General News

Well for the last 2 weeks regular visitors will have noticed no new news postings. I have been away on vacation. I plan to get back into the think of things this coming week. I've got lots to do, review 2 weeks worth of dating news (it does add up), answer numerous emails and go through all the latest submissions to this site.

If you have submitted items or have emailed me, please be patient as I will get to it this week.

Thanks

MatchMobile which is now available in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom is expected to be available soon in more countries. Early versions of Match Mobile only allowed users to browse the close to half a million other Match Mobile members. With the new system from Trilibis, Mobile users will now be able to browse the entire Match.com member database. Match.com has been estimated to have over 15 million members.

I found a YouTub video on Online Personals Watch that shows off Match Mobile in action.

To update an older story we did on Paying For Perks at dating sites, I noticed on Online Dating Insider that Match.com has added a few more perks above and beyond what a normal paying membership covers. Their main push is still MindFIndBInd with Dr. Phil but, the new perks included:

• matchMobile - Allows you to access features of Match.com right from your cell phone. Includes viewing profiles and instant messaging singles. Costs $4.99 per month for 3 months.
• Email Read Notification - Find out when and if singles from Match read the emails you send them. Costs $3.99 per month for 3 months.
• matchTalk - Speak with other Singles on the phone but keep your phone number anonymous. Completely integrated into Match. Costs $4.99 per month for 3 months.

I wonder if these new features will work out. If they do, this is where paid dating sites will start to out shine there free counterparts. By having services that truly offer added value and are just too expensive to be implement by the free dating sites (costs couldn't be covered by on site advertising).

The only service I don't agree with here is the Email Read Notification. In my opinion, this service should be included with a normal paying membership. It should be part of the Hot Lists functionality like, who has viewed your profile. There also should be a privacy option here for members to disable notifications being sent out when you read someone's email, and not a paid option either!

One perk I did miss from my last article was:

• Highlighted Portrait - Your profile picture is highlighted with a border so it stands out in search results. Costs $2.84 per month for 3 months.

This perk may be worth it for some members since it does make your search listing much more noticeable, and the price for it is not bad either.

CNN Money has an article called "Voice-over-IP powers online love connections". This article talks about a new service eHarmony plans to offer which allows for members to place actual phone calls to other members without giving out personal information. Here is quote from the article that describes the service in more details:

"Using voice-over-Internet Protocol, or VOIP, technology, eHarmony's service enables potential partners to speak on the phone without disclosing personal contact information. If one of the interested parties wants to initiate a call, he or she clicks on a special link on the eHarmony site, and eHarmony then sends an e-mail indicating the caller's interest to the intended call recipient. The eHarmony service, designed by VOIP provider Jajah, then initiates a call to the recipient's preferred phone number, only that data (as well as the phone number of the caller) is completely masked by the site."

eHarmony plans to offer this service for an additional charge of $5.75 which give them an unlimited number of calls to its members. At this point there is no mention of when the service is planned to start.

This type of service is a good idea, especially for people who are not into using Instant Messenger or similar tools. These singles tend to be older and not as technical savy, which fits right into eHarmony's demographic. I like the fact you don't need a VOIP phone that plugs into the internet, a normal phone can be used, which keeps it very simple. The one thing eHarmony needs to allow with this additional service is insure paying members can contact other non paying members. This is my major complaint with a number of dating services. When a member is a paying a fee they should be allowed to contact any member in the system.

And speaking of Time's 5 Worst Websites list (from yesterday's news item), eHarmony has made the list. Combined with Chemistry.com attack TV ads and the latest lawsuit that alleges discrimination of gays eHarmony's PR department must be going into overdrive.

In this type of negative press that eHarmony is receiving you never know if reacting to it through the media will have a positive or a more negative effect. eHarmony can't really win this fight and it will just prolong the negative exposure they have gathered. It may be better for eHarmony to let things quiet down a bit, change their policy regarding gay men and woman and then resume normal advertising. Singles who join eHarmony only are shown other members who match them anyways, so the right wing will never know.

According to the Guardian there are 141 online dating services in Britain with over 13% of UK internet surfers (of all ages) visiting these sites. What surprised me was the average age of members on these dating sites, 44 - 55. I guess more young people in Britain are using sites such as My Space. Of course people are starting to grumble about My Space, with all the ads and fake profile pages, and it has helped them by being put on Time's 5 worst site list.

Britains largest online dating service, DatingDirect.com has inked a deal with Vodafone UK to include it's dating service with their mobile internet service. Through this service you will be able to access DatingDirect.com and perform searches, browse profiles and receive alerts when you have singles view your profile and send you mail.