General News

Here is the gender ratios of members at ChristianCafe.com grouped by age range for January 2009:

Age Range	% of Males	% of Females
18 - 20	50.7%	49.3%
21 - 30	42.8%	57.2%
31 - 40	40.8%	59.2%
41 - 50	37.5%	62.5%
51 - 60	33%	67%
61+	31.9%	68.1%
Avg. Overall	39.9%	60.1%

Source: Online Personals Watch

Except for members who are 18 - 20 years old, females make up the greater percentage of members at Christian Cafe. As you move up in each age range segment, females gain a few more percentage points over the previous segment. By the 51 - 60 age rage there are twice as many females as males. Does this mean older males are less likely to consider Religion as an important factor in dating or do just more older females join dating sites in general compared to men of similar age?

For more information on this award winning dating site, read our ChristianCafe.com review.

Our last review to pass this milestone was almost a year ago (see Story). eHarmony is our 5th dating review to pass the 100,000 page views milestone. Recently eHarmony also was the recipient of 2 awards from the Dating Sites Reviews Choice Awards, one for Editor's Top Pick - Match System and a Silver in the [staticpage: 2008-Dating-Sites-Reviews-Singles-Choice Single's Choice Award].

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

According to Forrester Research Inc, in 2008 the online dating industry comes in as the third largest in terms of revenue.

1. Video Games - $1,866 million
2. Digital Music - $1,732 million
3. Online Dating - $957 million

Check out Robert L. Mitchell Computerworld Blog for more details.

Pasadena Weekly recently received a tour of the Pasadena-based dating website, eHarmony, and in particular eHarmony Labs were they develop the matching algorithm used by the dating site. eHarmony Labs is the research arm of the dating site. Here they:

are committed to investigating and understanding what makes relationships successful through rigorous scientific methodology.

Their mission is to conduct and support research on relationship processes using academic researchers and by gathering their findings through an established scientific process. Since eHarmony Labs has come into existence a number of studies from eHarmony's research has been submitted for peer review and has been published in such prestigious publications as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see APA Online).

As online dating has become more mainstream, dating sites have been under increased pressure to divulge how their match systems work. eHarmony has taken a bold step with eHarmony Labs. From here you can see what the Lab is currently up to, who works there and, what the current relationship studies are about. You can also take part in several online studies and even take part in research in person (if you are eligible). Some of these studies even allow you to make a bit of money. While they only tell you in broad strokes how the eHarmony matching system works (by matching personality traits, values, attitudes and interests), from eHarmony Labs you can tell the company is serious about figuring out what makes a successful relationship and by applying this research to matching singles together.

So, take the tour with Pasadena Weekly and find out more on how some of these relationship studies take place and about the researchers behind them. For more information about eHarmony, read our review.

Forbes did a story called Thrifty Singles Embrace Online Dating in which they looked at Match.com International and how it is performing in Britain. According to the article, UK memberships rose 26 percent in January when compared to the previous year. Overall traffic to the dating site grew 17 percent.

Forbes also updated us on some stats about singles in the UK. There are currently 8 million singles and they went on 24 million first dates. 69 percent of the dates were arranged through online dating sites and social networks.

For more information on this award winning dating service, read our Match.com International review.

The free dating site by Match.com called Down To Earth was launched in January and since then, they have had more than 100,000 members join. On average, Down To Earth has about 1,500 members join every day. According to DownToEarth Spokesman Tori Johnson:It’s very user-friendly, it’s completely free, and you can post images of yourself, Johnson said. It’s like a normal profile. Solotaroff said online dating is increasing among Americans. There are 93 million eligible singles in the U.S. and about 3 million are using paid dating sites, he said. Free online dating also is growing – at a rate of about 70 percent per year.

Down To Earths market is the College-aged crowd (18-25) which they currently have about 21,000 members. By the end of 2009, the goal for total number of memberships at Down To Earth is 250,000. The dating sites main feature which makes it fairly unique is the RealRatings system. It is designed to keep married people out and dating profiles honest by allowing other members to score a person's profile accuracy after a date. The score is a 1 to 5 star rating.

For more information on the dating site, read our Down To Earth review.