Statistics

Forbes did a story called Thrifty Singles Embrace Online Dating in which they looked at Match.com International and how it is performing in Britain. According to the article, UK memberships rose 26 percent in January when compared to the previous year. Overall traffic to the dating site grew 17 percent.

Forbes also updated us on some stats about singles in the UK. There are currently 8 million singles and they went on 24 million first dates. 69 percent of the dates were arranged through online dating sites and social networks.

For more information on this award winning dating service, read our Match.com International review.

On Wednesday Avalanche (the owners of Date.com, Matchmaker.com, and Amor) announced that they will be offering virtual gifts for sale on their dating sites. Just in time for Valentine's Day, members of these dating communities can send a $1 virtual gift to help make an impression with a potential date. To send a virtual gift:

Members purchase tokens that can be converted immediately, or at a later date, into Virtual Gifts. Online gifts, which range in price and start at $1, run the gamut from romantic to flirty. Everything from roses, hearts, Cupids and boxes of chocolates to martini glasses, food, stuffed animals, and even a shiny red sports car are available for purchase. Specialty items and limited edition items will be introduced in future updates of the feature.

Branded Virtual Gifts will also be available to advertisers that are looking for innovative ways to market products to online daters. Singles do not have to be paying subscribers of the sites to purchase, send or to receive Virtual Gifts. Virtual Gifts can be purchased using all major credit cards as well as via PayPal.

Virtual Gifts are currently very popular on social networking sites. The industry is estimated to be worth $1.5 billion in 2008.

According to Hitwise, there are currently around 1,400 dating sites in North America. This gives singles a lot of choice and many of them join multiple dating services at the same time. Mark Brooks of Online Personals Watch refers to this as serial online dating and compares it to bar and nightclub hopping. Some people see it as a simple math equation. The more dating sites you join the more chances you have of finding Mr. or Mrs. Right. Of course the problem you run into when you do this is, you end up not spending quality time on any one of the dating sites. You end up not thinking through the messages you are sending to singles and end up doing a cookie cutter operation by cutting and pasting the same email message to multiple people. This makes you look less interested in the person you are sending the message too. It is fairly easy to see when a message or a reply sent to you on a dating site has not been tailored to your previous message or the information in your profile. That is not a very good first impression!

Initially I think you should signup to multiple site, but there is a reason for this. You should sign up to 2 or 3 dating sites using their free trials to see the type of members they have to offer and if they live an acceptable distance away. If there is no one in your area then try another site. Once you find one with what you think is a good selection of members that meet your location requirements then that is the one site you need to upgrade your membership for.

An article at the Globe & Mail looks at the increased popularity of online dating since the downturn in the economy which started in the fall. They include a couple of reasons for this. The main point mentioned is, people rather use online dating first to filter out the duds (their word) before spending good money on an expensive dinner.

It's a pretty good deal at $25 a month to go out and meet people online, versus going out and spending 50 to 100 bucks per night and possibly not meeting anyone.

The other reason they suggest is bad times makes people re-prioritize what is important in life. I agree with both of these points, plus I think online dating is also a good distraction from bad times. Nothing legal gives you a better high than when you find someone that gives you that butterfly feeling in your stomach.

The article also gave us a few more statistics of some of our reviewed dating sites. Lavalife member registrations are up 11 percent from November with Toronto leading the charge with a 20 percent increase (Lavalife is based in Toronto). Messaging among members on Lavalife is also at a 6 month high. At the same time Plenty of Fish has had a banner year with a 77 percent increase from December 2007 until December 2008. Apparently about 900,000 people log in every day. A poll at Date.com also discovered that almost 50 percent of members are now spending more time on their dating site making sure they have found Mr or Miss Right before they go out on a date.

I wasn't sure at first why Logitech released a press release about online dating called Sex, Lies and Internet Dates for St. Valentines Day since they are mostly a hardware manufacture. According to the release, Logitech commissioned the European study to "establish how much difference a video call with a prospective date would make". Ok, I guess this study makes a little more sense now since Logitech is one of the world's largest supplier of web video cameras.

What did Logitech's report reveal? First, that 58 percent of Europeans have been victims of online dating dishonesty. This breaks down by country:

• Italians at 72 percent
• Germans with 58 percent
• French and British at 55 percent
• Dutch at 48 percent

The number one thing singles lied about was attractiveness. Now this is a subject attribute so I'm not sure how accurate it is. Plus it is not mentioned if singles told Logitech that they lied or if people have said they have been lied too. In second place about things singles lied about in their dating profile was weight. One of the things lease lied about was the lack of hair someone may have had.

For the complete press release visit Response Source.

Dr. Helen Fisher was at the iDate conference which was recently held in Miami. Dr. Helen Fisher is Chemistry's chief scientific advisor for their match system. David Evans of The Online Dating Insider shared with us some information he learned from her keynote speech:

• Dr. Helen Fisher studied 178k people on Chemistry.com.
• The Chemistry questionnaire has been taken by 7 million in 39 countries.

Chemistry currently has 4 million paid and registered users (info from their about us page on IAC) so it looks like just under half never signed up after the profile questionnaire.

For more information on this personality matching dating site, read our [staticpage: Chemistry review].