General News

So, how has the recession affected different markets in the love and relationship industry? According to Yahoo News it is all up and down.

Dating Sites - UP - We have had numerous articles on this site which talks about how online dating sites for the most part are having a period of booming business (see Search Results). Singles are looking to relationships for comfort instead of material goods.

Divorces - DOWN - From a previous story we noted that 37 percent of Matrimonial Lawyers are seeing a decline of couples getting a divorced in these financially trying times. Couples realize it is more economical to stay together and try to work things out since attorney fees and court costs can sometimes run up to $100 thousand.

Romance Books - UP - Sales for romance fiction is up according to the world's leading publisher, Harlequin Enterprises. Quarter 4 in 2008 saw a 7 percent increase compared to the same quarter in 2007. The 4 years before this, sales in this category have been flat.

Weddings - DOWN - Online dating may be up but, 75 percent of couples getting married are spending less. On average couples are spending 24 percent less per wedding than they did a year ago. This is a huge blow to the $60 billion a year wedding industry.

Since the start of the global recession, online dating services in the United Kingdom have grown 13 percent (September 2008 - February 2009). A total of 5 million singles from the UK are now using dating sites. This is 13 percent of the total UK online population. Genders are split evenly and heavy use members were online an average of 4 hours per month viewing and average of 23 pages a day. 65% of UK online daters are 35 or older. The most popular dating site in the month of February was DatingDirect (owned by Meetic, 1.6 million visitors), followed by POF (with 1.4 million) and then Match.com (1 million visitors).

Read NewMediaAge for more information on the story. Visit our DatingDirect review , our POF review and our Match.com review for more information on these dating sites.

Yahoo is shedding assets so they can concentrate on their core business. It looks like Yahoo! Personals may be on the chopping block. On Wednesday Barry Diller, CEO of IAC (which owns both Match.com and Chemistry) noted that they are talking to Yahoo about acquiring their dating service. This information was gathered from a conference call regarding the IAC/InterActive Q1 2009 Earnings report (we will discuss Match.com's earnings in another story). It is estimated that Yahoo! Personals could sell for around $500 million. This happens to be the same price that the Friendfinder Network sold in 2007 (see Story).

Interesting enough Match.com and Yahoo already have some dating partnerships. Yahoo has a number of dating sites for different parts of the world but, they really only actually run the one for US and Canada (as far as I can tell). The rest are partner dating sites. Match.com runs the Yahoo dating sites for the UK & Ireland, Germany and Taiwan. Find out more about Yahoo Personals partners by reading [story: Yahoo-Personals-Dating-Partners].

For more on this story read The Deal and for the full IAC/InterActive Q1 2009 Earnings Call Transcript visit Seeking Alpha.

Read our Yahoo Personals review and our Match.com review for information on these popular dating sites.

Craigslist is in the news again about their Casual Encounters section of the classifieds website. The last story in March was about a Chicago Sheriff who sued Craigslist for being one of the largest source of prostitution on the internet (see Story).

The New York Times takes a look at Craigslist, specifically the Casual Encounters section.

Like bathhouses and sex clubs, the Casual Encounters section caters to the erotic underbelly of society, where courtship gives way to expediency and anonymity is a virtue (or at least a turn-on). The section was introduced in late 2000 and is available in all cities served by Craigslist, for users gay and straight, male and female. The ads range from prim to raunchy; a good number of people include photographs of precisely what they have to offer.

I found a recent article were the author asked the question, Are free dating site like Plenty of Fish good or evil? By this the author means, if hooking up has become so easy through free dating sites, does it affect relationships and marriages, and in the end, just add to the divorce rate. He then goes on and actually compares Plenty of Fish to a gun. The analogy he uses is, are free dating sites only bad when someone misuses it? He further expands on his analogy by comparing a safety of a gun to features like site registrations and paying membership fees.

The first thing I have to wonder is, why are only free dating sites under attack? Sure more scammers, etc.. can access free sites easier than paid dating sites since there is no real barrier to creating a membership but, does this have much to do with people cheating online? I would think affair dating sites like Ashley Madison, which actually promote cheating would be his target. It is not like spending $40 on a membership is a huge financial burden for anyone.

Comparing a dating site to a gun is a little extreme. I haven't read many newspaper stories were a dating site was used to kill somebody. Some people consider guns bad, even if they are not misused. Plus, almost anything can be misused and therefore bad in certain circumstances.

For the full article, visit Muncie Free Press. For more information on this free dating site, read our Plenty of Fish review.

I have finished up our new review of the dating site, RSVP. It is the first dating site in our new Australian Dating Site category. I hope to have a few more added to this new dating category by the end of May.

RSVP is owned by Fairfax Digital and currently is the largest Australian dating site with over 1 million members. It uses a stamp/credit system for initiating contact with members and it is free to reply to any message from a member. This is also the only dating site that I know of which Australians can use there mobile phone to access the dating site and receive SMS alerts.

Read the new RSVP review for more information.