Online Dating

This month, eHarmony announced their 50 top couple's success stories for the year 2007. Each couple represents one of the 50 states. For entry into this contest the couple had to submit their success story of how their experience was on eHarmony. For this contest there where more than 25,000 entries. The grand prize winner for 2007 is, John and Mindy Pease, of Kailua, Hawaii. They received "a travel package including flight and five nights stay at a luxury resort in Orlando, Florida courtesy of Southwest Airlines Vacations and the Orlando Visitors Bureau."

On a related note, Lavalife is currently looking for it's top singles: Lavalife is Searching for Canada's 10 Top Singles

The Philadelphia Jewish Voice has an article about the Jewish dating service JDate. In it the author Gabrielle Loeb, talks about the problems of intermarriage in the Jewish community. Intermarried couples usually raise Jewish children but, by the next generation only 13 percent of the grandchildren identify themselves as Jews (according to the NJPS 2001 study). Also, a Jewish Population Survey reported that Jews who married between the years of 1996 and 2001, 47 percent of them did so outside the Jewish faith. As a comparison, in 1970 only 13 percent of Jews intermarried. It seems that intermarriage is resulting in a decrease of the over all growth rate of the Jewish population in North America.

Part of the reason the founders of JDate decided to create a dating service in 1997 was to combat this problem. They realized Jewish singles needed another way to meet someone of the same faith. Since then, this site has become very popular. Even Rabbi's have been promoting this service (see story Rabbis Helping Single Jews with Subscriptions to JDate). The media seems to love JDate as well. There are a ton of articles on this Jewish dating site and it has been mentioned in several TV shows over the last few years which also has helped it popularity.

According to Metro.co.uk 7.8 million people in Britain used internet dating last year. This is up 33% over 2005. With this growth spurt, Mad.co.uk has news that Match.com UK looks to be doubling its £4 million marketing budget from last year to £8 million. This is not surprising since the North American online dating market growth has slowed. Online dating companies now have to think globally and concentrate on the double digit growths of dating services in the European and Chinese markets. This is not easy as it sounds for North American dating services since ads and the dating sites themselves have to be tailored to suit the cultural difference from country to country.

I usually don't post much about non-English dating sites (since I don't speak any other language, except a little French), but it looks like German online dating services are doing just as well as North American sites, according to Just 4 Business. German online dating sites generated 85 million Euros in 2007, a 27% increase from 2006. Jupiter Research has predicted 103 million Euros for 2008.

Something I have never really thought of came to my attention a couple of days ago. The Wall Street Journal has a piece about singles stealing parts of or in some cases the entire profile of singles from dating services. In most cases this comes down to either the dating profiles heading or the profiles essay answers which usually includes such topics as describing who you are looking for in your own words. The article post examples of where even the opposite sexes have stolen entire profiles and which they had only just changed the gender information.

Headlines of profiles I have less issue with and in fact profiles with the same headline most likely happened more by accident. There are only so many ways to sum up yourself in one sentence. It also can be hard once you see a good headline to get it out of your head when you are trying to think one up for yourself. Plus, headlines like "Must Love Dogs!" are important. If the person wants to be with someone who loves dogs then reusing the same headline doesn't create any real problems (unless of course, the profiles come up next to each other in the search results). If the headline is from someone's profile who lives a fair distance away or from another dating site and, you can't think up one yourself that is similar then, I would go ahead and use it.

Profile essay are by far the hardest part to write of any dating profile. Especially, if writing is not your strong point. It's a lot easier for some people to just cut and paste this part with someone else but in the end they are not doing themselves any good. I find these essays are a good tool to help you reflect on who you are actually looking for. Even if you are a poor writer this is a useful exercise. Once written you can then review it with friends and family who could then help you rewrite it. If this is not an option, there are also a number of inexpensive profile writers available online that could help you (type "dating profile help" into Google Search). Some of the larger dating services like Match.com also offer a profile review service for an additional cost.

A Press Release by Date.com talks mainly about the results of a poll Date.com conducted on their dating site (seems like these days everyone will release a press release about anything). The poll asked female members if they would wait for Mr. Right to come along to get married, and then have children or would they have children without the commitment of marriage. 58% of the respondents said they would not wait with only 42% saying marriage should come first.

The release never mentioned how many actually took part in the poll but I am surprised by the results. I would have thought that at least 75% of people would have wanted to wait until marriage before having kids. Every one of my friends would only want children after they are married so I am a little sceptical of these results. I have a feeling ,surprising results like this gives companies an excuse just to post a press release. Another example of this is, Chemistry.com survey.