General News

The UK's Times Online posted an article today about online dating in the United Kingdom. While it talks about a few of the popular sites briefly, the main topic of the story is eHarmony's new website with a matching system designed just for the United Kingdom. Launched in July of this year (see story), eHarmony jumped started their membership base by offering 90 day memberships for free. This offer is now over but anyone curious in eHarmony UK can still signup for a 7 day free membership. eHarmony UK does standout from other US dating sites that have moved into the European market. The reason for this is, they have worked with local established research institutes (in this case, Oxford University) to modify their dating site and matching algorithm to make it apply more specifically to relationships in the United Kingdom.

The article also has some price comparisons for one month memberships:

• Dating Direct charges £25 for a single month. Read our Dating Direct Review for more information.
• eHarmony costs £33.95 for one month. We currently do not have a review that has looked at eHarmony's UK site but you could try our eHarmony Review that is for the US.
• Match.com charges £22 for a month. Read our Match.com UK Review for further details.

For the full story visit the Times Online UK and to find out more about this matchmaking service read some eHarmony Reviews.

eHarmony has acquired another wedding related website called Weddingbee. Weddingbee offers a blog, message boards, wiki, live chatting via Bee TV and a classifieds section for visitors. The Weddingbee's main attraction is their blog which contains a large number of posts by volunteers who are in the midst of planning their own weddings. There have been over 100 volunteer bloggers in total, in the 2 and half year life span of Weddingbee.

Weddingbee is definitely one of the more popular wedding websites on the internet. Alexa ranks them number 43,000 for all websites and Compete estimates Weddingbee's traffic to be just over 100,000 unique visitors for the month of August, which is no small feat. eHarmony's other wedding website which they purchased recently called Project Wedding (see story), only had 40,000 unique visitors in August (which is still very successful).

No details have been released regarding how much the purchase price was but, according to the announcement, Mrs. Bee (the websites founder) will still have full editorial control over the site.

Find out the full story by reading the announcement by Weddingbee. For more information on eHarmony, please read our review.

As with other countries, online dating and social networking has become popular in Japan. What is different in Japan is people still have a fixation with anonymity. As example, on average, the Japanese much rather upload video and pictures of their pets to YouTube, than media where they are the star. YouTube even:

has tried to convince the Japanese to loosen up, running events in Tokyo in which girls in miniskirts roam the streets with giant picture frames and video cameras, soliciting pedestrians to frame themselves and record a clip for the site.

In the end this campaign didn't work and, YouTube has since switch to promoting of uploading images of pets.

Match.com has been operating in Japan since 2004. They have added a number of different features to tailor the dating experience so it will suit their Japanese members (see story). These features include identity certification, income verification and blood type. Match.com's Japan president, Katsu Kuwano has stated:

When we did research on Japanese consumers, we found that the No. 1 reason for not using online dating is that they don't know if people are real or not.

Most of Match.com's advertising in Japan is geared towards Japanese women with marriage in mind. Match.com has timed the larger campaigns during national holidays. Still, only about 40% of woman who pay for a membership on Match.com post a picture of themselves. Just like in North America, men in Japan are much less likely to initiate communication with these profiles without pictures. Match.com feels their best bet for generating more members is to be identified with the konkatsu movement in which singles actively seek out marriage, instead of relying on their parents to find a partner.

For the full story visit the The Sydney Morning Herald.

To find out more about Match.com, please read our review.

Since 2000 eHarmony has produced more than 1 Billion automated matches for its members. With eHarmony's detailed profiles and strict criteria for matching singles, combined with their large membership base, this is a huge success for them.

To see how this fact was established using eHarmony's match ID, visit the Unofficial eHarmony Blog. For more information about this popular online dating service read our eHarmony Review.

Over a week ago we updated our user submissions for dating site ratings and reviews and we have already received a number of dating reviews using the new system. The highlight of this upgrade is, visitors now can rate a number of different important aspects of the dating site. These dating site aspects can include:

• Feature Set - Did the dating site have all the features needed?
• Ease of Use - Was is easy to find and use everything on the dating site?
• Popularity - Is the dating site popular and contain a number of profiles?
• Profile Quality - Are member profiles filled out completely? Are there to many fake profiles?
• Customer Service - Did customer service and the online help system meet your needs?
• Cost - Was the cost of the dating service membership worth the price?
• Searching - Did it work well and allow you to search for the criteria you wanted?
• Matching System - Did the automated matching system give you acceptable matches?

Not all aspects are available for rating, for all dating sites. As example eHarmony doesn't offer the ability for its members to search for their own matches. Therefore, visitors do not have the option to rate eHarmony on Searching. Here is an actual example of how the a new overall dating site rating looks:

Our older dating site ratings are still available for reading and still effect the overall user average rating of a dating site. Our new system is still being developed so if you noticed anything acting out of the ordinary (i.e. Bugs) or want to make a suggestion for improvement, please Contact Us.

To submit a review for any of the dating sites in our list please visit our Reviews Summary Page.

Related Items: Updated User Dating Site Rating System Coming Soon

We found this PDF file on eHarmony called eHarmony | Harris Interactive 2007 Marriage Metrics Number of eHarmony Marriages, which explains the facts behind their findings in which 236 eHarmony users get married every day. Of all the popular dating sites on the web today eHarmony is definitely one of the more trusted dating sites. By releasing the facts behind their claims, it helps improve eHarmony's creditability even more.

To find out more about eHarmony, please read our review.