General News

We just got the official word that eHarmony is planning for a Free Communication Weekend from February 13th to February 16th 2009. eHarmony is taking advantage of the large number of singles that will be using dating sites on Valentine's Day and during February (the busiest month for online dating). eHarmony wants to show how well their matching system works and, what better way to do this than to give all members (not just new ones) full access to the site. This allows you to review your matches and communicate for free.

This is Free Communication Weekend number 15 for eHarmony. They also had one last year at the same time. If eHarmony's promotion pattern continues you can expect to see more free weekends on or near every major US and Canadian holiday.

Read our eHarmony review for more information on this popular and award winning dating service.

I am not sure when this was implemented but I noticed, besides all the normal credit cards (Visa, Master Card, Discover, ...), Match.com now accepts PayPal. More consumers these days first choice for a payment system when buying goods or services online is PayPal, as it keeps all of your selected bank and credit account information securely in one spot. The company you are buying from never finds out about this private information. It also makes it a lot easier for Match.com to accept international members as PayPal takes care of the additional currencies and dealing with foreign banks.

You still can send in online checks or mail in your payment for your MAtch.com subscription but you still cannot use a debit card. It also looks like Match.com now gives you 7 days free automatically when you subscribe. Not sure if this happens for renewals as well?

Read our Match.com review (click her [staticpage: for singles in the UK]) for more information on this award winning online dating site.

BusinessWeek did a rather week comparison of Free VS Paid dating in North America. Mainly, they listed all the benefits of free dating but none of the problems. They backed their arguments up with quotes from free dating site owners but none from the paid ones. Of course the quotes from owners are mainly plugs for their services. There was also a heading in the article called Free Is the Right Price in a Recession which discussed how free dating sites experienced traffic growth during the economic downturn but, nothing was mentioned of traffic to paid dating sites. You don't have to look far on the internet to see paid services are experiencing growth as well (See Story).

To find out more advantages and disadvantages, see our new dating reviews category called Free Dating Sites & Apps.

I just moved the poll called Important Quality of a Dating Profile off our home page. Every new poll I do, I place on the homepage for a few months and then remove it and close it for voting before I add a new poll. This time I think I will still leave it open for voting and see where it is with new votes in a few months.

What did we discover was the most important quality in a dating profile? Well according to the votes, a members Interests comes out on top with 40 percent of the 262 votes. Next came Body Type at 29 percent, followed by Age with 16 percent of the votes. Education and Income was last with less than 10 percent of the vote for each.

I was surprised by the results of this poll. I was expecting Body Type to be voted the most important quality since in the media, body image is portrayed as very important in all sorts of situations.

In late January, True.con announced that they have added video chatting to their dating service with 26 different chat rooms.

At a given time, a member may find over 1,000 people chatting, flirting and having fun. The feature not only allows chatters to view up to 10 webcam broadcasts simultaneously, but also allows any two people into a private chat together.

True.com's new group video chat room allows members to enjoy a party like atmosphere since you can view and talk with up to 10 people at once, while the private one on one chat allows for subscribers to go on virtual dates. Online dates allows singles to see how they interact with each other in real time before they commit to taking their relationship off line.

For the full story read True.com's press release.

It seems that the British are not a trustworthy lot when it comes to their partners. Not only are internet histories being monitored but social networking sites are too. 70 percent of Britain's use the internet to spy on their partner. Most check at least once a month on sites like Twitter and Facebook to view comments and pictures. Some also want to see if their partner has any ex boy or girl friends flagged as friends on Facebook. 68 percent also admit to checking private emails.

For the full story visit news: lite and for British dating services visit our UK dating category.