General News

Between December 1, 2008 and January 5, 2009 a total of 1,629 online dating sites registered with Japans local public security boards. This is in response to a stricter law which regulates dating sites in Japan. The National Police Agency (NPA) said there was 432 applications filed for the dating sites which was a lot less than expected. It is assumed some dating services shut down due to the law being implemented. The largest application had 286 dating sites listed on it.

The last time we talked about dating regulations in Japan was last January when we wrote about Japans NPA wants Stricter Regulations for Dating Sites. It looks like the NPA got their wish.

For more information on this story visit JapanToday.

Dr. Helen Fisher was at the iDate conference which was recently held in Miami. Dr. Helen Fisher is Chemistry's chief scientific advisor for their match system. David Evans of The Online Dating Insider shared with us some information he learned from her keynote speech:

• Dr. Helen Fisher studied 178k people on Chemistry.com.
• The Chemistry questionnaire has been taken by 7 million in 39 countries.

Chemistry currently has 4 million paid and registered users (info from their about us page on IAC) so it looks like just under half never signed up after the profile questionnaire.

For more information on this personality matching dating site, read our [staticpage: Chemistry review].

The first month of the New Year to Valentine's Day is the season where online dating is usually is at its busiest. The owners of Date.com and MatchMaker.com have a promotion which gives singles a 10 day free trial to try out their dating services (the original promotion was 7 days). The free trial acts just like a paid membership and gives you full email and instant messaging access. Just type in this coupon code when you sign up as a new member:

Newyears10

For more information on these 2 online dating sites, read our Date.com review and our MatchMaker.com review.

There is a promising future for mobile dating as predicted by Juniper Research. They claim the value of the chatroom market and mobile dating will grow to almost $1.4 billion by 2013. For the most part revenue will be generated by subscriptions but event-based charging (like paying a fee to contact someone or virtual gifts) and advertising will continue to become a larger part of the revenue stream.

... many companies which have migrated to this approach are seeing conversion rates amongst customers buying premium rate goods and services which generate revenues significantly in excess of those achieved under flat rate subscriptions.

By 2011 it is predicted less than 30 percent of mobile dating customers will be on a flat rate subscription model. China and Japan currently have the largest number of mobile dating customers.

There is no mention what the 2008 revenue is for this market. Currently from our reviewed online dating services, Match.com (called matchMobile), Date.com, Lavalife, DatingDirect and Shaadi.com all offer a mobile phone service along with their dating website. Other sites like MeetMoi also offer location based mobile dating based on the GPS in your phone (with lots of privacy options of course). With the rise of 3G and the large bandwidth it provides I expect to see the rise of video mobile dating as well.

For reviews on dating services that offer a mobile/cell phone dating service check out our new Mobile Dating Category.

The Times Online (UK version) published an article called 10 things to know about internet dating. It is like most other dating safety lists with tips about talking on the phone first before meeting in person and, as point 7 suggests, your first date should always be in daylight and take place around other people. The Times first point is about reading between the lines to see if your potential match is married or even separated. They cite a statistic from MSNBC which says:

one third of people using online dating services are married

While I have no doubts that married people use dating sites, I don't believe a third of all online daters are married. Free dating sites do tend to have more married people and scammers on them since there is no cost to entry. Plus a married man or woman is much less likely to use a paid dating site since they don't want to have to explain to their partner about the dating site charge on their credit card.

I found more information about the new Match.com Platinum membership package that will soon be available to all members (from this Story). Match.com already has information available under the Help section when you log into the dating site. It is under the Searching and Dating section and the topic is called Platinum. The first thing I saw was this new membership package is available in some test markets. This means most members will not see the new package in the upgrade area but some of you will. Please comment on this story if you have any pricing information or where the test markets are. The help section also confirms that with this subscription 100 percent of Match.com members will be able to respond for free to your emails and Instant Messages. I'm glad they included IM in the package. Platinum members are identified by an icon on their profile (visible to only non paid members). The Help section also mentions that free members can contact you for free. This is a huge bonus for members. Most paid dating sites who allow free members to contact other members only allow this once the paid member has initiated communication. Match.com definitely has taken a bold step here and turned their dating service partially free.

The Platinum membership may also be purchased as an add-on to any existing membership. No cost information is available at this time. I believe also the Platinum subscription package is available to only online daters in North America.

While I was on Match, I noticed the new Smart Search feature has received an additional upgrade. The results page has been updated to include a Refine Your Search section. This allows you to easily refine your search scope for the following attributes, photos available, age ranges and location ranges. For each attribute range it also gives the total number of profiles which fit within the range.

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