18 to use any of Google's services. Which 17 year old and under teen exactly follows this term? You would be hard press to find one. Most dating sites have strict policies as well. You are not suppose to join Match.com if you are married and eHarmony forbids members from lying in their profiles. Breaking these rules in theory classifies you as a computer hacker which mean you could potentially be charged.

Read MySpace ruling could lead to jail for lying online daters for the full story.

Instead of launching Chemistry in the United Kingdom (which is available only in the US and Canada) Match.com has decided to include a personality test called Match Insights as part of the UK Match.com dating site. After reviewing the 2 tests I found them almost exactly the same (at least with the way I answered the questions). For existing Match.com members you can find the personality test in the My Profile section. According to the press release about this news:

... the self analysis is available free to all match.com online dating members in the UK. This will be followed by a premium service available early next year which will deliver every ’match insights’ user their best matches each day based on their personality type.

It looks like this will become an additional paid service that will most likely continue to be a part of Match.com instead of becoming a whole new dating site.

In the beginning of the year we took a look at a new Facebook application called the Little Black Book from Match.com. We were not overly impressed but, felt it did hold some promise. Being maybe a few weeks old at the time, the Little Black Book had 67 daily active users with about 600 total installed users. Our main complaints involved around the clunky user interface and browser compatibility problems.

A month later, David from the Online Dating Insider took a look at the application as well. At this time there was 240 daily active users. While not impressive numbers for a Facebook application, it was an improvement from when I had looked at it. In his review, David had a wish list of improvements and found the browser issues were still present.

Flash forward 11 months and the Little Black Book has disappeared from Facebooks application list. The last appearance I can find of it is a Google Cache page which was capture September 29, 2008. At this time there was only 100 monthly active users with a 1.6 out of 5 star rating. The reviews of the application were not pretty.

Did Match.com take down the application to redevelop and fix its problems or is it gone for good? I think it is in Match.com's best interest to forget about Facebook applications. A search for the term "Dating" on Facebook revealed that the most popular application has over 12 thousand active monthly users. Not a lot when you consider the 1.3 million paid users Match.com website had this past quarter. Match.com employees time would be better spent on other projects.

Scientific Match is a dating site that bases its matches on members DNA and their immune systems. The owner Eric Holzle was interviewed for a Times article. In it he talks about how Scientfic Match works, some background information about himself and his company plus, the cost of the service. The author of the article was a bit suspect of the whole thing.

Besides all of the obvious weirdness, it seemed odd that women on the pill aren’t allowed to join because, as Holzle explains, they’ve chemically altered their bodies to avoid the need to breed.

With quotes like the one above, Eric doesn't always come out very good. The author also had Scientific Match checked out by his Expert.

Somewhat bewildered, I bounced the concept off David Altshuler, a geneticist at Harvard University. I explained to him that there was a service that matches you with a partner based on genetics and immunity. He was intrigued, but after perusing Holzle’s site, he said, without apologies, “This is all such hooey.”

Of course I have no idea if the authors experts are any better or worse than Scientific Matches Experts and their quoted studies. If the price was lower it would be interesting to see the results of DNA matching but, I don't see many people paying almost $1000 to find out.

See the full article at The Times.

Related Story: DNA Love Matching