General News

We have just updated our Dating Forum to the latest version. It has a few minor bug fixes and a few new features which include support for member badges and a new tab layout for easier forum navigation. If anyone notices any problems with the updated forum please comment on this story.

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Getting into the holiday spirit, FriendFinder announced that they will be donating $200,000 in total to several charities. In a promotional twist, FriendFinder has decided to leave it up to its members as too which charities the money will go. Both free and paid members can cast a vote or nominate a charity until December 15, 2007.

Some of the charities nominated include the American Red Cross, St Jude's Children Hospital and the Make a Wish Foundation. Each charity will receive between $20,000 and $40,000. To date, there have been well over 30,000 votes placed by members so far.

We have wrapped up the awards for this years Dating Sites Reviews Choice Awards. Our last award, the Single's Choice was announced yesterday. This is our top award and was decided by the visitors of this site. To view information on all 8 Editor's Top Pick awards and the Single's Choice award please view our Awards topic.

The New Jersey Assembly Committee has passed the next measure that would require dating services to tell residents of New Jersey whether criminal background checks are done.

Most singles dating online are honest but it's that 1% everyone worries about. Background checks don't tell the whole story and probably give online daters a false sense of security. A fair number of states have considered a bill similar to this but, one state has yet to pass it. The biggest problem with these type of checks is that most singles who have a criminal background would just give a false name to circumvent this type of security measure. A dating site would have to confirm that a member is actually who he or she says he or she is before an actual background check can be done. Confirming ones identity for websites is a whole other problem.

More information about this bill is located at the NewsCenter 16 website.

Online Dating Insider got the scoop on the news regarding the improved search features of Yahoo Personals. Some of the new search and matching features include:

• One Click, We Match - Displays singles who meet your matching criteria as well as you meeting their matching criteria.
• One Click, I Match - Displays singles who are looking for someone whom you match with but not necessary fit your matching preferences.
• Search Filters - Available on the top of search results which allow you to further refine the search based on such characteristics as how new the profile is and when the last time the Yahoo member was online.
• New Search Results Interface - A two column display is now available which allows for an increase number of profiles visible per results page.

Dating sites at their core are about matching people. These new features of Yahoo Personals will make it easier but still keep the complexity to a minimum for the user. As reported [story: News-Yahoo-Personals-updates-service before], I am glad that Yahoo has gone ahead with continuing to update their dating service. For more information on Yahoo Personals, read our review.

TechCrunch have posted a rumor from what they call a reliable source that the FriendFinder Network of sites has been acquired for $1 Billion. In an update to this rumor the buyer is reported to be Penthouse Media Group. The FriendFinder Network of dating sites includes AdultFriendFInder, Passion, Senior FriendFinder and over 15 other different types of dating services. The article further reports that rumored revenues for the Network is over $300 million a year which makes this acquisition worth about 3 years of revenue.

Is this a good deal for Penthouse? Could be, the FriendFinder dating sites have always done well financially and they don't seem to be slowing down. At a cost of 3 years worth of revenue seems a little on the low end to me but most likely there is more too this deal than we know about (if it actually is true!).