General News

According to JupiterResearch (a respected service which creates detailed reports from analyzing internet traffic) online personals is expected to have steady growth in the coming years of roughly 16% per year. As a whole it has been estimated that the online personals industry revenue for 2007 was $900 million. By 2012 revenue is projected to be $1.9 Billion, more than doubled. This is all happening when according to some experts Social Networking was going to have taken over online dating by now.

See the full press release here.

Last week Lavalife announce that they have launched their second annual contest to find 10 of Canada's top singles. To enter the contest, all singles have to be is a member of Lavalife, have a great profile photo and well written paragraph or two in the "In My Own Words" part of the profile. From there, on February 27th, 2008 Lavalife will announce 30 semi-finalists with whom Lavalife thought stood out. At this point the public gets to vote for Lavalife's 2008 Top Single. On March 19th, 2008 Lavalife will announce the ten top singles. These people will receive a trip to Toronto in April for 3 days with accommodation and VIP treatment. They will also be attending Lavalife's FLIRT Party. One of the top ten singles will also win the grand prize of a 7 night trip to Mexico.

Read our Lavalife Review for more information.

An article called Complaints soar against online dating services in Northwest talks about the rise of complaints against dating sites in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It states, consumer complaints filed, rose 73%, in 2006 over 2005. In 2006 there were a total of 2,525 complaints to the Better Business Bureau in the area of Alaska, Oregon and Western Washington. The year 2007 is expected to increase as well. The complaints in the article where broken down into the following groups:

• 35% of the people complained about the quality of the singles available and matching system.
• 17% was for poor customer service.
• 15.1% of the complaints was in regards to the number of dates from the service.
• 13.7% where about high pressure sales tactics.

This is a sharp increase in complaints, especially since dating services have been established since well before 2005. So what has changed? I think it has a lot to do with the rise of niche dating sites. These types of sites are a lot smaller than the popular dating services and tend to be run on a shoe string budget. For this reason some niche dating site owners may be making exaggerated marketing claims on their site to try and lure in paying members. It is also pretty easy for any website to make itself appear a lot larger than it is, to trick people into a paying membership. A lot of the smaller dating services are also just a one man show which makes customer service for the site hard to keep up with, even if they have a limited number of members. Of course not all of these sites are bad, just a small percentage. Unfortantly though, it may be giving the online dating industry a bad name.

If we take a look at the numbers again 2,525 complaints are not a whole lot when you consider it has been estimated that between 30 and 40 million Americans have logged into a dating service in 2007. So let's assume a lower number of 25 million Americans who used a dating site in the year 2006. Now the question is what percentage of the population does Alaska, Oregon and Western Washington make up for in the United States. It's not large, so let's be conservative and say 3%. Now, 3% of 25 million Americans is 750,000 singles. When you measure this number against the 2,525 complaints, you get less than 0.4% of singles using dating sites actually complain to the Better Business Bureau. This is a very, very, very small number of complaints. So in a way, this article makes it seem that there are a large number of complaints against dating sites by just comparing the number of complaints with last year and not taking the total number of complaints and the actual number of singles using dating services. So what do my numbers not take into account (you are probably asking yourself)? Well, obviously not everyone will take the time to complain to the BBB. Also, not all dating services belong to the BBB, so complaints would not be filed for them. How does this affect things? I'm not totally sure but, after looking at other industries and companies in the BBB database and looking at the complaints, I feel online dating sites as a whole don't have any more complaints than any other industry on the internet. As with each industry, someone will always not be satisfied with what they bought and there will always be companies that do not have the best intentions for their customers.

So, how do you find a reputable online dating site? A good start (besides reading our site and user reviews) is the Better Business Bureau. From here you can search for the dating service to see if it belongs to the BBB. If so, it will show the complaints (if any) and if they where resolved. Remember, most large businesses will have complaints. The key here is to see if the complaints of the company where resolved to the satisfaction of the BBB. The article at kgw.com also contains some very wise tips when considering a dating service, especially one that is not as well known.

TechCrunch is reporting that HotOrNot.com was sold to a Canadian company called Avid Life Media for an unconfirmed $20 million. Avid Life Media also owns Ashley Madison which is a hook-up site for married people.

It is estimated that Hot Or Not pulled in $2 million in profit last year. If this is the case, $20 million seems a little low, especially when compared to what other dating services have been sold for lately. I've got the sense recently though that Hot Or Not has been struggling with trying to increase revenue. They briefly went to a free model last summer (relying on people clicking on ads to bring in the income) but cited huge profile spam for switching to their paid revenue model again.

Related Story: Hot or Not is now Paid (again)

UPDATE - (Feb. 15, 2008) James, one of the original owners of HotOrNot.com, has confirmed the sale on his blog. He also mentioned that the $20 million price tag is incorrect. He didn't go into any details on what they did receive as payment.

It's official now! The "Who Has Viewed Me" feature is now available to members of eHarmony. You can now see members who have viewed you from up to 2 weeks ago. There is also a new option in your Match Settings which allows members to show their views of profiles as anonymous instead of showing their membership name.

This feature has the side affect of now allowing singles to see if a member is currently actively using eHarmony. If you send them a mail message and if their is no view of your profile (let alone a reply) by the eHarmony member, most likely then it is an inactive profile (unless the member is on vacation or something).

Forbes has an article about how to find single millionaires online. There is not much new information here but they do mention several of the sites we have reviewed . This includes Sugardaddie.com and our award winner MillionaireMatch.com. The article does explain that more and more single millionaire's are using specialty online dating services than the more traditional matchmakers. Online sites cost on average $20 per month while a personal matchmaker may charge thousands of dollars for there services. Plus, with online dating you also have the convenience of logging in anytime and at work or home.

Check out the full article, How To Find A Millionaire (Or Billionaire) and for a list of are dating site reviews for wealthy singles go here.