Ashley Madison

It appears that AshleyMadison.com has been doing very well this last year. According to Fox Business they have doubled their membership from 1 million to over 2 million. This online service is geared toward people looking for one night stands and they specialize in married men and woman looking for affairs.

This Canadian based dating service has seem huge growth numbers in the United States with the state of California seeing the highest at over 200%. New Jersey and New York also saw great numbers with membership jumps of 172% and 155%. Pennsylvania and Florida saw high numbers as well. This is in part do to the increased exposure of this site on TV talk shows like Montel, Ellen and Dr. Phil where marriage, infidelity and divorces are hot topics.

One rather unique concept that Ashley Madison does (now days) is their dating service is based on a credit system instead of a monthly payment system (like Lavalifes use to be). Basically this means signing up as a member is free but if you wish to contact someone (not including winks) you need to purchase credits to perform the task. You pay for what you use. The other unique thing Ashley Madison allows which I think all dating services should is, it is free for guest members to reply to any mail message from a full member. This is a perfect way to increase communication between members of a paid dating service.

According to a recent Financial Post article, Ashley Madison, the dating service that caters to people who want extramarital affairs is banned from placing ads on the Microsoft Network (MSN). MSN Canada states the reason for the ban is because this web service is designed to facilitate deception.

While I don't agree morally with the Ashley Madison dating site concept, I'm on the fence about this ban. On one side MSN is a business and they have the right to decide who can and who cannot advertise with them. On the other hand, say all of the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) took the same stance on who can advertise. This would hurt your legitimate business. It is a form of censorship in a way and IMO the big 3 search engines are basically an essential service of the internet.