General News

The dialaphone blog has an article called Microsoft Patents Killer Mobile Dating Application. While I don't think the application will be a "killer" I do find it interesting. Here is a quote of the abstract right from the patent application called Image-Based Face Search:

"A search includes comparing a query image provided by a user to a plurality of stored images of faces stored in a stored image database, and determining a similarity of the query image to the plurality of stored images. One or more resultant images of faces, selected from among the stored images, are displayed to the user based on the determined similarity of the stored images to the query image provided by the user. The resultant images are displayed based at least in part on one or more facial features. "

Sounds neat, comparing facial features of an image to find other images with faces that closely match it. I guess if your girl friend dumps you can always go out and find someone that looks like her! Kidding aside, I do think this would be a useful tool. The problem is, it sounds an awful lot like what Eyealike is already doing (see story Dating Search via Facial Recognition). We reported on this story mid November 2007. Eyealike even have a live demo of this technology you can try out called Faces. The demo allows to either find a match on some popular dating sites based on a photo of a person you find attractive or you can upload a photo of yourself to see which celebrities closely match you. Eyealike uses facial recognition for their visual based search. I'm not sure what this will do for Microsoft's patent application, maybe they can just buy out Eyealike.

This month, eHarmony announced their 50 top couple's success stories for the year 2007. Each couple represents one of the 50 states. For entry into this contest the couple had to submit their success story of how their experience was on eHarmony. For this contest there where more than 25,000 entries. The grand prize winner for 2007 is, John and Mindy Pease, of Kailua, Hawaii. They received "a travel package including flight and five nights stay at a luxury resort in Orlando, Florida courtesy of Southwest Airlines Vacations and the Orlando Visitors Bureau."

On a related note, Lavalife is currently looking for it's top singles: Lavalife is Searching for Canada's 10 Top Singles

The Philadelphia Jewish Voice has an article about the Jewish dating service JDate. In it the author Gabrielle Loeb, talks about the problems of intermarriage in the Jewish community. Intermarried couples usually raise Jewish children but, by the next generation only 13 percent of the grandchildren identify themselves as Jews (according to the NJPS 2001 study). Also, a Jewish Population Survey reported that Jews who married between the years of 1996 and 2001, 47 percent of them did so outside the Jewish faith. As a comparison, in 1970 only 13 percent of Jews intermarried. It seems that intermarriage is resulting in a decrease of the over all growth rate of the Jewish population in North America.

Part of the reason the founders of JDate decided to create a dating service in 1997 was to combat this problem. They realized Jewish singles needed another way to meet someone of the same faith. Since then, this site has become very popular. Even Rabbi's have been promoting this service (see story Rabbis Helping Single Jews with Subscriptions to JDate). The media seems to love JDate as well. There are a ton of articles on this Jewish dating site and it has been mentioned in several TV shows over the last few years which also has helped it popularity.

According to Metro.co.uk 7.8 million people in Britain used internet dating last year. This is up 33% over 2005. With this growth spurt, Mad.co.uk has news that Match.com UK looks to be doubling its £4 million marketing budget from last year to £8 million. This is not surprising since the North American online dating market growth has slowed. Online dating companies now have to think globally and concentrate on the double digit growths of dating services in the European and Chinese markets. This is not easy as it sounds for North American dating services since ads and the dating sites themselves have to be tailored to suit the cultural difference from country to country.

I usually don't post much about non-English dating sites (since I don't speak any other language, except a little French), but it looks like German online dating services are doing just as well as North American sites, according to Just 4 Business. German online dating sites generated 85 million Euros in 2007, a 27% increase from 2006. Jupiter Research has predicted 103 million Euros for 2008.

Well, I finished updating the price lists for this year, for all the dating reviews (about a month late). I really should put all this information on one page to make it easier for people to do comparisons. I have actually been planning to do this for a while. What I want is to make a very detailed Dating Site Comparison Chart that is database driven so it will allow visitors to select multiple dating services and do side by side comparisons, plus some other neat things. Of course, the time to implement this functionality is what is holding me back at the moment. Anyways on to the few other tidbits I notice while checking out prices:

I had to rub my eyes and refresh the browser page for this one, the gay dating site, Outpersonals only has 3 or 12 month membership plans. Where is the one month? Currently a 3 month membership costs $49.96, so I guess Outpersonals are trying to see if they get more singles signing up at 3 months to offset the cost of losing the ones who only wanted to signup for one month. A mistake on there part in my opinion. The more active profiles a dating site has, the more members they will attract.

I also notice that UK Singles Connection have cut their membership costs in half. In October 2006, 1 Month cost £10.99 per month. Now it costs £4.99 (From $20 US to $9.99 US). A 6 month membership is down to 3.99 pounds. It looks like they are really trying to bring in new members with this price cut. I'm not sure if it is working since there where not meny members online when I was reviewing the prices. I'll have to check out some other UK dating services again.

For the other missed tidbits see: A few Dating Site Missed Notable Tidbits from the last year.