General News

I just closed our poll called: Do you perform a background check by searching the internet for someone before you date them?

Lets take a look at the results,

After 284 votes with almost an even response from both men (54%) and woman (46%) there is a marked difference between the genders responses on if they perform a simple background check of their dates by searching the internet. Almost three quarters of the woman who voted performed a simple online search. To compare this, only 45% of men do a similar search.

These findings is pretty close to what I expected. Men obviously feel more secure on dates since they usually are bigger and stronger than the person they are going out with. They also probably feel more confident that they can weed out any potential scammers by just seeing how the person communicates and acts through the online dating service.

The problem is, this type of check isn't going to produce much relevant information most of the time. You can hope it may end up confirming a few things, if you say, find the person's Facebook page or some other piece of information from a website that matches up with what they told you or wrote in their profile. The main problem with searching the internet through Google or Yahoo is most people's names brings up a large number of search results. My name is not too common but, I had over 32 pages of search results on Google. That can be a little confusing. There are people with the same name as me who have been a Football Player, Book Authors and a Robot Scientist.

Our review of LavalifePRIME is now up. This online dating service is designed for singles who are 45 years and older and contains a number of social networking features. If you enjoy active conversations on message boards and chat groups, and are looking for a relationship or online friends, this site has a lot to offer.

Check out the full LavalifePrime Review now.

Are you a member of LavalifePRIME? If so, why don't you post your own review.

LavalifePRIME User Review

For people who opted into marketing emails from Datran Media, eHarmony's e-mail marketing partner, they recently received 3 different emails over a 6 week period. The goal of this marketing email campaign was not only to find customers but also to increase brand awareness. At the end of the campaign, a study found brand awareness increased by over 37 percent for eHarmony, from those who received the emails. Through email, advertisers can focus their marketing dollars and zero in on key demographics. As an example, in a test, eHarmony targeted people over 40 who where Asian and Canadian. Once sent, they found brand awareness increased by almost 12 percent from those who received the email.

Click E-mail gaining utility among marketers for the full story.

For singles interested in this online dating service, our eHarmony review is a good source of information.

In the 90's Match.com at one point found that 70% of their members were men. Since then, more and more woman have found online dating and the scales have tipped . Some dating services still have a greater percentage of men to women but they mainly are more "Adult" in nature. But, services like Match.com usually have more woman, though this usually is less than a 10% difference. To start off the second half of the year Match UK plans a marketing campaign aimed at single men that is titled Too Many Woman. To start off this campaign Men who sign up before September 14 will get one week free. Starting tomorrow new TV commercials will begin to air for 4 weeks on mostly men TV channels.

Find out more at UTalk Marketing and for further details about the UK dating site, Match.com, read our review.

It seems that Shaadi is branching out into a lot of different types of media tools this year. First it was Satellite TV (see Story) and now it is mobile phones. Shaadi Matrimonial has teamed up with Vodafone Essar to launch Shaadi.com on Vodafone. This new service will allow Vodafone cell phone customers to search and view Shaadi profiles without needing the internet. Mobile phone users may also express interest and send and receive messages from their matches.

View the full story at Business Standard.

In a poll that appears to be from eHarmony (though it is reported on a UK website) found that 19% of married couples surveyed met online. The poll was conducted in 2006 and 2007 and surveyed 10,000 married couples. 17% of these couples met at work with the same percentage meeting through friends. In a similar poll conducted in 2004 and 2005, of the 5000 married couples surveyed, 14% met online, with 20% meeting at work and 17 percent through friends.

In the 2006-2007 poll if you looked at the age group 45-54 for couples, the result showed 31% met online. In the 20 to 44 age range this is much lower at only 18% of couples met online.

I was surprised by the poll results and I would have expected the numbers regarding married couples meeting online to be slightly lower than it was. I wonder what this percentage would be for couples who are not married yet? If this was an online poll (it is not mentioned if it is or not) then I would also expect the numbers of married couples who met online to be higher since the couples who are polled are people who are tech savvy and have been online.

These poll numbers are also backed up by some eHarmony statistics we reviewed a little while ago (see story). If you look at the comments section you will note it is calculated that eHarmony has a 32% to 40% success rate. A success is measured by if a couple who met on eHarmony actually got married.

Go to Mirror.co.uk News for the full story or check out our review of eHarmony for more information on this dating service.

Update - August 16, 2008

I found another news item regarding this survey which gave me a few more facts. It was an online survey and it was done by Harris Interactive.