General News

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...

Read our eHarmony Review, Match.com Review and our PerfectMatch.com Review for more information on these dating services.

Scientific Match is a dating site that bases its matches on members DNA and their immune systems. The owner Eric Holzle was interviewed for a Times article. In it he talks about how Scientfic Match works, some background information about himself and his company plus, the cost of the service. The author of the article was a bit suspect of the whole thing.

Besides all of the obvious weirdness, it seemed odd that women on the pill aren’t allowed to join because, as Holzle explains, they’ve chemically altered their bodies to avoid the need to breed.

With quotes like the one above, Eric doesn't always come out very good. The author also had Scientific Match checked out by his Expert.

Somewhat bewildered, I bounced the concept off David Altshuler, a geneticist at Harvard University. I explained to him that there was a service that matches you with a partner based on genetics and immunity. He was intrigued, but after perusing Holzle’s site, he said, without apologies, “This is all such hooey.”

Of course I have no idea if the authors experts are any better or worse than Scientific Matches Experts and their quoted studies. If the price was lower it would be interesting to see the results of DNA matching but, I don't see many people paying almost $1000 to find out.

See the full article at The Times.

Related Story: DNA Love Matching

An article on The Wall Street Journal website reviews the negative side of eHarmony settling the New Jersey anti-discrimination complaint (see Story). The complaint was about same sex matching not being available on eHarmony.

Some eHarmony customers feel

that homosexual activists have succeeded in taking a private business hostage. Why should eHarmony have to serve every type of clientele? Do Jewish dating sites have to serve Christians? Can meat-eaters demand a hamburger at vegetarian restaurants?

These are all good points but are they relevant counter points in this same-sex matching case? It wouldn't really make sense for a Christian to join a Jewish dating site. The site is designed with the Jewish faith in mind and the members who joined it obviously want to find a partner who is Jewish and makes their religion an important part of their lives. If a Christian did join the site, there wouldn't be much there for them, plus there are plenty of Christian dating sites they could join instead. A popular Jewish dating site, JDate, doesn't allow you to select Catholic as your religious background but you can select "Willing to Convert" or "Will tell you later". I don't see this as discriminatory, towards Catholics, as there are plenty of Catholic dating sites to join. If there wasn't then, maybe it would be a different story. An extreme example of this type of thinking, would be going into a Jewish Synagogue and demanding they allow other religions to practice there.

This is a slippery slope. You shouldn't discriminate against race, age, sexual orientation, gender and religion. The question is what is not going far enough and what is going too far? Should we start cracking down on businesses that offer seniors discounts or ladies nights? I don't think so. Should eHarmony have offered same-sex matching? Probably...

Check out the full story at The Wall Street Journal.

I checked out the virtual world, Second Life, a year or two ago and liked what I saw but, I have such a busy life in the real world I didn't do much more than try it out a few times. Much like MMO's (massively multiplayer online game) if you let it, these programs can take up all of your time.

I first heard about a Second Life wedding on our local radio station and after a bit of research I found an online article about it too at the Telegraph. The story is about Kira and Rik, or should I say Kristen and Steve (their real names). It talks about how these two met online in Second Life and the eventually virtual wedding.

The bizarre event was the culmination of five months of cyber-dating, during which time Kirsten and Steve’s avatars met in Second Life, struck up a virtual rapport, had virtual sex and moved in together, virtually.

It's a pretty unreal story, especially because they both had spouses in the real world.

After more research I was able to find a dating service in Second Life (see AvaDate). In 2007 they had 75 members looking for love. Not a huge selection for a virtual world with 15 million accounts and 38,000 residents logged in at any one time (according to Wikipedia). There are some online dating services trying to create a virtual dating world within their website (the most popular one being OmniDate.com). It is an interesting idea but I am not sure how well it is being received. Personally, I would be more inclined to use web cameras and see the real person instead.

A press release from Chemistry about the eHarmony New Jersey settlement, points out the fact that the dating matchmaking service Chemistry has always had an open mind and accepted singles looking for same sex partners. Thomas Enraght-Moony, CEO of Match.com and Chemistry.com is quoted as saying:

It's a shame that Dr. Neil Clark Warren's sudden acceptance came at the forced hand of the legal system.

With this release Chemistry is just taking advantage of eHarmony's reluctance with offering same sex matching. This issue has generated a lot of publicity in which Chemistry wants to be a part of. This is a marketing trend in which Chemistry started when they launched several TV commercials in the last year pointing out eHarmony only matches heterosexual singles.

The press release also points out, eHarmony has flip-flopped on the reasons why they don't offer gay matching. Reasons listed include that same-sex marriage is illegal in most states and eHarmony matching system is based only on information about heterosexual couples.

The Chemistry release mentions as well, gay users will still have to leave eHarmony and go to another site. I do have to wonder why eHarmony is starting a whole new site. Why not just make it a part of the main eHarmony dating site? Members of eHarmony cannot perform searches for singles and only receive matches from eHarmony themselves. So, members who want same-sex matches and members who want heterosexual matches would never mingle (if that is what they are worried about).