General News

Our Dating Profile Help Category is looking rather slim of late. I'm looking to doing a couple of reviews on several different dating profile writers. This review will be in the same format as our dating sites. It will offer a summary as well as some positive and negative points (if any) about your service. An option for visitors to post their reviews of your website will also be present.

If you are interested please contact me and include your web sites and some before and after samples. I'm only looking for 2 reviews here for now, so not all applicants will be accepted.

Something I have never really thought of came to my attention a couple of days ago. The Wall Street Journal has a piece about singles stealing parts of or in some cases the entire profile of singles from dating services. In most cases this comes down to either the dating profiles heading or the profiles essay answers which usually includes such topics as describing who you are looking for in your own words. The article post examples of where even the opposite sexes have stolen entire profiles and which they had only just changed the gender information.

Headlines of profiles I have less issue with and in fact profiles with the same headline most likely happened more by accident. There are only so many ways to sum up yourself in one sentence. It also can be hard once you see a good headline to get it out of your head when you are trying to think one up for yourself. Plus, headlines like "Must Love Dogs!" are important. If the person wants to be with someone who loves dogs then reusing the same headline doesn't create any real problems (unless of course, the profiles come up next to each other in the search results). If the headline is from someone's profile who lives a fair distance away or from another dating site and, you can't think up one yourself that is similar then, I would go ahead and use it.

Profile essay are by far the hardest part to write of any dating profile. Especially, if writing is not your strong point. It's a lot easier for some people to just cut and paste this part with someone else but in the end they are not doing themselves any good. I find these essays are a good tool to help you reflect on who you are actually looking for. Even if you are a poor writer this is a useful exercise. Once written you can then review it with friends and family who could then help you rewrite it. If this is not an option, there are also a number of inexpensive profile writers available online that could help you (type "dating profile help" into Google Search). Some of the larger dating services like Match.com also offer a profile review service for an additional cost.

A Press Release by Date.com talks mainly about the results of a poll Date.com conducted on their dating site (seems like these days everyone will release a press release about anything). The poll asked female members if they would wait for Mr. Right to come along to get married, and then have children or would they have children without the commitment of marriage. 58% of the respondents said they would not wait with only 42% saying marriage should come first.

The release never mentioned how many actually took part in the poll but I am surprised by the results. I would have thought that at least 75% of people would have wanted to wait until marriage before having kids. Every one of my friends would only want children after they are married so I am a little sceptical of these results. I have a feeling ,surprising results like this gives companies an excuse just to post a press release. Another example of this is, Chemistry.com survey.

I saw a TV ad for eHarmony last night advertising a Free Communication weekend for all new members to celebrate Valentines Day. This promotion is for singles both in Canada and the US. It starts Friday February 15th 2008 and goes to Monday February 18th, 2008. To receive this promotion all you have to do is sign up as a member (no special promo codes).

eHarmony usually doesn't have many free communication weekends but within the last few months they have had two already (the last one being during the [story: News-eHarmony-Free-Trial-2008 New Years Eve Weekend]). Remember this promotion is for new members only so if you have signed up already to eHarmony, you probably are out of luck.

For more information, please read our eHarmony Review.

This The New York Times science section has an article by John Tierney with an interesting dating service twist. John had decided to find out if he and wife of 12 years would be considered a good match by eHarmony. They each registered separately and answered the 250 plus questions as honestly as possible, with many of their answers being the same or very similar. The only exception was, they said each of them was divorced (you can't join eHarmony if you are married). Johns wife got more matches overall but John did get several dozen over a week. Both had said they wanted nearby matches (they had entered the same zip code in both of their profiles) and most of the matches they both received lived in their area but the one match they where looking for wasn't there. They where not match to each other.

John did contact Galen Buckwalter who is eHarmony's vice president of research and development to see what was going on. Galen is a psychologist and helped design eHarmonys matching system. He offered John some advice, which in the end, did not produce the result John was looking for, a match with his wife. It looks like John couldn't crack how eHarmony matches singles, but I am glad to know it is deeper than just having similar answers in your profile. I find most matching systems do work and are a helpful guide. I just don't think anyone has cracked the question, "How do you find your soul mate?".

For more on this eHarmony Experiment click here, and for visitors and our site review on eHarmony click here.

Advertising Age has an article about Perfectmatch and 50 something daters. From 2005 to 2006 Perfectmatch have seen a 60% increase in 50+ singles. From 2006 to 2007 this growth has surged to 140%, making senior singles one of Perfectmatches most important demographics. This week to help attract more 50 plus singles, Perfectmatch.com has been featured on the TV dating show called "Another Chance for Romance". This show is aired on the Retirement Living TV channel that appears on Comcast and DirecTV in the United States.

Please read our review, for more information on Perfectmatch.com.