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Starting this Friday, November 20th, 2009, eHarmony UK (eHarmony.co.uk) is having a 4 day long free communication weekend. Until Sunday midnight (Nov. 23rd), all members of this dating service can review matches and communicate with all members for free. All that is required from you, is the time you need to try out this matchmaking service.

eHarmony places an emphasis on long term relationships that lead to marriage. If this is something that interests you, give one of the fastest growing dating sites in the UK a try.

The last free communication weekend for eHarmony UK was held at the end of October, just 4 weeks ago (see Story).

Read our review of eHarmony for more details and users opinions on this popular matchmaking service for British singles.

As Thanksgiving moves closer, we knew the next eHarmony Free Communication Weekend would soon be upon us. Starting tomorrow, Thursday, Nov 19 and to Sunday Nov. 22 all members of eHarmony (US and Canada) will be able to communicate and review their matches at no cost. These 4 day events are the best way for singles interested in online dating to give eHarmony a try and to see if this matchmaking service is the one that not only works for them, but fits their needs as well.

The last free communication event was held in late October, just 4 weeks ago (see Story). This is Free Communication Weekend number 21 for eHarmony here in the US.

Check out our review of eHarmony for more information on the dating site. We also currently have 72 user reviews which you can read that are available from our review page.

The 50 plus singles crowd is not necessarily looking for casual dates. They are looking for a long term relationships that offer companionship. This group of online daters still is being reported as the fastest growing group of singles on dating sites. In the last U.S. Census, seniors are also a growing demographic. It was reported that there are 95.9 million single people in America. 15.8 million (16.5 %) of these people are 65 years or older (see Story). Let's see how some of the more popular dating sites are performing in this demographic.

Match.com is reporting 16 percent of men and 17 percent of women members are 50 or older. Match.com also reported 1,403 million paying subscribers in quarter 3 of this year so this means there are about 236,000 members on Match who are at least 50.

eHarmony's first quarter of 2009 saw a 20 percent growth in users 60 and over when compared to 2008. While we don't have any actual subscriber numbers, we do know that the average age on eHarmony is 35 and that they have been getting about 3.6 million unique visitors per month on their dating sites (US, UK, and Canada).

In the last 5 years Lavalife.com more than doubled its members who are 45 or older. In response to this surge in members, LavalifePRIME was launched in 2007 and now has more than 70,000 members.

To find out more about the dating sites listed here please read our eHarmony review, Match.com review, and our LavalifePRIME review. For more dating site specifically for seniors, check out our Dating Over 50 category.

What services are included in the mobile dating market? Basically anything designed to be accessed by a cell phone for the purposes of finding and communicating with a date. This includes mobile phone applications (think iPhone Apps), mobile internet services (accessible via the phones web browser) and text based services (Twitter like).

The global mobile dating market appears to have a bright future indeed. In 2007 the industry was worth $330 million already (Juniper Research). By 2008 it had jumped over 60% to $550 million and by 2013 it is expected to double to $1.3 billion.

In part what is driving this industry are the capabilities of the phones themselves. As more people get GPS enabled smart phones and as the dating software become more sophisticated, yet easier to use for the user, more people are willing to try out these services. Still, mobile phone dating is more about instant gratification. It is considered a tech-savvy young adults tool, who is not looking for so much a long term relationship, but a casual fling or hook-up. This is why most dating profiles on a mobile dating service contains only a few questions since it is designed primarily to get the user to be able to search for matches as soon as possible.

Here is a list of a few dating applications usable on your phone:

• DateCheck - For background checks. You can search criminal records and if they own property, etc...
• Skout - An iPhone app that uses the iPhones GPS to offer a real-time location based service for online daters.
• Radaroo - A Twitter app for meeting singles.
• Zoosk - A dating site which integrates with social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

The free dating site OkCupid is also planning to launch a free iPhone dating app in the near future which will offer a location based service. Sam Yagan, CEO of OkCupid.com says that the main challenges is to create a big enough user base in which to work from and to try to get people to the same place and at the same time.

For more on this story, read Chicago Now. For dating sites which offer services for your phone (web based and applications), check out our Mobile Phone Dating category. Our Zoosk review can be found here.

eHarmony launched their Celebration of Love marketing campaign on their Facebook page during the last week of October and it sure has been busy. There are currently 2,156 fans and over 600 success stories (I stopped counting after 20 pages) from Facebook members posted on the wall. Fans of the page have also uploaded 379 photos for these success stories.

Most of these success stories are in response to a weekly contest being run. Facebook members can submit eHarmony success stories about how they met their partner and if they follow the official contest rules they could when a $50, $100 or $200 Amazon E-Mail Gift card.

Entries will be judged based on the criteria set forth in each weekly Contest announcement post. The judge or judging panel will select the entry that best represents the theme or purpose of the weekly post. The judge or judging panel will evaluate all qualifying entries and the subjective opinion of the judge or judging panel will be the deciding factor. Entries must be entrant’s own original work, must not infringe on any third-party rights and must be deemed suitable by Sponsor.

This is a great idea by eHarmony's marketing team. They get lots of great exposure and a lot of new success stories. These success stories also seem more legitimate than your typical quotes of successes on most dating sites since they are linked to the actual Facebook members account that people can contact or become friends with.

For more information on the Facebook page and the contest, visit the eHarmony Facebook Page and for more details about the dating site, read our eHarmony review.

The chief executive officer of eHarmony Inc, Gregory Waldorf, talks with Bloomberg's Pimm Fox about the dating service.

Gregory mainly gives a brief overview of how eHarmony works and how members need to be honest with themselves so that the matching algorithms will work and give them highly compatible matches. He also talks a bit about the current recession and the boost of members eHarmony has seen. Over the last few years, eHarmony has seen a yearly increase in members of about 20 percent. Waldorf also further discuss what the company is most proud of, being responsible for about 2 percent of marriages in the United States each year. This works out to about 236 eHarmony members a day.

Most of the information we have heard before, but one interesting point Gregory Waldorf said is, what their researchers found really important is starting with a pool of compatible matches. With the matches given to members, eHarmony research indicates that these singles give that particular member the best chance of having a long term relationship. From there members can figure out if they live in the right place or have a job that interests them and that they have that " right amount of special click" (his words not mine).

If this online dating service interests you, read our full eHarmony review for more information.