Canada

Last year eHarmony.ca had a free communication weekend, on the Canada Day long weekend (see Story - it ran from Sat. June 28 to Tues. July 1). Some of you were wondering if there is a free weekend coming up this year for Canada Day. As July 1st, 2009 falls on a Wednesday, right in the middle of the week and we have had no official word yet, I have a feeling if there is one, it will be combined with eHarmony.com and the U.S. Independence Day holiday on the July 4th long weekend.

Check back with this story Canada, and we will update it as soon as we get more information about if and when there is a Free Communication Weekend.

Update #1: eHarmony Canada is indeed having a Free Communication Weekend. It starts July 2 and runs to July 5, 2009.

Update #2: For those of you looking for eHarmony.com (the US site ), the free weekend is on as well, check out this story for more information.

In the mean time, if you want some further insight on what makes this a popular dating site, read our review of eHarmony.

We just got confirmation that a Free eHarmony Canada Communication Weekend is in the works for this coming Labour Day Weekend. From Friday May 15, 2009 up to and including Monday, May 18, 2009 (Victoria Day) new and existing members of eHarmony.ca will be able to not only review matches for free, but communicate with them as well. As stated in our previous post, FastTrack communication is not included with free weekends.

From our count this is Free Communication Weekend number 17 for eHarmony and as usual this one falls on a holiday long weekend. Last year in May, eHarmony actually had 2 free communication weekends (see Story & Story). So, if they follow the same pattern I would expect a free weekend coming soon for the United States.

Read our eHarmony review for more information on this matchmaking dating site.

UPDATE: According to a post at eHarmony Advice, the eHarmony Free Communication Weekend starts May 15 at 12:01am Pacific Daylight Time through Monday, May 18 at 11:59pm Pacific Daylight Time. That means those of you in other Canadian time zones will have to wait an hour or more. As example, Eastern Time is 3 hours ahead of Pacific Time so the free weekend would start for you at 3:01am EST.

The Richard Ivey School of Business (The University of Western Ontario), Intouch Magazine (Winter 2009 edition), has a feature story about the history of a few of their graduates who are successful business men in the online dating industry. Lavalife co-founder Nicholas Paine (HBA ’83) is interviewed first. He talks about his experience in the early 1990's of converting their Tele-classifieds business (Classifieds over the phone) into a web personals site, and by 2001 into the popular dating site Lavalife.

Sam Moorcroft (MBA ’95), is also interviewed about how he started the popular Christian dating site, ChristianCafe.com. In the late 90's Sam had used a U.S. based Christian dating service to meet women locally and on the advice from a friend decided to start a website himself.

The key to the success of Christian Cafe.com was filling a niche in the market. Moorcroft knew from the women he had dated that they wanted to meet believers like themselves.

In the beginning years Sam and his brother held down several jobs to support themselves while they got their online dating site off the ground. In ten years ChristianCafe.com has grown into a multi-million dollar business.

To find out more information about these dating services from Canada, read our ChristianCafe.com review and our Lavalife review.

On Wednesday January 7th Lavalife announced their search for Canada's 10 most eligible singles. This is the third year in a row for the event.

All singles have to do is sign up for free to become a member of Lavalife.com, have a great photo and a creative and engaging "In My Own Words" profile. The deadline to enter is Tuesday, February 3, 2009.

On February 18, the judges will announce 30 semi-finalists. At this point the public can visit Lavalife and vote for Lavalife's 2009 Top 10 finalists. On March 11th Lavalife will announce the 10 winners.

The winners will receive a 3 day trip to Toronto and tickets to Lavalife's Red Hot Affair. The grand prize is $10,000 and the runner up will receive a all-inclusive trip for two to Negril, Jamaica, courtesy of Bel Air Travel.

For the full press release, read it at Newswire. For more information on this online dating site, read our Lavalife review.

The unofficial eHarmony Blog noted a small announcement on eHarmony Canada that RelyID will be available soon. RelyID on the US eHarmony site allows members to validate their full name, age and address (see eHarmony now has an Online ID Verification Service for more info). eHarmony Blog does wonder if a company that isn’t covered by Canadian privacy laws well have success in getting Canadians to hand over their private identification information to be verified on a dating site.

Being a Canadian myself, eHarmony Blog has a good point. The thing is, I would of never of thought of the problems dealing with an American company who may not be governed under our own privacy laws. I doubt this point would have been made apparent to those who will sign up for the RelyID Canadian service. eHarmony or RelyID should make sure we are covered by our own privacy laws (maybe open an office in Canada?) or at least inform us if we are not.

There is a small article at the Calgary Herald which mentions a Ipsos Reid survey about Canadians. The survey asked 1,033 Canadians several questions about relationships and love. The following conclusions where reached:

• 70 percent of Canadians are in love (80 percent of woman and 67 percent of men).
• In total 16 percent found love online. When split into age ranges, the 18 to 34 demographic leads with over 25 percent finding love online. Only 7 percent found love aged 55 or older.

So what did we find out from this poll and how does it relate to online dating? Well it seems there are approximately one third of Canadians not in love. This means online dating sites who service Canadians has a market of about 10 million people. It also appears that 84 percent of singles who are in love found it offline, with the other 16 percent finding it online. It is too bad they didn't mention how many Canadians were not successful in finding a mate online, we would then have a more complete picture on how successful online dating is.