Online Dating

Late yesterday a press release went out by eHarmony which informed us they had settled a 3 year old allegation with the New Jersey Attorney General. The settlement was about eHarmony violating the New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination and not allowing a gay / same-sex matching service. Among $50,000 settlement money awarded to the NJ Attorney General Office and $5,000 to the original plaintiff (Eric McKinley) eHarmony has agreed to launch a same sex matching service by March 31, 2009. The new dating site is called Compatible Partners. In eHarmony's FAQ about the settlement they mention that the site will be free to the first 10,000 members who register within one year of the dating sites launch. Compatible Partners and eHarmony will be separate sites, with separate matching pools. If you seek same gender matching at eHarmony you will be directed to Compatible Partners.

The FAQ also points out:

The Compatible Partners site will have a statement posted to inform members that its Compatibility Matching System™ is solely based on research involving married heterosexual couples.

Previously eHarmony has stressed that their matching system was designed to match heterosexual couples and it would not work well with same sex matching. Is this really a win for gay activists then? One other interesting point from the FAQ is, because of the settlement eHarmony has not been found in violation of the law. Basically then eHarmony is being forced to create a gay dating site, not because it's the right thing to do but, because they do not want any more negative publicity. In the end eHarmony really wins. All this publicity surrounding eHarmony and same sex matching will more than pay for the settlement.

On a side note, the State of New Jersey seems to have something against online dating sites. Early this year they brought in the controversial Internet Dating Safety Act.

For more information about this matching service, read our eHarmony review.

An article on NewMediaAge mentions the fact that Match.com has rolled out personality testing (think eHarmony). It is a 30 minute test with 56 questions of different types. The article says 88% of members are completing the test. That is a high percentage but, when I logged on to both uk.Match.com and Match.com I couldn't find the personality test anywhere. Maybe it is only for new member signups, I'll have to try that next. I have a feeling this feature is not for North America though, since Match.com's sister site Chemistry is all about the personality test. Why would they want to compete directly with each other.

The short article quotes Match.com International MD Jason Stockwood. He says that it is the biggest innovation in five years. With eHarmony having launched a UK dating site this year, maybe Match is feeling the pinch and wants to fight back. I just wonder why they don't launch a international version of Chemistry. I think they may have added the personality test into Match.com instead of creating an international version of Chemistry due to all of Match.com worldwide partner programs.

For more information on this dating site, read some of our Match.com Reviews and UK Match.com Reviews.

eHarmony is planning a Free Communication Weekend this Friday November 21 to November 23. This is the second free promotion this month for the dating service with the last one running from Oct 31 to Nov 2. This makes it the, lucky number, 13th Free Communication Weekend in total for eHarmony.

With this promotion, you can do the same things on eHarmony as a paid member for 3 days. This means new eHarmony users can review and communicate for free with any matches. If you were thinking of trying out eHarmony, this would be a good time to see if the dating service meets your expectations without spending any money.

Read our eHarmony review for more information on this award winning dating site.

Match.com has renamed their profile writing service MatchStudios to ProfilePro. A good move on their part since the old name MatchStudios doesn't scream profile writing and makes it sound more like a service purely for photos. The new name doesn't seem to have prompted any other changes to the service. The price remains the same at $39.99.

For more dating profile and photo help services, check out this category.

Related Story: Match.com New Service - MatchStudios

On FriendFinder Networks corporate site they are claiming to be the largest social networking company in the world. The numbers they give to support this are:

• 250,000,000+ total profiles in their database since inception (for all websites).
• On average, over 150,000 new members per day.
• Over 10,000 private label social networking and live video sites in their network.

While FriendFinder Networks may be the largest social networking company in terms of number of profiles created, but how relevant are all those profiles. FriendFinder got its start way back in 1996, 12 years ago. I am sure many of these profiles are unused now or duplicates within the same site and across multiple sites. Adult FriendFinder, the largest site in the Network, says on their home page they have over 29 million active members. An active member to FriendFinder is someone with a valid email account who has logged in within at least 2 years. Now 2 years is a long time to be considered an active member but at least FriendFinder publishes how these numbers are calculate. Most dating sites do not. I would consider the largest social networking sites to be the ones with the most number of active profiles. In my opinion an active profile is one in which someone has used it in at least 2 months (and this is stretching it). I'm sure this honour would go to either Myspace or Facebook.

While we are on the subject, why are more and more dating sites calling themselves social networking sites? Sure they have social networking features but the main goal of the site is dating and to match you with a compatible person. If you are not single, there is no point in joining any dating site or the ones that call themselves Social Networks. These sites really should be called Social Networks for Singles.

Here is FriendFinder Networks corporate home page. For more information on the FriendFinder dating site, read our review.

Spark Networks released their 3rd quarter financial results this past week. It wasn't a very good quarter for the company when compared to 2007 Q3 and last quarter.

Revenue for the third quarter of 2008 was $14.0 million, an 11% decrease compared to $15.8 million in the third quarter of 2007, and a 6% decrease compared to $15.0 million in the prior quarter. Revenue for the nine months was $44.1 million, a 10% decrease compared to $49.2 million for the same period last year.

Subscribers are also down.