Christian Mingle

With all the news about internet dating safety bills lately, I noticed that the Spark Networks dating sites have a new warning at the bottom of their home pages. Here is the text I am referring to as quoted from AmericanSingles.com:

Spark Networks Limited does not conduct background checks on the members or subscribers of this website.

I wonder if this background checks warning is response to the New Jersey's Internet Dating Safety Act. If so, and since I don't live in the state of New Jersey, it appears they are displaying the message to everyone and not just New Jersey residents.

I've been meaning to post this information for a while.

Spark Networks released their First Quarter 2008 Financial Results on May 1, 2008. Spark Networks revenue for this period is $15 million. This is $1.8 million less from the first quarter 2007 and a decrease of 6% over quarter 4, 2007. It is not all bad news though as operating expenses where cut 27% over quarter 1, 2007 which resulted in a $1.6 million net income. Spark Networks reported a net loss of $1.4 million last year in the first quarter.

As far as subscribers are concerned, Spark Networks in the first quarter of 2008 had 195,325 subscribers. This is a decrease of 16% from 231,313 from the first quarter in 2007 and a decrease of 3% from the fourth quarter of 2007.

I received an email from Relationship.com. They are changing their name to ChristianMingle.com to make it easier for people to realize what type of single Relationship.com is trying to attract.

For the last year or so Relationships.com has been the most visited Christian dating site according to Hitwise. Hitwise is a company that keeps track of how many people visit web sites and then ranks them accordingly.

I guess this means I'll have to update my review of Relationship.com to reflect the new name change. I should have another look at this dating site anyways since it's been a while and I like to review each site at least once every 6 months.

Spark Networks, owners of AmericanSingles.com, Date.ca and JDate.com have released their 2006 4th quarter financials. There is some interesting numbers here for singles thinking about joining one of these dating sites. For the year end (Dec 31, 2006) American Singles had 80,519 paying subscribers and JDate had 74,775 paying subscribers. All of Sparks business ventures combined had a total of 217,276 paying subscribers, an increase of 10% when compared to last year. Of course none of these numbers include the members who use the site with a free membership.

I was surprised by JDate's numbers, they must be the largest Dating Site for Jewish singles out there.

Spark Networks also had another milestone on February 14th, 2007. It was their one year anniversary of its AMEX Listing. Look for them under the ticker "LOV". For more information on Spark Networks financial results check out this page.