General News

As competition grows between the online dating personals, these sites have had to keep adding value to their service. More and more I am seeing new features crop into dating services that ask for an additional fee above what a member normally pays per month or a one time fee.

eHarmony is the latest dating site to offer an "Added Value" service. As mentioned in a previous story, eHarmony has added the "Premium Personality Profile". This contains additional questions that takes into account 15 more personality traits that are not featured in eHarmony's free profile (traits like social awareness and adventure) . This added value feature will cost an eHarmony member an additional $9.99.

FriendFinder has been charging for value added features the longest. Over their monthly fee cost, you can add two services. The first one allows you to have your email highlighted in members mail boxes and your search listing highlighted in search results. While reviewing FriendFinders search results I do notice the highlight listings a lot more. Is this service worth it? If you are not getting as many emails from members maybe it is just as long as there are not too many members who already have their listings highlighted that are similar too you (and therefore would come up in the same searches) This feature costs close to $10 a month

The second value added feature from FriendFinder is the ability to receive emails from non paying members. Non paying members on FriendFinder cannot normally send emails. This service costs more than the highlighted service and it runs for almost $20 per month. I think FriendFinder has the right idea here and this service would be an excellent choice for male members who usually outnumber female visitors on most dating services. Plus a large part of any dating services traffic is from singles with free memberships who are just checking out the service, who wouldn't want to tap in on that. My only complaint would be the cost. I think $10 a month would have been enough, especially since members already have to pay their normal fees. But, even at $20 a month plus normal membership fees this still beats the cost of a 1 month membership at some of the other popular dating services.

Match.com is the last dating service that I will write about today that has "Pay For Perks". When upgrading your membership at Match.com you either can go for a standard membership or one that is about $7.00 more per month which is called MindFindBind. MindFindBind is a Dr. Phil creation that helps members in a number of ways. This includes insights from Dr. Phil, through videos and audio messages, action plans and workshops.

Well there you go, when I find more paid perks from other online dating sites I'll add them to the list. I believe as long as these dating services add REAL value with these paid for perks they'll be worth it (as long as they continue to add new features for normal members too). Of course the real problem is for most of these perks, you don't know if they are worth it unless you try it first.

I saw this article called "Dating websites rebuked for promoting sex trade" on China Daily reporting that 12 dating websites are accused of being a cover for prostitution. No personals sites are named but apparently they are very graphic and lists pricing and contact information of the prostitutes.

I thought this article was relevant to our reviews site since I just added a second Asian dating site called Asia FriendFinder. The Asian dating services I have reviewed here are in no way involved in this type of thing.

Our Lavalife Review is now the second review to surpass a 100,000 page views. Lavalife has always been an excellent choice for singles interested in an online dating experience. Lavalife is very popular in Canada and is the number one choice for singles living there. This dating service is based in Canada and got it's start in Toronto originally as a telephone dating service.

The relatively new site, eHarmony Labs is now offering couples in a serious relationship of at least 3 months a web tool to perform a relationship check-up. Once the check-up is complete you will be offered relationship advice based on your answers.

The check-up consists of 60 questions and is designed to be taken consecutively by each person in the relationship. The questions will take approx 40 minutes to complete. After reviewing the test I found that eHarmony has taken this task as seriously as their profile matching system for singles. They ask in-depth and thought provoking questions that make you look at you and your partners relationship. Even if your relationship is not in trouble there is a good amount of information to learn about your partner from the check-up.

For more information or to take the "eHarmony Relationship Check-Up", head over to eHarmony Labs.

eHarmony is now offering an extended personality profile over and above their current free personality profile (which eHarmony claims it is a $40 value). They call it the "Premium Personality Profile" and offers the eHarmony member 15 additional aspects of personality. These aspects include social awareness, inquisitiveness and adventure.

According to eHarmony this gives the subscriber a deeper understanding about how there personality may impact their relationship. From a Yahoo article about this service, it states "The Premium Personality Profile was developed by eHarmony Labs and is based on a study of approximately 10,000 people. eHarmony Labs is led by a team of five PhDs with expertise in the fields of psychology, sociology and human relations.". This premium service will cost the eHarmony subscriber an additional one time fee of $9.99.

Is it worth it? I can't give a complete answer here, since I haven't taken it myself. Of all the personality profiles and matching systems offered by dating services I tend to trust eHarmony's the most, but I feel that eHarmony's current free profile contains enough information and is probably more than enough for almost all of its members. Plus, it sounds like the information gathered from the Premium Profile is not taken into account in eHarmony's matching system. If it is, what are the chances of the information coming into play since so few people have had a chance to use this new service. I would counsel eHarmony members to wait at least a few months to see how this new service is used before trying it out.

Read more about this service at Yahoo or check out our eHarmony Review.

Lavalife is in the midst of testing their new site for older and senior singles called Lavallife Prime. Officially to launch on May 23, 2007, Lavalife Prime looks to combine social networking (friends and interest groups) and online dating. They plan to offer people the freedom to add to your profile any life experiences, goals and interests you have along with any audio, pictures and videos that go with it. An interesting idea, most social networking sites are geared towards the younger generation, I wonder if this will be the one for the older?

Currently you can only create a profile on Lavalife Prime. You will have to wait to May 23rd to be able to log in and try it out.