General News

It is now official LoveHappens have closed its doors. I'm still surprised this site has gone out of business. I can understand maybe the existing investors want to get out do to the fact of losing over 60% of your traffic but why didn't they sell it and least gain a little of there money back? A site with a couple hundred thousand visitors every month is still very attractive to the right people.

Related Story: Is LoveHappens Closing Shop?

NWA.CO.UK is reporting that Match.com has partnered with Russell Grant Horoscopes. Russell Grant is a popular spot for horoscope enthusiasts in the United Kingdom. You can access the dating service under the Free Dating menu item on the left of the site. Russell Grant Dating is powered by Match.com and allows you to search for members by your star sign. The marketing director of Russell Grant Astrology, is quoted as saying:

This is a unique and exclusive partnership that brings together the leaders in astrology and online dating to give singles the best possible chance of finding love.

Russel Grant Dating is Match.com UK but with a modified Russell Grant Logo at the top of the page. It contains all the functions and features of the normal Match.com dating site. I'm surprised they didn't modify the Match.com partner dating site theme more to make it fit better with the look and feel of Russell Grant Horoscopes.

There are two things I have questions about. Why is the dating link labelled Free Dating, when it is not? You can create a free membership but you not allowed to communicate with members until you pay for a subscription. While there is nothing wrong in paying for a dating service subscription, this is misleading people. The other thing I wondered about is why there is a link at the top of the page that says "Log In to your DatingAgency.com profile". This is even visible when you have logged into Match.com. The link goes to another Russell Grant dating site. I have a feeling this is probably the original dating site before Match.com's partnership. I'm surprised Match.com allowed these two things to happen. It looks unprofessional and is misleading, 2 things Match.com usually does not do.

A Philadelphia NBC station has a video news story about a homeless man stealing more than $100,000 from thirteen woman. Seven of the woman he met on the dating service MillionaireMatch.com The accused told the victims he was a record producer who had been nominated for several Grammy Awards and that he needed investors for a new music company. He was arrested in Atlantic City where it is reported he gambled most of the money away.

It never ceases to amaze me on how some people get conned. If someone asks you for a large sum of money you just met online (or anywhere else for the matter), don't send them a dime! Block them immediately on the dating service and report them to customer service.

A Australian News Site wrote this in an article about this story:

NEWS.com.au was able to sign up to MillionaireMatch as a $US5 million-per-annum mogul without any income verification.

While this is true you can sign up to MillionaireMatch.com without any income verification, income and photo verification is available to all members for free. Members need to send to MillionaireMatch.com the appropriate documents for the verification to take place and once verified, these members are identified by a graphic icon.

For more information about the dating service MillionaireMatch.com, read our review.

I've added another coupon code to our coupons page. You can now save 15% off any Lavalife subscription when you sign up using the code 780121.

For more information, read our review of Lavalife.

On my latest visit to Lavalife I've notice a few improvements. The biggest one being is a redesign of the navigation. Navigation has been simplified with the primary navigation located across the top and the secondary navigation pane located on the left side of the page. The central information window is in its own separate frame now, and allows you to scroll it up or down while the main navigation display remains at the top. Warning Tech Talk Now - This type of navigation with the use of distinct browsing frames to display the navigation and web site information was first popular with web site designers in the late nineties but for the most part disappeared due to the fact that search engines (like Google) didn't index it very well. I do find this design format works well at Lavalife since it allows the navigation to stay in one spot at all times while I scroll through the dating search results or other long pages. There is no scrolling back to the top of the page to navigate to another part of the dating site.

With the new interface, searching for singles also was over hauled. There is a simple search bar at the top which allows you to click on a number of criteria for singles like New, Online or Local. Once you have selected a search criteria your results will be displayed and from here you are allowed to refine your search even more with a simple click on the secondary search options. At any point in this process you can go into the advance search page and either refine your current search or create a new detailed search criteria which you can save for later.

Another improvement I noticed right away was, mail and instant messaging has now been centralized which makes easy viewing of all your messages from the different communities. This means you don't have to jump from the Casual Dating community, to Dating/Relationship or Intimate Encounters to access messages from these separate Lavalife communities.

Lavalife also has a real-time alert system in place now. If you get a new email or instant message request an alert will appear on the top navigation area informing you of the communication request. This catches your eye more than the previous way since it can happen at any time and not just when you go to a new page.

Other improvements include an online message forum and the group chatting feature has been updated graphically slightly and is now called Lavalife Party.

It wasn't all good news though. There seems to be a lot more of onsite advertising now. These ads appear on the side and bottom of the dating profiles search results and on the main pages of the different Lavalife communities. I do hope these disappear when you become a paying member.

One of the things I really like about Lavalife is, they allow non-paying members to reply to messages for free. While this is good for the new member checking out the service (only paying members can initiate contact) it is great for paying members since you don't have to worry about sending a message to someone who can't respond since they may only be using a trial membership. Tisk, Tisk to the other popular dating services like Match.com and eHarmony for not allowing the same thing.

For more information about this dating service, read our Lavalife Review.

USA Today had an article about singles finding love and marriage through online dating after the age 45. The article focuses mostly on older singles who have not married before. In 1990 only 0.4% of woman and 0.6% of men married for the first time between the age of 45 to 49. According to the U.S. Census, In 2006 on average men married for the first time at 27.5 years of age and woman at 25.5.

Recently dating sites have started to track this demographic of later life first marriages. Match.com reports an increase of 10% of new members since 2005 who are over the age of 45 and never have married. Currently this demographic makes up 14% of their members. Yahoo! Personals also has seen a increase of 33% in this demographic for 2006 and 2007.

Online dating has made it easier for these singles to meet. According to Craig Wax of Match.com:

As people get older, they tend to find themselves in fairly established patterns, so the ability to meet new people goes down over time. They've got to do something new if they want to meet different people.

By doing a new activity, it allows these singles to easily reach out beyond their circle of friends, family and co-workers and meet someone new. If you want to find love, online dating is your obvious choice since these services offer an environment that is geared towards matching compatible singles.

For more information about the dating services mention here, visit our Match Review (match.com) and our Yahoo! Personals Review (Personals.Yahoo.com).