General News

Yahoo! Personals has decided to settle with Robert Anthony from a lawsuit reported late last year. Robert claimed he was a victim of a "date baiting" by Yahoo which Yahoo! Personals has denied completely. Yahoo decided to settle to prevent a long drawn out case which would obviously result in bad press.

A couple of good things have come out of this settlement. The first one being inactive profiles of more than 120 days will be removed from the system. This should have been standard procedure for Yahoo from day one. A few of the larger dating services (like Match) already do this. Why waste customer's time and frustrate them by allowing them to try to contact someone who hasn't been online dating for a while. Yahoo will also keep the ability of users to report bad behaviour and suspicious profiles along with the ability of when the user cancels there paid membership they can have there profile deleted.

I noticed on CNN.com today, an article on dating niche sites. They mention MillionaireMatch.com, a site we have reviewed which allows singles "a pre-screening process" to find a wealthy mate.

For the complete article go here.

Forbes Magazine is at it again (seventh year in a row) and has released their Best Cites rankings for Singles. When creating the "Best City For Singles" list Forbes takes into account culture, nightlife, number of singles, job growth, cost of living alone and online dating. You can check out all 40 American cites ranked and see which ones did the best over all, or you can list the cities by any of the categories used for the ranking. The top five overall ranked cities include:

1. San Francisco
2. New York
3. Los Angeles
4. Atlanta
5. Chicago

Read the Special Report on how the rankings where generated and to see how all 40 cities faired at Forbes Magazine.

The poll that asks the question:

How many singles do you usually communicate with online before you find someone you will go out with?

now has over 220 votes and the results for the most part confirms my thinking. Over 40% of respondents say they communicate with over 6 singles before they find someone they are willing to meet in person. The next highest percentage was online communication with 4 to 6 singles before someone was found worthy of meeting. I was surprised at how high the percentage was (13%) for people going out with anyone who contacted them via an online dating site. I was thinking this number would be more like 2%. I wonder if these singles are more from the dating sites that offer intimate encounters like Passion.com.

I am also curious about how your gender affects your answer. Maybe this would make a good poll for next month!

We have decided to put together a Editor's Choice list for every year. Eligible dating sites include, any of the sites which we have reviewed. There will be an over all top pick as well as top picks for certain popular dating categories. We will also have a Single's Choice award which anyone can participate in. You can choose one of the eight selected sites for this award. Use this poll to make your selection.

Once enough information has been gathered we will release the results. This will probably be mid October - November.

Seven years ago today, eHarmony was launched (August 22, 2000). Today more than 17 million singles have registered as members. eHarmony's unique scientific approach to matchmaking has made it very popular, allowing them to increased there membership base by at least 30% every year. eHarmony is one of the few succesful dating services which only displays potential matches to members and do not allow them to search for matches themselves.

For more information of what eHarmony has to offer, check out our review.