General News

Back in June, 2008 we reported that the Arizona Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Great Expectations. Yesterday, Attorney General Terry Goddard announced that a $500,000 settlement was reached.

Great Expectations must pay $250,000 in restitution to eligible consumers who were victimized by the company's deceptive practises. The remaining $250,000 will be paid to the state for consumer fraud prevention.

Terms of the settlement also require Great Expectations to correct its alleged deceptive business practises. According to the lawsuit these included:

• Misrepresenting to consumers the overall number of Great Expectations' participating members.
• Misrepresenting to consumers that it had conducted a criminal background check on all of its members.
• Using membership agreements that illegally extended initial memberships beyond one year.
• Unlawfully obtaining consumers' credit information as soon as they arrived at the Great Expectations office.
• Using high-pressure sales tactics during one-on-one, hours-long presentations to consumers.

The article also contained information to contact the Attorney General's Office in Phoenix if you have been a victim of fraud by this matchmaking service.

On February 19th, Match.com announced that Greg Blatt had been named Chief Executive Officer of Match.com. His previous job title was InterActiveCorp’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel. As the new CEO, Mr. Blatt:

... will have primary responsibility for the strategic and operational leadership of IAC’s personals businesses, which includes the global operations for its flagship brand, Match.com, as well as Chemistry.com and DowntoEarth.com.

Greg Blatt will be taking over for Thomas Enraght-Moony who has held the CEO position since April 2007. Thomas first started working at Match.com in 2004 which was the same year Greg started at IAC in senior management.

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

Since InterActiveCorp announced the sale of Match.com European Operations on Thursday, February 19th, by Friday IAC's stock price ended the day up 4 percent or 57 cents to $15.05. Match.com European operations are estimated to be valued at $110 million according to analyst Jeetil Patel. Match.com European operations also earned about $12 million in the fourth quarter of 2008 which is 13 percent of Match.com's total revenue.

For a more complete picture, read the Forbes article.

I found an interesting report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project website. It breaks down the American population by generation and shows what percentage of them are online and what percentage each generation performs certain online activities. Here is a chart detailing the generations and their internet use:

This is a story from a couple of weeks ago that got lost in the shuffle. In December MyShape.com partnered with eHarmony. MyShape provides customers with a selection of clothes based on your bodies key measurements, along with your fashion tastes. Business has grown quickly for MyShape and since last year their customer base grew 5 times. Currently they have over 500,000 customers and in September repeat business was 50 percent. With these statistics in mind, eHarmony decided to add a date planner section to their eHarmony Advice website. MyShape's date planner role is to help people figure out what to wear on dates.

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

The Chicago Tribune has a story about dating when you have children. In it they discuss how the stigma has changed about single parents and dating. The author also mentions how online dating has started to change the way single parents can find dates and how it has become more socially acceptable to use. A number of interesting statistics were included:

Part of the story is the numbers. There are 12 million single parents living with children younger than 18 in the U.S., according to 2007 Census Bureau figures, a whopping 200 percent increase over 1970, when there were 4 million.

Another surprising number mentioned was, Match.com reported that 47% of its members in the United States have children.

I wonder if I should add Match.com to our Single Parent Dating Site Reviews Category?