Match.com has recently redesigned their site. The last face lift happened around the same time last year (January, 2007). This seems to have become a yearly thing. As mention in a previous story Match.com has lightened things up a bit with a brighter blue background, when compared to the old black one. The new look of Match.com gives it a more metallic feel to it. Each part of the site seemed to be in a block. It reminds me in a way of a content management system.
One of the updated features at Match.com is the Daily 5. Completely unrelated, but when I first saw this, the first thing that came to mind is the cell phone company T-Mobile Fave 5 plan. Anyways, it looks to be basically a rebranding of the matches they use to email out to members. It also seems to display similar search results as a Mutual Matches search. The Daily 5 gets its own web page which members can check every day. From the list of matches, members can specify if the matched member sparks their interest or not. If it doesn't the profile will not appear in their Daily 5 anymore. If it does spark an interest, an introduction email will be sent out. According to Match.com, the Daily 5 will learn from your "Spark Interests" answers and produce better results in the next Daily 5.
Another new feature at Match.com is Smart Search. It finds matches based on words or phrases you enter. Smart Search bases its search results on any MatchWords, the user name and any text in another member's profile. You also include the gender you are seeking and a zip or postal code. I wish Smart Search was smart enough to default the gender and zip code with the information from my profile. Every search I did I had to refill it in. I did like the popular searches being displayed for Smart Search, it gave me some ideas on what else to search for.
For more information on this dating site, read our Match.com Review.
There is an informative interview with the founder of the dating site Single Christian Network, Clark Sloan, over at the Dating Ad Network. In it, Clark answers questions about when and how his dating site got started (it was first a Singles Christian Newspaper) in the mid 90s. He also talks about what makes his dating service stand out from the rest.
Read the full interview at the Dating Ad Network and for more information about this Christian dating service read our Single Christian Network review.
PlentyOfFish.com started to offer paid virtual gifts last week. I was thinking when Marcus (the owner) first announced they planned to offering some paid features that they would go with real gifts instead of the virtual kind. I guess it makes sense to offer the virtual gifts first, since it is the easier of the 2 options. There is no need for the receivers address information to ship too and you will not have other delivery problems.
What I am shocked at is the price. Virtual gift prices range from $12 for a Beginner Orchid to $30 for and Elite Rose. There are 4 flowers in total to choose from. When purchased, this virtual gift will show up on top of the persons mail inbox you sent it too. It will stay there for 2 weeks and it includes a personalized message and a link to your profile. I find the prices pretty steep and from what I read on the forums most people seem to agree. The general feeling was people "prefer the smell of real roses to virtual ones". Maybe Marcus can strike a deal with 1-800-FLOWERS or some other company.
Not sure if I missed this the last time I checked eHarmony's statistics but, it seems Quantcast is now displaying more statistical information about this dating service. You can now view a graphical break down of eHarmony's 3 sites, eHarmony.com, eHarmony.ca (Canada) and eHarmony.com.au (Australia). I'm not sure why the eHarmony UK site is not using Quantcast, maybe it will in the future. In October, eHarmony had 4.1 million unique visitors. 3.4 million visited eHarmony.com, 300 thousand visited eHarmony.ca and 153 thousand viewed eHarmony.com.au. In the last 4 months eHarmony US growth hasn't changed much, while eHarmony Canada has seen some improvement, and with eHarmony Australia seeing the most growth, percentage wise.
The other interesting thing you can view statistically now is traffic by subdomains. As an example, this means you can see how many visitors eHarmony Advice received (advice.eharmony.com), over 1 million last month. eHarmony's partnership with AOL seems to have driven over 25,000 people to eHarmony in one month. One surprising statistic was eHarmony Marriage. The domain marriage.eharmony.com saw only 1,000 visitors. I guess this is why eHarmony is buying up Project Wedding (see Story) and the WeddingBee (see Story), they need to funnel more traffic to Marriage.
For further information on this dating site, read our [staticpage: review of eHarmony].
In the beginning of the year we took a look at a new Facebook application called the Little Black Book from Match.com. We were not overly impressed but, felt it did hold some promise. Being maybe a few weeks old at the time, the Little Black Book had 67 daily active users with about 600 total installed users. Our main complaints involved around the clunky user interface and browser compatibility problems.
A month later, David from the Online Dating Insider took a look at the application as well. At this time there was 240 daily active users. While not impressive numbers for a Facebook application, it was an improvement from when I had looked at it. In his review, David had a wish list of improvements and found the browser issues were still present.
Flash forward 11 months and the Little Black Book has disappeared from Facebooks application list. The last appearance I can find of it is a Google Cache page which was capture September 29, 2008. At this time there was only 100 monthly active users with a 1.6 out of 5 star rating. The reviews of the application were not pretty.
Did Match.com take down the application to redevelop and fix its problems or is it gone for good? I think it is in Match.com's best interest to forget about Facebook applications. A search for the term "Dating" on Facebook revealed that the most popular application has over 12 thousand active monthly users. Not a lot when you consider the 1.3 million paid users Match.com website had this past quarter. Match.com employees time would be better spent on other projects.
Move over red, 3 popular dating sites are now using almost the exact same shade of blue as their website background color. Here are some cropped snapshots from Match.com, eHarmony and PerfectMatch.com homepages:
Does blue prompt more singles to sign up to these services or, does it put members in a more relaxed and matchmaking mood? I have to wonder...
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