General News

On January 14, 2008, New Jersey passed the first United States online dating legislation called the Internet Dating Safety Act (Senate Bill-1977/A4304). This law will take effect in 120 days. Several other states have tried to pass different variations of this Act but New Jersey is the first state to succeed. All I can say is this Internet Dating Safety Act is a mess. In a nut shell it requires all New Jersey-based members to be informed if criminal background checks are performed and if the people who are deemed to have a criminal background are prevented from joining the site. This sounds ok on the surface but, as pointed out on Online Personals Watch this section quoted below from the act will cause some major headaches for dating websites:

"If an Internet dating service does not conduct criminal background screenings on its members, the service shall disclose, clearly and conspicuously, to all New Jersey members that the Internet dating service does not conduct criminal background screenings. The disclosure shall be provided when an electronic mail message is sent or received by a New Jersey member, on the profile describing a member to a New Jersey member, and on the web-site pages of the Internet dating service used when a New Jersey member signs up. A disclosure under this subsection shall be in bold, capital letters in at least 12-point type."

I also have to wonder why dating sites are getting picked on here. Going to Bars, Dance Clubs, etc.. offer a no safer place to meet singles and these establishments are not required to do background checks on their customers. Plus,quality of a background check has to be put into question. How far do you need to go here? All this act will do is just lead to a false sense of security for people dating online in New Jersey. Not all criminals get caught!

eHarmony announced yesterday that they have a new online id verification service for its members. This service, which is provided by ReliID allows eHarmony members to validate their full name, age and address. RelyID uses publicly available information for the id verification. Once members are verified they will have a RelyID badge displayed with their profile showing other users that they have completed the process successfully.

I'm glad other large dating services have started to offer this type of verification service. It's a great first step which willl go a long way in helping people trust the information they find in a profile. This should generate a lot more communication for eHarmony members who have been verified. But, how much further can eHarmony go? True.com does criminal background checks and I have seen some other sites like MillionaireMate.com verify photos. It would be great to see all of these services combined. I wonder if this service is available on eHarmony Canada?

For more information on this new verification process read this News Release and for more information on eHarmony, check out our review.

Update 2008-01-16: I just notice that Online Dating Insider has some more information on this new verification service including the cost ($5.95) and how the actually verification takes place.

Update 2019-10-22: Please note that the Online Verification Service is not available anymore.

I just notice that our FriendFinder Review is the third review to surpass a 100,000 page views. I'm not surprised since this online dating site one of the more popular sites on the internet with almost 2 million active members. They also have one of the most feature rich services.

Well after doing some review updates I thought I would mention a few more of the notable tidbits I found regarding some of our reviewed dating services. I should of written this early as I am sure I have forgotten a few.

First off is Match.com,

Within the last year sometime Match.com has dropped their 1 month membership price by 5 dollars to $29.99. The 3 and 6 month membership prices also went down by a few dollars. Recently (must be within the last month) Dr Phil has disappeared from Match and he has taken with him the MatchMindFind membership plans. For those of you who don't know, MatchMindFind Match.com memberships (say that 10 times fast) included videos and articles on how to improve your success in online dating. These memberships on average cost $10 more than the regular Match.com membership plans. If memory serves, Dr. Phil had been associated with Match.com for at least 2 years. I wonder if Match.com thought that the money used to secure Dr. Phil's name was better spent on other ventures like MatchMobile and MatchMyFriends. Or maybe, members where not buying into MatchMindFind any more?

The other new thing I notice regarding Match.com was that the MatchMyFriends information page has gotten a makeover (already). They have put a very high quality video and tour online. It is very informative and it explains this new service very well. I like the idea of the popup links in the video that takes you to different parts of the site if you want to learn more.

The next thing I notice was about Jewish FriendFinder,

Jewish FriendFinder has appeared to of lost about 300,000 members since the last real review I did. They went from roughly 400,000 members to around 100,000 today. I can't recall exactly where I gathered the initial information but it was most likely from Friend Finder themselves, about 1 1/2 years ago. Last year FriendFinder did change how they calculated membership numbers so this may also play into the number of active members they have now negatively. Some dating sites count all members that have created profiles since the start of the service (this could be years of profiles), FriendFinder includes members into their statistics that only have logged in within the last year and have a valid email account. While not the most stringent of definition for an active member, at least they include this information and it is fairly easy to find on their site. No other dating site except those of the FriendFinder Network I know of at the moment does this.

Well that's it for now; I'll post again when I have a few more tidbits.

Well I installed the Little Black Book Facebook Application today. It's pretty easy to find. Do a search on "Little Black Book" in Facebook, it was the third item in the list for me. Make sure that the developer is Match.com as there are two other applications with similar names. Before installing the app I notice 3 reviews and 2 of them dealt with incompatibility problems. It appears (I have not confirmed this) that Firefox, Camino and Safari browsers have problems and will not work with this application. I shouldn't have any problems since I am using Internet Explorer 7. I don't think cutting out Firefox and Mac users was a good idea. I realize they are not the majority of web surfers but any complaints with the application are easily accessed and it looks bad. For this reason alone, I think Match.com should have delayed the release until these browsers are supported.

When I installed the app there where currently 67 daily active users which is 11% of the total install base (just over 600 users in total). Not a lot of people but it is a fairly new application and Match.com didn't really do a whole lot too promote it.

The first thing Little Black Book does is ask you a few questions. These include if you are single, your age, gender you are seeking and your location. Currently United States, Canadian and United Kingdom Facebook users can join. You then supply an email address or you can directly link to your Match.com account by using your Match.com user name and password. If you don't link your Facebook account with a Match account you can add in additional profile information about youself. This includes just basic personality traits.

From there, you can try matching yourself with people on facebook who have this application installed or you can try Matching your Friends. Matching your Friends allows you to select a person from a list of your Facebook friends. From there, you enter a little bit about them (if they haven't already done so) and then the application will show you some possible facebook matches in which you can give a thumbs up or down for. If you give a thumbs up the Little Black Book will send an email off to your friend to invite them to install the application to view their potential matches. You are also supposed to be able to buy unlocking keys at this point so you and your friend can find out more about this person and be able to contact them. I wasn't able to figure out how (not a good sign).

Matching yourself with the Little Black Book (called Match Me) works very similar to Matching your friends, the only difference is you would be purchasing keys to unlock your own matches. The problem is, I was not able to use Match Me. Initially when I installed the application I had told it, I was not single. If you do this, the Match Me feature is disabled. I could not find a way to change my single status. The about me profile section doesn't allow you to change any of the information you initialy entered. Uninstalling and then reinstalling the application did not fix this problem. I just have to ask, what happens if someone moves or does become single. If you are using this application, I guess it is tough luck!

Match.com does most things right with there dating website and its popularity proves this. There Little Black Book Facebook application is another matter. In my opinion it has a clunky interface and many bugs. In about 3 spots I notice broken images, this is not professional, especially since this is a paid service. A help section would of been nice and maybe would of gotten me out of a few jams and given me less to complain about. There where also a few spots like uploading a photo where if you didn't want too, there was no way to move on except by hitting the web browsers back button. If I was grading this application it would receive an F. For being a paid service Match should of put this application through a few more design, development and testing cycles. Maybe the Facebook programming interface is partly to blame, I don't know, I'm just surprised a company like Match.com would release something so poorly designed. Maybe the next version will be better.

Online Dating Insider has an article about Match.com's new service called MatchStudios. The cost is a one time fee of $40 and includes a review of your profile by Matches experienced profile writer staff. After a review, Match.com will contact you via phone and discuss any text changes with your profile that is recommended. You can either add in these changes yourself or Match.com will do it for you.

Match.com may also recommend you use their Match Photo Review service. The review is no cost, but if changes are recommend, they will put you in contact with a company called LookBetterOnline.com. Look Better Online offer easy access to photo professionals across North America (over 6000 cities). The service costs $149 which seems a little steep, but they do offer a 100% Risk Free Guarantee. There are terms to this guarantee, but they are not too bad. If you don't think the photos will give you more emails than before, then you can ask for a reshoot or your money back. If you ask for your money back, it is less a sitting fee of $60 to $75. For more information about this photo service, click here. There have been a lot of these type of services over the last few years and most of them seem to have disappeared. Look Better Online is one of the few popular ones and has been around for a while.

MatchStudios is designed to make your profile more attractive to other members. I'm sure the service works well, but I think you would most likely get as good advice from your friends and family regarding your profile. According to our poll Do you tell your friends you're Dating Online?, over 55% of 330 votes by our readers don't tell people they use online dating. I guess these singles could use MatchStudios if they feel their profile is inadequate. As far as profile photos are concerned I think most people's picks are pretty good. A picture of you laughing or at a family gathering tells a potential match much more than a professional model shot. Then again, members of sites for Wealthy Singles may want to use a service such as this.

For more information on Match please read our review.