General News

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?

I was reading the article "Niche dating websites help picky singles find love" at Canada.com and it got me wondering if some of these niche dating services have gone too far?

Don't get me wrong, a lot of dating niches work with most of them being based on religion or your ethnicity, or even popular interests like pets. I just have to wonder about dating sites who service niches like people who are interested in pirates (see press release). Where is this going to end? I'm sure there are people who are passionate about pirates and pirate history but I have a hard time believing there are enough singles out there so passionate about pirates that they need a dating service dedicated to them. This would be like someone creating a dating service for astronauts. Sure there are single astronauts out there but not that many. From 1978 to 2003 NASA had only trained 237, how many of these people are single? Who cares, let's start an online dating site!

Match.com recently launched the “Who’s Favorited Me” feature. This lets members know when they have been added to a Favorites list of another member. This feature has been a little late in coming to Match since most other dating services have had this type of hot list information available for a while now.

For more information on the dating service Match.com and its features, please read our review.

The Earth Times has a press release from Chemistry.com regarding a new promotion to celebrate California's ruling to overturn the state's ban on gay marriage. Chemistry will offer free 7 day memberships to anyone in the state of California who visits this promotional page on Monday, June 16. This is the same day San Francisco will begin issuing marriage licenses.

I'm glad Chemistry supports equal opportunity for all couples who want to declare their commitment, I just have to wonder what is so special about this particular promotion. We have been advertising a 7 day free trial Chemistry promotion for all U.S. and Canadian singles for a while now. It is available from our Chemistry review or our Dating Service Coupon page (which also has some good deals for other online dating sites as well).

India's matrimony market is estimated to be worth almost $230 million annually (£118 million). This includes online dating and matrimony services which brings in about $13.5 million (£7 million). An Indian matchmaking service called Shaadi.com has become quite popular among singles in the 20 to 40 age range and is now one of India's five most popular sites according to the Britain’s Telegraph newspaper. The dating and marriage service reports it has over 10 million members and is responsible for a million marriages worldwide since its inception in 1997. 6000 profiles are created every day on the site with 60% of them being male. Shaadi.com is not just a website, there are more than 150 Shaadi Centres in 87 Indian cities. This allows parents and children to sit down with a relationship adviser and review the dating services huge database of potential matches.

One of the reasons Shaadi.com succeeds according to the Telegraph is because:

The unofficial eHarmony Blog got the scoop on eHarmony's traffic statistics being accessible to the public at Quantcast. eHarmony has been a Quantified Publisher since February 2008. This means the traffic information is very accurate because a script or tracking image is inserted into every page at eHarmony which allows detailed tracking of all visitors.

The first thing to realize is (if you don't know too much about this type of thing), don't worry about being tracked. It happens on most web sites. Online businesses(and blog owners) want to know about their traffic, since obviously visitors are the bread and butter. If you do worry about it, visit the sites Privacy Policy where they should tell you what is done with this information. The main things most companies want to know about visitors are:

• How many there are?
• How many come back?
• Where are they coming from?
• What do they visit on the site?