General News

I've heard some rumors that JDate plans to raise their monthly fee by $5.00 to $39.99 starting Thursday April 26. So if your thinking about joining this Jewish Dating Service, decide soon before the price rises (which locks in the renewal rate as well).

I know a lot of dating sites are feeling the pinch lately as internet advertising keeps rising. I hope this doesn't push to many subscribers away as JDate is a good dating service. Maybe this will prompt more people to sign up for a 3 month membership instead.

I'll update my JDate Review when the price increase has been confirmed on the 26th.

UPDATE - Confirmed, JDate has increased their prices. Our review for JDate has been updated to refect this.

I just received a notice from Lavalife to pass onto the users of Dating Sites Reviews. Over the next month Lavalife will be offering a free 7 Day full membership. This membership allows you to do everything a paid member can and is a great way to test run their dating service. Within the 7 days you will be able to send an unlimited number of emails, instant message and view fully 1000s of local singles profiles.

To try the free membership click the graphic below or for reviews by us and our users click here. Our Dating Coupons Page also has been updated with this information.

I checked our latest poll results this morning for: What type of relationship are you looking for when you use online dating?

As of April 16, 2007 we have collect 211 votes (after about 1 month running this poll). I was generally surprised with the results. We virtually had a 3 way tie between the relationship types of "Friends", "Intimacy/Physical" and "Long-term Relationship". With "Long-term Relationship" edging out the other 2 types, receiving 55 votes (26%). "Friends" and "Intimacy/Physical" both received 53 votes (25%). Next came the "Dating" relationship type with 27 votes (12.8%) and then finally "Marriage" with 23 votes (10.9%).

I was surprised that the "Dating" relationship type received almost half as many votes as any of the top 3, especially the "Friends" type. I would have expected the "Dating" and "Friends" results to be reversed. I always assumed that people looking for friends would use sites such as My Space or Face Book. This is obviously not completely true as nearly a quarter of the people using online dating services are looking just for friends. Maybe they like the better search options and more controlled environment of a dating sites compared to other types of services.

While online dating is still dominated by singles who are in their 20s or 30s the highest growing demographic in online dating is the Baby Boomer generation. These 50+ singles are more tech savvy, have more time and more money than previous generations so it is a perfect fit. Also, a lot of these senior singles children have left home which also frees up both time and money for them to do other things.

According to a Media Life article called "Finding silver in the silver singles set", over 53% of visitors to Yahoo! Personals where over the age of 45 in February, 2007. This high percentage of older singles also holds true for the other major dating sites like AmericanSingles.com, True and eHarmony. Their percentages ranged from the high 30s and 40s.

The full Media Life article is here.

Wow, I missed the boat here. I just found out that Microsoft has a dating site called "MSN Dating & Personals". From a quick first glance it looks to be their own site but looking closer you well notice the "Powered By Match.com" line. This is not necessary a bad thing though. We don't need another dating site from a big company, there are too many for singles to choose from already.

By MSN partnering with Match.com they get a proven dating system with already a huge number of members. Match.com gets more members from this plus an endorsement from Microsoft. You know Microsoft would not partner with a company that has shoddy business practices like some other dating sites.

For more information check out our Match Review (match.com).

Here is an interesting article on CNNMoney.com about the founder (Andrew Conru) of the FriendFinder Network of dating sites. It talks about his failures and successes including AdultFriendFinder, his biggest success which generates more than 60% of his total revenue (over $200 million). This site rivals the likes of Match.com and Yahoo! Personals in total number of members. Last year AFF had more than 35 million visitors and on average 75,000 new user registering each day (not paid members).