General News

I found some interesting site usage statistics over at Lavalife. They list over 1,800,000 active members. I'm not sure how they define an active member but they also list 1.8 million unique visitors per month (I hope this is not the same thing). My definition of an active member of a dating site is someone who visits the website at least a couple times a month (hopefully once a week). Lavalife also gets over 26,000 new members a week and sees 1.3 million messages exchanged every day. They see an average of almost 41 page views per usage day from members and these members surf Lavalife on average for 15 minutes per usage day. 50% of Lavalife members visit the dating site at least once a day while a further 38% visit 1 to 3 times a week. Lavalife members average income is reported to be $58,800 and 81% of members went to college or university. 61% of Lavalife members are male making 39% female.

I am not sure how old this information is but some of this information is currently used in Lavalife internet advertising. The demographics section does mention a source "Audience Profiler 2005". I take this to mean that the gender ratio, Income and Education level information would be around 3 years old.

For further information on these stats visit Lavalife's Advertising and Marketing Opportunities page. For more information on this dating site, read our Lavalife Review.

ChristianCafe.com have currently reduce their memberships prices by up to 25% this month for the Christmas season. This means you will receive:

• $10 off a 3 month membership.
• $20 off a 6 month membership.
• $20 off a 12 month membership.

Now is the time to sign up to find Christian singles near you. If you have a friend who you think may be interested in this online dating service, gift memberships are also available. Read our ChristianCafe.com Review for more information on this dating site.

The economy is in reverse but online dating site Match.com is speeding ahead. They had their largest membership growth for November in 7 years. Match.com started 13 years ago in 1995. According to a press release Match.com attribute the growth to:

The combination of a new matching service, the Daily5, and the daily drumbeat of bad economics sent consumers to Match.com looking for love.

Match.com members initiated over 400,000 more connections this November (when compared to Nov 07) thanks to in part the new Daily 5 feature (see Story). November also produced the third busiest week of the year. Usually the weeks in January and February leading up to Valentine's Day see the heaviest use of dating sites.

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

I saw this article on December 1st at CNet News. It talks about a recent ruling regarding a cyber bullying, suicide and MySpace.

The specifics of the Lori Drew case are messy and emotional. The important fact is that there is no federal cyber bullying statute, so the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles turned to a novel interpretation of existing computer hacking laws to try to punish the woman. The general idea is that in creating terms of service, a Web site owner specifies the rules of admission to the site. If someone violates any of those contractual terms, the "access" to the Web site is done without authorization, and is thus hacking.

A jury found Lori guilty of 3 misdemeanor violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This means she could get up to $300,000 in fines and a year in prison.

At the moment, (unless it gets overturned) using this case as a example, a websites Terms of Service currently have the power of US federal hacking laws. As the article points out most companies have strict Terms of Service. Google is used as an example. Their terms do not allow people under the age of 18 to use any of Google's services. Which 17 year old and under teen exactly follows this term? You would be hard press to find one. Most dating sites have strict policies as well. You are not suppose to join Match.com if you are married and eHarmony forbids members from lying in their profiles. Breaking these rules in theory classifies you as a computer hacker which mean you could potentially be charged.

Read MySpace ruling could lead to jail for lying online daters for the full story.

Instead of launching Chemistry in the United Kingdom (which is available only in the US and Canada) Match.com has decided to include a personality test called Match Insights as part of the UK Match.com dating site. After reviewing the 2 tests I found them almost exactly the same (at least with the way I answered the questions). For existing Match.com members you can find the personality test in the My Profile section. According to the press release about this news:

... the self analysis is available free to all match.com online dating members in the UK. This will be followed by a premium service available early next year which will deliver every ’match insights’ user their best matches each day based on their personality type.

It looks like this will become an additional paid service that will most likely continue to be a part of Match.com instead of becoming a whole new dating site.

Not specifically related to online dating but, I really hate how some of those online text ads work at some websites. If you click on the white space near them, it acts like I clicked on the actual ad. This happens to me all the time. As example, if I am reading an email and then return to the browser. I click on a blank space within the website to bring the browser into focus so I can use the scroll wheel of the mouse. Not only does this bug the user but it's ripping off the person paying for the ad since I am not an interested in the product or service.

I'm in no way against online advertising, just on how some company's do it. Google Adsense does it correctly by requiring the visitor to click on the title of the text ad.

Other advertising tools I dislike include ad web page pop ups (who doesn't) and fake chat programs that appear when I browse away from a particular website (are you listening Date.com?).