General News

As with most other online dating services Senior FriendFinder allows visitors to join for free. At Senior FriendFinder, this is called a Standard Membership. 2 other types of membership are available called Silver and Gold. Both of these are paid memberships. When you sign up for free as a Standard Member (and once your profile is approved) the features of the dating site you have access to include the standard search with a limit of 10 profile views a day, reading of your email, message boards, instant messaging and chat rooms. Already Senior FriendFinder is providing something most other dating services do not, the use of a number of communication tools for free. This allows members to see how active the senior community is and if Senior FriendFinder is the right dating service for them. In return is also gives the dating service more user interaction and increased sales of their paid memberships.

Now what are some more innovated ways Senior FriendFinder motivates members to use the site which can also help you use the service for free? One way is to take advantage of Standard Member Popularity Privileges. This function awards members who's profile is viewed a certain number of times in any 3 day period. I'm not sure the number of views needed (comment on the story if you know!) but if you are rewarded with Popularity Privileges you get access to 50 member profiles as well as the ability to email them (up to 10 emails a day). There are a number of ways to increase profile views with the most obvious being a well written introduction and profile accompanied by a good quality photo and video. Other ways to boost your views is to participate in chat, message groups or blogs. Every message you write includes your username, a thumbnail picture of you and a link to your profile which only gets your profile out in front of people. This brings a greater chance of someone clicking on your profile to find out more about you.

The other way in which Senior FriendFinder motivates its members to participate on the site is by rewarding points for doing a number of activities. You can get from 10 to 2000 points per activity. These activities range from commenting on a blog post (10 points) to uploading a photo for your profile (100 points). Most activities are around 30 points. The highest point activity is referring a friend (who successfully registers) for 2000 points. All members automatically participate in the point system and at any time you can redeem points for a number of Senior FriendFinder upgrades. These upgrades include emailing members (100 points) and viewing profiles (200 points) for Standard Members to sending virtual flowers (50 points). Highlighting your profile for a 1 month period in search results costs a 1000 points and you can even upgrade your membership to Silver for 2200 points or Gold for 4000 points. A history of the points awarded to you can be found on the member homepage.

The Popularity Privileges and Points System has resulted in an active and lively community at Senior FriendFinder. This not only benefits Senior FriendFinder but the members as well.

Find out more about Senior FriendFinder by reading our dating review.

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.