Holidays

Christian Café is having 2 sales this month on membership subscriptions. The first one starts May 16th and runs to for a week, and the second one runs during Memorial Day weekend. Both give percentage discounts on subscriptions and are available on the membership upgrade page during the time they are offered.

From Monday May 16th, to Tuesday May 24th, 2016 you will receive 15% off when you purchase a 3 month subscription. This mid-May sale means a 3 month membership will only cost you about $40.

For the Memorial Day Weekend sale which runs from May 27th to May 31st, 2016 you can save up to 25% off any membership. Depending on the membership this means you could see a savings of over $25.

One of the great things about Christian Café is they offer a 10 day free trial to all new visitors. All you need to do is signup for a free membership and fill in your profile, and upload a photo. No credit card is required. With the free trial you have full access to the service including sending and receiving emails and participation in the Christian forum. This allows you to find out more about the members close to you and if online dating is something you want to continue with.

Another perk of an upgraded Christian Café memberships is, it allows you to contact all members, including free ones. Most other dating services require both members to have paid before each can commutate. This is not true with Christian Café, as once the paid member initiate the conversation both members will be able to send and receive emails to each other.

For more information about this Christian dating service, please read our Christian Cafe review.

In 2016, there’s no question about YouTube’s place in the world. The streaming site is the go-to destination for music videos, comedy sketches, makeup tutorials, adorable pets, and any other video whim the internet has. But before it was so firmly entrenched in popular culture, YouTube had an entirely different aim: dating.

According to co-founder Steve Chen, who recently spoke at the 2016 South By Southwest conference, YouTube was initially conceived as a way for singles to upload videos of themselves talking about the future partner they hope to meet.

“We always thought there was something with video there, but what would be the actual practical application?” Chen said, according to CNET. “We thought dating would be the obvious choice.” Chen and his co-founders, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, launched a site with a simple slogan: Tune In, Hook Up. Five days later, not a single video had been uploaded.

In desperation, the team took matters into their own hands. “Realizing videos of anything would be better than no videos, I populated our new dating site with videos of 747s taking off and landing," Karim told Motherboard. They took out ads on Craigslist in Las Vegas and Los Angeles and offered to pay women $20 to upload videos of themselves to the site. Again, they came up short.

The co-founders made the decision to ditch the dating aspect entirely. Early adopters began using YouTube to share videos of all kinds - pets, vacations, performances, anything. YouTube took on a new meaning, got a physical makeover, and this time, it worked.

Although YouTube’s matchmaking element was a bust, it’s an interesting origin story that has inspired a small amount of superstition in its founders. Chen noted that they registered the domain name YouTube on February 14 - "Just three guys on Valentine's Day that had nothing to do," he said.

Today YouTube is hardly “nothing.” It was acquired by Google for a $1.65 billion in 2006. It has launched the careers of many stars, from Justin Bieber to Swedish gamer PewDiePie. The company is nothing short of an empire.

Chen now has a new project in the works. He was at SxSW with Vijay Karunamurthy, an early engineering manager at YouTube, in support of their new startup, Nom. The service describes itself as “a community for food lovers to create, share and watch their favorite stories in real-time.” The food-focused site, which lets chefs and foodies broadcast live video of their edible adventures, launched in March.

eHarmony.com has a special going on for the next few days. Starting May 12th until May 16th (2016) you can get 6 additional months for free when you purchase a 6 month subscription. This is valid only in the United States.

Instead of free communication weekends this past few months, eHarmony has been offering free subscription extensions when you purchase a subscription (about once a month). No coupon is required and you will see the deal listed when you visit the eHarmony membership upgrade page

To join eHarmony just signup for a free membership which allows you to create your profile and take the personality questionnaire. The whole process takes about 40 minutes to complete with most questions for the questionnaire being multiple choice. Just select the best answer which describes you and once complete eHarmony will take your answers and use their matching algorithm to produce a set of matches everyday for you to checkout. If one or more sparks your interest you can then go ahead and start communicating with them.

For more information about this online dating service, please go ahead and read our eHarmony review.

You’ve heard of love at first sight, but what about love at first bite? This year’s crop of corporate April Fools’ Day pranks included Burrit-oh!, a dating site from Zoosk that matches users based on burrito compatibility.

The gimmick was all in good fun, especially considering that April 4 was National Burrito Day, but now the Chicago Tribune is reporting that the humorous site unintentionally exposed a major online dating myth.

“This year, one prank remains stubbornly present, almost four weeks after the day came and went,” writes the Tribune. “In fact, Burrit-oh! - the dating site that pairs singles based solely on their taste in portable Mexican - has proven so unexpectedly successful that maker Zoosk is thinking of keeping it.”

Nearly 2000 users have joined the site so far. Some joined just for laughs, but others are taking the scrumptious service seriously. Zoosk said they've seen an unexpected surge of people exchanging more than 20 back-and-forth messages. To put that into perspective, consider that OkCupid deems a match successful if a conversation survives only four exchanges. Burrit-oh’s record so far is 56.

"We all thought this was a really good idea and hoped it would take off," said Megan Murray, the site's senior content strategist. "But we didn't think it would take off like this."

So why is this important, other than for a quick giggle over the silliness of the internet? Almost every major dating site (including several Burrit-oh took a swipe at in a press release) touts the importance of sophisticated matching algorithms. They’re praised as the most effective way to pair people based on some "deeper" measure of interests or personality that guarantee “real” compatibility.

But Burrit-oh? Well, it’s anything but sophisticated. The algorithm is as basic as it gets, and it’s built on the flimsiest of foundations, and yet… users are still hitting it off. This supports the finding, long promoted by social scientists, that matching algorithms aren’t really science - they’re just good marketing. Behold, the unbeatable power of the burrito.

Then again, the silly service is a marketing stunt at the end of the day - a funny and clever one, but a stunt nonetheless. There’s just a teeny chance that it may outlive its initial purpose to become a real destination for single foodies. Zoosk said they've decided to keep supporting the site as long as people continue to use it.

“Personally, I am single and love burritos," Murray said, "and think it would be amazing if I could meet the love of my life on a burrito dating app."

For more information on the online dating service who launched Burrit-oh! on April Fools, please read our Zoosk review.

eHarmony is offering 6 months for free when members in the United States purchase a eHarmony subscription for 6 months. In Canada, eHarmony.ca is offering 3 months for free on the purchase of a 3 month membership. No coupon code is required but these 2 deals are only available from April 28th to May 2nd, 2016.

eHarmony is a popular service for those looking to find a long-term relationship. In fact a recent study found that 57% of eHarmony members end up finding a relationship on the service. To get started on eHarmony you first need to create a free membership. Once you have entered information like your username, age and gender you will then be asked to take the personality questionnaire. This step is important and is used by the eHarmony matchmaking algorithm to find matches for you. Taking the questionnaire will require about 30 minutes of your time. Once complete you will then receive your first batch of matches (around 5). From here you can then review the matches and communicate with the ones you wish starting first with the Guided Communication Process. Every day or so afterwards you will then receive a new batch of eHarmony matches.

For more information about this popular matchmaking app and website which over 600,000 married couples have met on, you can check out our review of eHarmony.

eHarmony is offering a 3 day full trial of their service. Just sign up for a subscription from April 21st to April 24th, 2016 and use the coupon code FREE to receive 3 days of full access to eHarmony. This code is valid in the United States and Canada on the eHarmony website and dating apps (iOS and Android). Once the 3 day free trial is over you will then be auto enrolled into a 3 month plan (unless you cancel before the 3 days is over).

eHarmony is one of the top dating services where members find long term relationships. A recent study by Consumers' Research found that 57% of eHarmony users found a relationship, with 29% of eHarmony users relationships lasting longer than 1 month. eHarmony has put a lot of time and effort into developing their in-depth matchmaking algorithm so once you signup as a member take your time and answer the relationship questionnaire. It will take about 30 minutes to do so and once completed you will receive your first set of matches in minutes.

For more information about this popular online dating service that specializes in long-term relationships, you can read our eHarmony review.