General News

MarketingWeek is reporting that OgilvyOne won the marketing account for eHarmony. I am unsure if this is the entire marketing account for eHarmony or just the United Kingdom part. eHarmony was reported to open a UK specific dating service in June (see story) but that appears to be less and less likely as there is just over a week left this month. Hopefully we will see it by summer's end. I did notice that the domain eHarmony.co.uk is registered but it currently just reroutes you to the eHarmony US site.

For more information on eHarmony, please read our review.

Do you want to see how many visitors a dating site has been getting over time? Google Trends now offers this ability. You can also compare up to 5 different sites. To see the daily unique visitor numbers (instead of just a graph) you must be logged into Trends.

The Google Trends website data is "estimated and aggregated over a variety of sources" (quoted from the Google Webmaster Blog. I would assume these sources are the searches people perform on Google (which they track) and from their other free services like Google Analytics. These results are probably more accurate than other companies with similar services like Alexa or Compete since, Google has such a large pool of data to collect estimates from. Google is responsible for providing over 60% (see USA Today) of the search results from search engines, for people in the United States.

According to several news sources (ABC15.com and AZ Central) the Arizona Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Great Expectations dating service, alleging they misled their customers.

Great Expectations has said the case has no merit. This service has over 30 years of experience in matchmaking and is one of the few dating services which actually meet their clients face to face at one of their offices. They have more than a couple dozen offices spread across the US.

The suit was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court against Sun West Video, Inc which runs Great Expectations for Singles.

The suit is seeking refunds for consumers and financial penalties against the company.

The Attorney General's office alleged that Great Expectations:

• Misrepresented to consumers the overall number of participating members and members in certain age groups.
• Told consumers that two to three marriages occurred among members every month when it had no credible basis for such statements.
• Misrepresented to consumers that it had conducted a criminal background check on all of its members.
• Used high-pressure sales tactics that included sales representatives urging consumers to contact their credit card companies to get an increased credit limit to pay for a membership.
• Showed potential new members written profiles and photographs of people they said were Great.

These allegations have not been proven in court yet but, we have decided to remove this dating site review from our categories for the time being, just to be safe.

I logged into Yahoo! Personals the other day to note any changes and notice a few surprises with regards to the memberships. The first is, Yahoo has gone from 3 membership levels down to 2. Their Premier Membership has been removed and the remaining membership pricing will be just a dollar more, when compared to the old casual membership. Subscription prices are now between $13.99 to $25.99 per month depending on the length of the membership. The old Premier prices for a month ranged from $20.83 to $39.95. The features that where part of the Premier subscription level (which dealt with searching and rating matches) have either been removed or rolled into the existing paid memberships. The free membership as far as I can tell has remained unchanged.

The major surprise is Yahoo! Personals has a guarantee now. If you purchase a 6 month membership Yahoo will make you a 6-Month Promise. If you do not find someone special by the end of your subscription, they will give you another six months for free. You must have a approved searchable profile with a photo and must communicate with at least 5 different members each month to be eligible. Another nice touch is they will email your status each month to help you keep track of your eligibility.

It appears that the 6-month promise started in May, 2008. I am unsure why Yahoo did not promote this at all since few dating services actually offer a guarantee. If promoted they would have brought in more members and received some free publicity from dating blogs such as this one. Sometimes you have to wonder about large companies marking departments, it doesn't take much to release a press release.

Yahoo Personals promise is very similar to Match.com "Make Love Happen Guarantee". In fact it is virtually the same except for a few small details. I guess they figured if it works for Match, it will work for Yahoo.

For more information on Yahoo! Personals, please read our review.

eHarmony received some more bad press from ABC News a few days ago, in regards to not allowing homosexuals to use their dating service. eHarmony has stated publicly previously that the reason for this is, their profile and matching algorithms don't take into account what attributes are needed to make a successful Homosexual couple. All their research has been on heterosexual couples. They also have stated that their is nothing preventing them from adding same sex matching to the dating service in the future.

Virgin America announced Superfly Wednesdays which allows flyers to make connections over complimentary drinks. You can mingle in the air with the other guests by chatting with your neighbours or by using the in-flight chat rooms. Superfly Wednesdays now includes 2 flights every Wednesday from San Francisco to LA or San Francisco to Las Vegas.

I'm not sure what to make of this? Seems to be just more of a publicity stunt than anything else. In May they had some celebrities on these flights which included a few America's Next Top Models winners and some musicians. There is no mention of why Match.com is a partner and I am not sure why they are since anyone (over 21) can buy tickets for the flights (no compatibility matchign at all). It seems to be more of a party than a real singles event since the free drinks are promoted more than anything else. Maybe this should be geared towards bachelor parties or something similar?

When I looked at booking a ticket online at Virgin there is no mention of the Promotion so is a family flying on this flight going to be in for a surprise?