General News

The company Avalanche, which owns Date.com, Matchmaker.com and Amor.com, released a press release which reviews how these dating sites are performing this year. Avalanche's revenue grew 17% in the first two quarters of 2008 when compared to the same period last year. The release also points out increased activity on the dating sites with members logging in more often and staying online longer. This activity has been increasing by at least 3% per month since the start of Avalanche's fiscal year. In total this means a 26% increase in member activity. New subscriber numbers have also risen but no percentages where released.

With many dating sites appearing to be reaching a plateau this year thanks to in part the recent economic conditions, the Avalanche suite of dating services have been performing well. While revenue increases don't help singles directly (unless used to help improve the site) the increase in member activity does. I just wish Avalanche had released their new subscribers numbers so we had a better idea on how things look.

For more information on these dating sites read the following reviews:

• Amor.com Review
• Date.com Review
• Matchmaker.com Review

With eHarmony appearing to be close to officially launching their UK dating site there has been an unusually high number of articles on the internet about the dating service. Just watch some of the statistics being presented, some are not completely accurate. In our last story we took a look at this Times Online article. In it they reported:

A poll carried out by Harris Interactive reports that last year eHarmony was the force behind 236 marriages per day. That is more than 80,000 a year. Indeed, the company claims to bring about more than 2 per cent of all marriages in the United States.

This is not correct. eHarmony has reported recently that they are responsible on average for 118 marriages a day. This then means that 236 eHarmony members get married everyday (2 people = 1 marriage). Likewise, according to eHarmony 86,102 eHarmony users have been married in the year ending March 2007. This works out to 43,051 marriages in a year, not the over 80,000 in which the Times article suggests. The last point of the quote is also inaccurate. eHarmony claims to be responsible for 2.57% of marriages in the United States of people between the ages of 20 and 54, and who use the internet. They do not claim over 2% of all marriages in the US. Of the 2.2 million people married in 2007 (from the US Census), only 1,675,172 of these marriages fall within eHarmony's parameters.

For the complete statistic read, How eHarmony Concluded, 236 Members get Married Everyday and for more general online dating statistics visit our Statistics and Facts page.

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.