Australia

JetPlace, the owners of the Australian dating and swinger site Red Hot Pie, was ordered by the federal court to remove 1,371 fake profiles that they had on their website. Jetplace must also disclose to its Red Hot Pie members that they had misrepresented the number of users on the dating site. Members who registered between December 2004 and November 26, 2008 will also receive notices via email of this information. These same users can also apply for a refund if they can show that they were mislead by these fake profiles.

These fake profiles created by Jetplace contravened the Australian Trade Practices Act of 1974 since the dating site engaged in misleading conduct. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said they would have gone after Red Hot Pie in civil court where penalties are more severe but the conduct of the dating site happened before the new Australian Consumer Law. In their defence, Red Hot Pie said these profiles were created over a 4 year period and only a small number were active at any one time. They were used by the dating site's User Security Suite.

For more information on this story, read The Sydney Morning Herald.

Match.com in Australia (Match.com.au) has been in operation for 15 years now. They launched back in April of 2002 after buying out Soulmates Technology. To celebrate this milestone they have released some Aussie statistics about Match.com:

• More than 80,000 profiles are viewed every day.
• Everyday 16,000 winks and messages are sent. This equals to 6.5 million communications a year.
• 67% of Australian singles have never been married.
• 59% of members are looking for a non-smoker.
• 90% of members are okay with a partner who drinks on occasion.
• Gold Coast members are 45% more likely to have children than those members from Sydney.
• 64% of men are looking for a partner who has some tertiary education. With women it is 71%.

To find out more information about this dating site, read our review of Match.com.

The other eHarmony dating sites had their free weekend at the end of May. eHarmony Australia is celebrating theirs this weekend. Starting today, Friday June 11th and until Monday June 14th, 2010 eHarmony Australia (eHarmony.com.au) is having their free communication weekend. During this time all members of eHarmony Australia will be able to communicate with each other at no cost (with no credit card required). This 4 day event is happening during the Queen’s Birthday holiday which makes it ideal for singles to try out the dating site as it will be extra busy this weekend. Fasttracking the guided communication process and profile photo's are not included in this promotion.

The last free weekend at eHarmony Australia was 4 months ago on Valentine's Day. Check out our eHarmony review for more information on this popular Australian dating service.

The Australian website Smart Company did an interview with the vice president of international marketing at eHarmony, Sean Cornwell. In the interview he was asked several questions which resulted in him giving us some new information and statistics about eHarmony in Australia.

eHarmony.com.au was launched in November 2007. In those 2 years, the matchmaking site has had over 650,000 single residents of Australia register. In the first quarter of this year (2010) they saw 123,000 additional people create profiles on eHarmony Australia. Part of the huge growth this year is due to a bigger marketing budget. By late 2009, eHarmony felt they had enough Australian members in which they could properly promote their service through the media.

eHarmony offers singles a chance to receive high quality matches. Singles who sign up to eHarmony will receive between

five and a maximum of seven compatible matches every day.

These matches offer the best chance for a relationship to develop, but it is still up to members through communication to see if there is any sparks or chemistry between them. eHarmony believes it is more important to receive quality matches than to receive a large number of matches that have little chance of creating a successful relationship.

For more information about this dating site, read our review of eHarmony.

In mid March, Match.com announced a partnership with Yahoo!7 in Australia. Match.com will be the exclusive dating partner to Yahoo's Australian news and search portal as well as Yahoo!Xtra for New Zealand. You can now reach the new partnered dating service by visiting Yahoo!7 Dating or by clicking on the "Dating" menu item available on the Yahoo!7 home page.

Currently on the Yahoo!7 Dating page visitors have access to both the old dating service and the new Match.com partnered service. The original Yahoo!7 Dating will close it' doors in June, 2010.

According to IBISWorld the online dating industry in Australia experienced a 5 percent growth in 2009. This year they predict that growth may reach 10 percent with earnings of almost $100 million AUD from advertising and subscriptions.

So how many people use dating sites in Australia? RSVP, the leading Australian dating site, surveyed more than 3000 people. They found that 50 percent had used online dating before with 10 percent of those surveyed (300 people) finding a partner on the internet. The number of active online dating accounts in Australia is also expected to increase from 1.5 million to almost 2 million by 2020.

For more on the story, read The Times of India. To find out more about Australia's leading dating site, read our RSVP review.