Be selective in the personal details you share with your date. Don’t give out too many personal details on a first date, as this may scare some people away, but sharing basic information about yourself, such as where you grew up, what you like to do in your spare time, etc., is perfectly acceptable. Don’t, however, talk about past relationships or bring up very personal information. Additionally, you don’t want to brag, as this may also turn people away. Try to be modest in the way you talk with your date and make sure you both share the conversation equally rather than one of you doing all the talking.

Do not fiddle with your phone. This will make it look like you aren’t interested in the date at all and it is very disrespectful. It is okay to leave you phone on in case of an emergency, but you should not be texting other people or taking unnecessary phone calls when you are sharing the night with your date.

Do not lie for any reason. If you are looking to go on a second date and hope that this relationship may potentially get serious, then lying on the first date can cause complications later in the relationship. Try to be completely honest with your date.

Don’t do anything to make your date uncomfortable, such as touching them in certain areas, asking personal questions, etc. This may compromise your chances of having a second date.

Look good. Dress to accentuate your positive traits. Dressing nice gives you confidence and allows your personality to shine. Remember to pack breath mints and perfume in your purse.

Be yourself. If you despise sports, suppress the temptation to act interested in football. With honesty, you maintain your dignity and ensure you date men who appreciate the real you.

Avoid dating a loser. Even if you are desperate for a date on Friday night, a man who disrespects you or cannot hold a job will not be able to fulfill you in other areas. Look for a man’s character traits. Observe how he treats his mother and animals to determine how he will treat you.

Play hard to get. Men like a challenge. If you avoid rushing to answer every call, he will work harder to persuade you to date him. Additionally, keep secrets. Men are turned off when you share your life history on the first date.

Exercise safety precautions. Avoid being alone with a man you do not know. Agree to meet him somewhere rather than allowing him to pick you up at your home. Carry a fully charged cell phone and cash for a cab in case you need to escape a dead end date.

Control your drinking. Alcohol inhibits your behavior and leads to embarrassment and potentially dangerous situations.

Avoid unprotected sex. In most cases, reserve sex until your date has committed to you. Likewise, avoid dating a man who boasts about his sexual exploits or pressures you for sexual favors.

Be honest about your expectations. If you are seeking to find a lifetime mate, date men who could potentially be marital mates. If you are looking for a fun time, be available to date a variety of men.

Embrace surprise. Your dream date may not look like the man from your fantasies. Sometimes, setting aside your list of requirements leads to experiences you would otherwise miss.

These general dating guidelines prepare you for success. Pay attention to your date’s character while accentuating your positive traits. Be yourself and have fun while enjoying your next date.

Photo

Your online dating photo should be current within the last six months. Old photos might be your favorite, however when you make an interesting connection, reality is going to come out. If you are not happy with what you have, get busy and have a fabulous photo taken at a professional studio. In addition, remember that those you are chatting with may not be truthful with their own appearance. To safe guard yourself before meeting them, it is wise to hook-up together on a live web cam chat to ensure everything is above board and they truly are who they claim to be.

Your Bio Information

Your online dating bio page is the first stop for the opposite sex. The information should represent your talents, abilities, hobbies, interests and outlook on life. Stick to the truth and never feel compelled to dumb yourself down if you are a female. Smart, assertive and professionally aggressive women are a rare prize for the right man who has the self-confidence to compliment her. If a male is uncomfortable or intimidated by a woman’s profession or achievements, he won’t last long when you meet him in the flesh. In addition, males may feel free to strut like a peacock to attract a fun-loving and athletic companion for the golf course, surfing or intellectual chats by the fireplace. Intelligence and education are a core value on any dating service, so be sure to express yourself in your best light.

Meeting For the First Time

The decision to meet for a date is an exciting giant step forward, however females must exert caution and common sense in the situation. Keep it safe and sane with a meeting in a public place, such as a restaurant or museum, and avoid going home with someone you do not know. Before you leave on your date, Google him or her and verify the home address you have. This information should be kept on your computer or given to a trusted family member or friend should an emergency arise and no one knows where you are. If a male or female connection does not want to reveal who they are, where they work, and where they live, that first date may be a mistake. Males who have nothing to hide understand the precautions women must take, and those who are non-compliant towards her safety are not to be trusted.

The online dating scene is filled with wonderful people just like you that have no time to meet a partner the old school way. Technology has made it possible to screen hundreds of potential partners with one click of the mouse. Be real, be honest and protect yourself from possible harm. Online dating is here to stay, and for most single people, it’s the only way to play.

Match.com Discount Codes

Take an extra 20% off when you sign up for a new Match.com plan. Match.com comes with a 6-Month Guarantee that you’ll meet someone special and if you don’t then they’ll give you 6 months free. No Obligation, cancel anytime offer.

3-Day Free Trial, No Obligation, Cancel Anytime: Redeem Offer

20% Off Discount Offer: Redeem Offer

Perfectmatch.com Coupon Offer

Buy 2, Get 2 Free: Redeem Offer

Get started with a free compatibility profile and take the work out of dating online with their Duet Compatibility System where you will receive email matches of members that are compatible with you based on your personality. Perfectmatch.com also offers relationship advice from the relationship expert, Dr. Pepper Schwartz.

eHarmony.com 20% Off Offer

For a limited time – purchase a 6 month subscription and save 20%. (coupon code: CJPROMOAAA Expiration Date 6/30/10). Find your soulmate today.

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Chemistry.com 3 for 1 Offer: Redeem Offer

Chemistry.com 7-Day Free Trial Offer: Redeem Offer

Try Chemistry.com for free for 7-Days and take the personality test and receive matches and get full access to contact other singles on the #1 site for love, relationships and dating.

Lavalife.com Special Deal

Get 24 hours FREE member access on the popular singles community at Lavalife.com. Meet 1000′s of sexy singles and get a free peak into the large member base of singles in your area or around the world.

Lavalife.com 24-Hours Free: Redeem Offer

Do you know of any other online dating site offers? Post them below.

So what is dating? I think most of us are familiar with the term dating but don’t exactly know the meaning of dating. They don’t know what when we can say whether the meeting of two people is a date or not. The term date comes from the literal word date which means meeting of two people on a specific date. The usual custom that has now been developed is that when a boy is interested in a girl the first step in knowing is asking her out on a date.

The usual steps of dating are first going to the girl’s home to pick her up, then taking her to a nice fancy restaurant for a dinner, and afterwards drop her back home. Dating is the starting point of all relationships. It is the step in which two people get to know each other. They find out whether or not they like each other and also the fact that whether or not they would be able to live in a relationship with each other or not.

The concept of dating is one school of thought; the second one is that of arranged marriages. The two schools of thoughts have their own pros and cons. There may be something that dating is better than that of arranged marriages while other things think dating might have not be as good as arranged marriages.

My personal likeness is more towards marriage. It could be arranged or for love. The reason for this is that no matter how many times you date, no matter how many dinners you eat together and no matter how many places you travel together, you can never be sure that the other person is the right person for you. In fact one of the worst things about dating is that both the boy and the girl try to pretend what they are not. They try to cover themselves to become something that they are not in real life. And once an actual relationship is developed more things about each other are revealed and once such things are revealed there is always a second thought about the relationship.

A relationship developed on the basic of dating is not always stable.  There is always an option of leaving a person. But this is not how relationships are built. Until and unless you commit yourself into making every possible effort in maintaining the relationship, the relationship is bound to be destroyed. And such level of commitment only comes in marriages and not simple relationships that are based on few dates.

It is actually an overwhelming task in our thinking because it gets very difficult to find a date at this elder age. With the technological advancements of these days, it is actually not difficult due to the availability of dating for seniors websites on the internet. After staying in a long relationship the seniors are actually expected to get out of that and start adjusting themselves to a totally new working scenario and finding a new partner and starting all the relationship searching again. Although senior dating is similar to normal dating but it actually has a certain modifications in the working rules.

The main emphasis is required on enjoying & having fun and for that matter you are expected to keep an eye on all the people around you. Have time out for yourself when you can sit with yourself and find out ways to romance the opposite sex by taking a break from work and “smell the roses”.

According to the recent statistics, around 17% of the adults who are or have crossed the age of 55 are using senior dating websites very regularly. This percentage is actually very high as compared to the statistics 20 years ago. Many of these people have been supported by their children as their children want them to be happy again after the divorce or death of their spouses.

Be Sure and Safe Dating
The most important thing to keep in mind is to be sure of being safe when choosing senior dating services after a long time of being single. The important thing to be kept in mind is that the first date will be where you will be required to go alone with an unknown person, so the dating individual shall be bold enough to handle and take care of himself.

It is advisable to go to a public place for your initial dates not because the other person can be wrong but just to be sure of avoiding any mishap.

Common Factors Attached to Senior Dating
As the technology changes, so is the way of dating. The outcome of the advanced technology is the idea of online dating and thereby senior dating for individuals in an elder age bracket. One drawback of online dating is that it gets difficult to know that the person you dating is genuine and trustworthy – so take your time.

1 – Match.com sites (5,392,000) – Yahoo Personals is now owned and operated by Match, MSN Personals and Love@AOL.
2 – PlentyofFish (3,849,000) – Free dating website also known as POF.com.
3 – eHarmony (2,200,000)
4 – Speeddate (2,137,000) – Fast growing property with great chat features.
5 – People Media Sites (2,064,000) – This is now owned by Match.com and includes properties like BlackPeopleMeet.com and SeniorPeopleMeet.com which are both partnered with AOL.
6 – Zoosk (1,579,000) – They grew fast with a social media applicationffffff
7 – OK Cupid (1,309,000) – Also owned by Match.com now. %100 Free dating site.
8 – Mate1 (1,029,000)
9 – DateHookup (1,021,000) – Free dating site with steady growth operated out of Sacramento, CA
10 – Spark Networks (958,000) – JDate.com is their main site but they own and operate other ethnic, religious and niche dating sites.

Below are the Hitwise Top Free Dating Sites in the US from August, 2011:

1 – PlentyofFish
2 – Adam4Adam – free gay dating site
3 – DateHookup.com
4 – OKCupid
5 – WooMe – recently acquired by Zoosk so most likely won’t be free anymore.

I always take the Hitwise and Comscore industry numbers with a grain of salt as they are generated by estimation algorithms and don’t necessarily reflect actuals. If you visit the about us page on Speeddate.com they reported over 7M monthly uniques back in April. Another tool that shows a pretty good picture of site growth and traffic numbers is compete.com which I use to see if there are new movers in the dating industry. This is just a landscape picture of sites in the US and if you look in Canada you’ll see sites like Lavalife.ca and Meetic.co.uk in the UK on the top of the lists. Good luck on your search for love online!

Zoosk.com was in the #1 Position and they have been aggressively buying paid search these past few months and mostly broad matching all terms.
eHarmony.com was a surprise to see here as their search is managed by an agency that seems to not mind buying teen terms. I bet that’s not helping the good old ROI for them.
AshleyMadison.com took the #4 position with their ad saying “Have an Affair – Guaranteed” which is just exactly what you want your teenage kids reading.

If you do other searches on Google for “dating under 15″ you’ll see ads for Zoosk, Match and eHarmony. I found that to be a little humorous since Match.com International just report that they saw a 84% increase in conversions using the Google Conversion Optimizer on Ad Words.

If you are managing a paid search campaign on Google Ad Words and want to make sure your ads aren’t showing up for these searches you can go to your keywords tab, then scroll all the way down the page and expand the ‘negatives’ link and put in the terms that you don’t want to appear on. See screenshot below:

There are teen dating websites online if you are indeed looking for dating services for teens or singles under 18 years old. Here are a few that I found that seemed to be pretty legitimate.

MyLOL.net
eCrush (now eSpin and owned by Hearst Communications)
Stay Teen

Post up other sites if you know of any safe teen online dating sites.

Before we enter the world of online dating, we first need to understand the concept of dating and then relate that to the concept of online dating. The term dating means meeting of two individuals usually a boy and a girl, usually in a fancy restaurant. The reason behind the meeting is that people want to know each other and know about the fact that whether or not they can have a good and healthy relationship. Now the way these two people meet is where the concept of online dating is introduced.

The usual way of meeting is that usually a guy sees a girl and if he fancies her, asks her on a date. The online dating concept is somewhat similar but the fact is that everyone i.e. both the girl and the boy have so many options to choose from. This means that there is a greater probability of success as compared to that of conventional dating. But this online dating world is not that simple. Many people who are new to the concept of dating online are tricked by fake profiles. Normally people learn the art of dating online the hard way.

The best way to succeed in the world of online dating is by first properly learning the ways, tips and techniques of succeeding in the world of online dating. This article is one effort to make sure that people who are new to online dating don’t face trouble in the quest to find the perfect someone.

The first and the foremost thing that you need to do is find out the website that suits your need. Because online dating is very successful there are many websites that provide the services of online dating. Many of them are real whereas many of them are not. Therefore first of all know what you want. Then depending on what you want find a website. Once you find a website, make yourself a good profile. A profile that is both attractive and at the same time filled with information that is real. Telling the truth about yourself is very important if you want a long lasting relationship.

Once you have made your profile you have two options. Either you can go search for profiles that you like or you can wait for some profile to add you as a friend. In either ways since you will be having a lot of options, the chances of success are higher.

The numbers of people that are now using online dating have increased exponentially. There are more and more profiles that are being added everyday now. Some of them are real whereas many of them are not. No matter how much one tries, there are always some profiles that are not real and there is no need to spend time on them. People who are new to dating usually end up with profiles such as these. They spend their time trying to setup a date and at the end of the day they fail at it miserably. The one good way of avoiding this is by viewing other people’s online personals ads and using them for creative ideas.

There are thousands of different online personals ads that you can use to generate great ideas for your own personals ad. There are tons and tons of website that claim that they have the best dating service. But the question is, are they that good actually?

The fact of the matter is that most of the websites that claim that they are the best in their field are not usually that good. However this does not mean that there are no websites that are good enough.

But one thing to keep in mind is that some online personals ads can also be fake. So one thing that you need to keep in mind is that you have be very careful when it comes to choosing the right online personal ad. Like any other field there are both good and bad people, so what you need to do is to make sure that you choose the right person.

But once you find the right person, there is a good chance that you will find the right girl or boy for you because after all they are people who are meant to find you the right person, the one you can live your life with.

1. First step is to choose the website that matches your interests. If you are looking for a friend or fun dates, then you should consider Match.com (www.match.com). Similarly, if you are looking for a marriage partner or soul mate; then PerfectMatch.com (www.perfectmatch.com) – is more suitable. The choice of the right website is the first step for dating online with the right match. You can also set priorities for the age match, professional match, religion match, ethnicity match and much more at the niche dating websites or other through some social networking websites. Remember, it’s one of the most effective dating tips that would ensure your success at the start of your search.

1. Second among the effective dating tips includes the creation of a profile that is interesting, and contains only the intriguing and required information. Never reveal you very personal information, as that is not good for your safety online. Provide the information that shows your personality and interests rather than becoming too obvious. Create a lively and chill profile that has some curiosity for online daters and that can bring an outshining win for you.

1. One of the most neglected aspects in online dating is the profile writing and communication. Remember, you writings are your image for others, and the content in your profile will matter the most in enhancing your positive personality characteristics.

1. Moreover, posting great photos is certainly among the useful dating tips. A nice and chic photo will definitely attract most of the people and the response rate become higher instantly just because of this little change.

1. Finally, it’s not a good idea to lie or provide fake info about you. This way you might be able to attract an ideal person, but then you won’t be able to ensure a long term relationship with that match, because when your white lies are revealed, you would be ditched by your partner who trusted you. This way you will lose your respect as well.

We hope that the mentioned dating tipswill prove helpful for you in finding a superb and ideal match online.

Once you have selected a good site and you are done with the account creation, now the second thing which you are supposed to do is create your dating personal profile. Remember, your profile is your first impression to other members, and so you should not neglect it if you are really keen for online dating. The key for finding the perfect match is of course an inspiring profile. There are certain columns that you would be required to fill in a typical website for creation of your profile. Try to avoid providing the fake information, as that can create problems for you in future. In the first step, you would be required to provide information about your looks, hobbies, age, qualification, height, weight , interests and activities to name a few. All of these are most important parts of your profile, and can really matter for finding a perfect match online.

Many people have been observed to follow ineffective personal ad profile writing strategies, which later on brings unsuccessful or fruitless results for them in their search. By keeping few things in mind, you would definitely be able to create a good dating profile online, and will be able to increase your dating scope.  Try to be different and write uniquely. Write the statements about your personality in an innovative manner. Highlight your trades with interesting quotations, piece of writings or jokes etc. A simple statement about your interests might not prove that effective, as it becomes with the addition of some outshining and attractive words.

Besides, in creating your personal profile, although you should be true, but you shouldn’t be too open or obvious. Disclosing everything at the start is not a good strategy. Rather, add some curiosity for others that would seem intriguing or sweet to the people who view your profile. While mentioning your interests or hobbies, illustrate some of the examples. Like if you love poetry; then write a good piece of poetry to highlight your interest, rather than simply stating “I love poetry”.

Finally, be true in what you desire. Simply state in your personal ad, whether you are looking for a love match or friendship only, or what type of person are you looking for. We wish you a shining profile writing and successful online dating.

DALLAS, May 24th, 2010 – Match.com, an operating business of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI), today announced an agreement by which Match.com will become the exclusive online dating site on Yahoo!. Yahoo! Personals users will have the opportunity to move to a new co-branded Match.com experience, “Match.com on Yahoo!” where they will combine with the greater Match.com community. The Match.com on Yahoo! service is available starting today.

Yahoo! Personals users will receive special offers designed to help them enjoy all that Match.com has to offer. The two companies are working together to help users easily migrate to Match.com on Yahoo!. Over the next two months, existing Yahoo! Personals members will be given the opportunity to seamlessly migrate their Yahoo! Personals accounts over to the new experience. Match.com on Yahoo! offers compelling features including mobile access, daily personalized matches and robust search tools and will fully replace the existing Yahoo! Personals experience at the end of the transition period.

“The key to a successful online dating experience is having both a thriving community of active members and a sophisticated site experience optimized for dating success,” says Greg Blatt, CEO of Match.com. “By bringing Yahoo! Personals members to Match.com, our community, which we already believe to be the largest and most vibrant in the space, has become even more compelling for our members. When you add this to our unparalleled site experience, evolving every month with new features and enhancements, we feel the distance between the online dating experience we offer and that of others in the space is growing even larger.”

“Yahoo!’s vision is to be the center of people’s online lives and we continue to focus on providing the best experiences for our users and advertisers. Through our partnership with Match.com, the leader in the online dating category, we will offer an enhanced experience to singles looking to find the right match,” said Greg Hintz, senior director, Americas Listings and Audience SEO at Yahoo!.

The long-term arrangement provides that Match.com will be the exclusive online dating provider and display advertiser on Yahoo!. Match.com will receive media placements on the site, as well as occupy the position served by the personals navigational link on the Yahoo! homepage.

About IAC
IAC operates more than 50 leading and diversified Internet businesses across 30 countries … our mission is to harness the power of interactivity to make daily life easier and more productive for people all over the world. To view a full list of the companies of IAC please visit our website at http://www.iac.com.

About Match.com
Match.com pioneered online dating when it launched on the Web in 1995 and continues to lead this exciting and evolving category after more than a decade. Throughout its 15-year history, Match.com has helped millions of singles meet and fall in love. Match.com provides a rich tapestry of ethnicities, interests, goals, ambitions, quirks, looks and personalities from which to choose. Match.com operates some of the leading subscription-based online dating sites in 25 countries, in 8 languages and spanning five continents, as well as oversees its ongoing investment in Meetic. Match.com also powers online dating on MSN across Asia, Australia, the United States and Latin America. Match.com is an operating business of IAC.

-Amy Canaday
Match.com Public Relations

Match.com Discount Codes

Take an extra 20% off when you sign up for a new Match.com plan. Match.com comes with a 6-Month Guarantee that you’ll meet someone special and if you don’t then they’ll give you 6 months free. No Obligation, cancel anytime offer.

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Perfectmatch.com Coupon Offer

Buy 2, Get 2 Free: Redeem Offer

Get started with a free compatibility profile and take the work out of dating online with their Duet Compatibility System where you will receive email matches of members that are compatible with you based on your personality. Perfectmatch.com also offers relationship advice from the relationship expert, Dr. Pepper Schwartz.

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Try Chemistry.com for free for 7-Days and take the personality test and receive matches and get full access to contact other singles on the #1 site for love, relationships and dating.

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Get 24 hours FREE member access on the popular singles community at Lavalife.com. Meet 1000′s of sexy singles and get a free peak into the large member base of singles in your area or around the world.

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Do you know of any other online dating site offers? Post them below.

Chemistry.com Review

Site Name: Chemistry.com
Established: January 2006
Member Size: Over 40,000 Active Members
Description: Chemistry.com features an advanced matching system and guided communications process based on the research of Dr. Helen Fisher. Chemistry believes that meaningful relationships are built on two important foundations: compatibility and chemistry.
Special Features: First-Meeting^TM technology, Chemistry Profile, Guided communication process, On-site email, Multiple Feedback Process

Summary Of Chemistry.com:

Far from the matchmaking sites that are out there today, Chemistry.com pairs individuals by utilizing both compatibility and chemistry. By doing so, Chemistry.com becomes one of the first websites that recognizes that the science of brain chemistry plays an important role in creating relationships. Chemistry.com is designed for individuals seeking meaningful and long-term relationships. Instead of taking your time searching for other members, Chemistry does it all for you through four simple steps.

Chemistry.com Website Review:

When you register for Chemistry.com, the first step is to fill out a free personality test, designed by Chemistry’s chief scientific advisor, Dr. Helen Fisher. The test is extensive and includes two sections: analytical and basic background information. It may take a little long at first, but the test contains some interesting questions and, most importantly, ensures the accuracy of your matches.

Once you have completed the Chemistry Profile, you will receive profiles of potential matches. Chemistry’s four step matching process includes Relationship Essentials, Short Answers, Email, and In-Person Meeting. Each step requires active communication with a potential partner. You and your match first begin an online conversation to get better acquainted through short Q&As and emails. This guided process helps set off the first In-Person meeting. When the time is right, you can send out a First-Meeting request to your partner and then schedule a meeting through Chemistry’s unique scheduling system.

Chemistry does not stop here. It is the first site to incorporate member feedback after each first meeting. The feedback system helps refine the matches received and provides tips for members on how to become better daters. The feedback system also gives you a better understanding of your relationship personality and helps Chemistry improve their services.

Chemistry Subscription Plans:

In order to continue through the four step matching process and communicate with your matches, you will have to subscribe. Chemistry offers three types of subscription plans:

Regular Subscription:
1 Month for $49.95/month
3 Months for $33.32/month
6 Months for $26.65/month

Chemistry.com is a registered Verisign site with secure credit card forms and SSL encryption.

Company Information:

Chemistry.com is an all-new product from Match.com (IAC/InterActiveCorp), the world’s leading online dating and personals site. Launched in April 1995, Match.com was one of the first online dating sites on the scene.

Match.com/Chemistry.com
P.O. Box 25314
Dallas, TX 75225
Customer Care: Contact Chemistry.com
CS Phone: 1-866-610-MEET (6338)

Write your own personal review of Chemistry.com or comment below.

Andrew Conru

10 Quick Questions with Andrew Conru:

1. Back in 1994 when you started up WebPersonals.com, did you ever think that the industry would be this huge?

I knew that the Internet was going to be revolutionary the first time I saw how it enabled people worldwide to see postings instantaneously.  At that time, the dating industry was split between traditional matchmakers and newspaper personals.  It was clear to me that it was easier, faster, and cheaper to use a central online database than to go to a niche matchmaker or use phone-based newspaper personals.  While I understood that online dating would change the way people meet, I didn’t fully grasp the extent that it would change the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

2. Is there any new technology that you see getting incorporated into online dating that will revolutionize it? Mobile, GPS, Apps, Video, VOIP, Matching

Online dating can mean many things to different people – mostly related to how filtering done by the “system” (how do members obtain validation or credibility?), access restrictions (how do members prove their intentions?), are people interacting in realtime,  and the dating process being facilitated (introduction verses matchmaking).

There are four elements to online dating:  access, member profiles, searching/matching, and member interaction.  While technology can often improve the experience, the benefits are more evolutionary than revolutionary.  For example, the trend of “always-on” access via mobile devices does open members to more spontaneous meetings especially when coupled with GPS technology.

As far as member profiles, most people are comfortable only with uploading photos and creating text profiles.  That being said, we’ve always tried to find ways for people to be more expressive in their profiles – adding voice profiles, video profiles, and other ways for people to differentiate themselves.  There seems to be a natural inhibition in people that limits about 5% of people to add more than a photo to their profile.

I think one of the last areas open to the biggest gains in innovation is in matching technology.  Matching technology includes searching, filtering, access control, privacy, and automatic agent-based services.  Two challenges facing online dating sites is the increasing expectations of members and imbalances in gender dynamics.  When I started the first online dating service in 1994, there was an immediate benefit for members… as people’s expectations of their dates stayed constant while the number of candidates soared.  After a few years, however, people become much more selective of their ideal match and now often feel less satisfied with the online dating experience.  They report that online dating sites have tons of profiles but it gets harder and harder to find a good match (while actually, the matches are better than before just that they have become more picky).

Imbalances in gender dynamics also currently results in a suboptimal suboptimal.  In most mainstream dating sites, men send 50 times more emails than women… this happens in part to the hunter nature of men as well as the fact that faced by an avalanche of emails, women respond to a tiny fraction of them which results in men having to send even more to get a single reply.  This in turn, makes men unhappy with their response rate and women unhappy with the quality and selectivity of the men.

I believe that the next wave of online personal services will be less dependent of gee-whiz technology but on the ability for people (mostly women) to select, filter, and challenge their suitors.  That is, users will start embracing software agents to dynamically interview each other prior to allowing human contact.

A key consideration as to what technology can be applied to online dating is the extent to which participants are interacting in real-time.  For the most part, online dating is pretty asynchronous – people filter and interact primarily via email message exchanges prior meeting.   GPS, Video, VOIP are all tools to enable real-time synchronous interactions.  While there are many exciting applications of these technologies to facilitate instant hookups (e.g., among friends or gay bars), they tend not to be embraced in mainstream dating sites.

3. You were one of the pioneers in developing niche community sites with AsiaFriendFinder and BigChurch. What do you see as the future in affinity dating and what made you think that these niche groups would be so successful?

I think when people visualize the perfect online dating experience, they think of a site that only have perfect candidates for THEM.  In the early days of online dating, we had to come up with ways to make people feel comfortable that they would find good matches and one way was to show them that all the members of a site matched their primary filter (e.g., Chinese language or Christians).  While it is true that a general purpose site could advertise “hey we have Chinese speakers or Christians”, some people feel more comfortable with a niche site.  Niche dating sites will continue so long as they have critical mass (number of active members) and larger general-purpose dating sites continue to give broad marketing messages.

4. Do you think that there is room for an emerging dating company to compete with the likes of Friendfinder Network, Match.com or eHarmony?

The mainstream online dating industry has a few challenges that could be exploited by a disruptive player – namely that they charge for access and have to pay for traffic.  While there are a few fast-growing sites that provide free services, they must find non-financial ways to throttle usage, provide user-intention validation and make enough revenue via advertising to buy traffic.  There is also always the potential for a first-mover company to take advantage of new traffic markets.

5. What do you think of eHarmony’s approach to personality test matchmaking vs. searching profiles? Do you think they have done a good job on the brand trust side of things with their offline commercials?

There are two general categories of online daters – those who like to take things in their own hands (e.g., search) and those who prefer to take the advice of others (e.g., matchmakers).  For many, there is a strong historical and emotional bias that a 3rd party or an expert can do a better job picking a spouse than an individual… just like people hire a stock broker to pick stocks… they believe that a dating expert or matchmaker can screen candidates better.

I believe that self-assessment tests, specific suggestions on how to better search, and many profile with personality data give online daters a better chance at success.  The challenge is to get enough members willing to spend the time to complete the tests.

eHarmony has capitalized on the fear that people make bad dating decisions.  Their advertising seems effective by targeting older women who may have had bad dating experiences as well as by using anecdotal evidence on the effectiveness of their matchmaking algorithm.   Just as financial firms will still advertise turning control to a broker, online matchmaking sites will continue to advertise the same.  eHarmony’s message to single people is that dating is very difficult, that an expert (system) can do better than they could at picking a spouse.

6. If you never got into the online dating industry, what is another online business that you would have pursued?

Search company?  I was doing a couple different online companies about the same time as online dating – one being the first company to centralize banner ads, one of the first to do online shopping, and some early social networking sites.  It is often difficult to know what your opportunity costs are when you are focusing on your primary company.  My educational background is in system controls and optimization which fits well to many aspects of Internet businesses.

7. Do you think that Social Networks are a big threat to the dating industry at large? Have you ever heard of the new fad “Twatting” (Twitter Dating)?

Many people say that large social networks like Facebook could takeover the online dating world overnight.  I am a bit skeptical due to their current inability to have multiple, disconnected, and independently privacy-controlled profiles for a single user (e.g., let a user have multiple profiles that are not linked in a way).  In 2001, I modified FriendFinder.com to support both friend social networking and online dating.  It turned out not to be successful because members found that interacting with their current friends was a separate process than discovering new friends and dates.  They saw that enabling prospective dates to see their current friends was a dating liability.  We later consolidated the profiles back into one.

Entrepreneurs will always try to apply dating in new markets.  The challenge of Twitter Dating is that there is almost no filtering process that increases the value of an interaction.  The result is a flood of responses with minimal net value.

8. Do you think love can blossom in 140 characters or less?

Oh, stop… you had me at 139 characters!  The most common subject line sent to members of online dating sites is “hi”.  The question is more dependent on what the person had to do before they were able to send you that 140 characters… how were they screened?  how do you know that they have the potential to be worth loving?

9. What is one thing that you would tell someone pursuing a new start-up as the best piece of business advice you have learned over the past 16+ years as an entrepreneur?

Pick your battles… find the minimum product/service offering features that you need to have in order to have a complete solution and get it done as soon as possible.  You can always evolve your solution by listening to your customers.

10. What are one of your favorite websites online and what site drives you crazy? One of my favorite sites online at the moment is Ustream.tv and I hate Youtube.

I tend to spend more time thinking about how to build and improve web services than actually using them.   I see lots of potential in services that extend your social network offline such as the geo-location sites Foursquare/Gowala.   I wish Craigslist would either innovate or forward their free traffic to a site that would.  When society hands you a free monopoly, it’s your duty to innovate as if you have fierce competition.

===

I’d like to thank Andrew for taking the time to answer all of these questions with such insight. It has been a pleasure knowing Andrew Conru over the past few years and watching the Friendfinder Network grow into such a successful business empire.

Jdate.com Information

Site Name: JDate.com
Established: 1997
Member Size: 7,000,000+ Active Members
Description: Photo personals with advanced personality matching and whisper instant messaging technology.
Special Features: 1-on-1 IM Technology – Email Message Center – Who’s Online – Favorites – 2-Way Matching

Jdate.com Website Review:

JDate.com has been on the Jewish dating community since 1997 and has one of the best matchmaking technologies for Jewish singles including one-on-one instant messaging. With over 1,000,000 registered members, plus 20,000 new members joining each month, it’s no wonder they’ve been extremely successful in bringing people together. Login to our Happy Endings section for a taste of the hundreds of couples who have met and married through JDate.com. J Date is simply the best place to meet other Jewish singles from your local area or around the country.

JDate.com is made up of a high-quality group of Jewish singles from all walks of life, all professions and ages, who are living life to its fullest and looking for others to share their experiences with other Jewish members. Soul mates, special friends, and even pen pals… you make your choice! The majority of JDate.com members have a professional degree and an average income exceeding $60,000/year. Registration is Free and gives you unlimited access to view profiles, browse, match and to see who’s online.

Summary of Udate’s Features

• It’s simple to get started and be fabulous in your profile. Just answer a few questions, write something wonderful about yourself, and post up to 4 gorgeous photos. Within minutes and at no cost, you’ve joined the scene!
• Search for the person you’re looking for by just entering the characteristics and desired location of the person you want.
• Instant messaging = Instant gratification! See someone’s profile that you’re interesting in meeting? If they’re online, send them an instant message and see if sparks fly.
• Who’s online – See photos and profiles of everyone who’s online. Add people that you’re interested in to your “favorites” list.
• Active jewish dating community with from 8,000 to 12,000 users online at any given time of day.
• Over 15,000 singles are joining J-Date each month. This means that in just the last 24-hours 500 new Jewish singles have joined.

Summary Of Jdate:

JDate.com appeals to all singles no matter what race, gender or age. With over 7 Million active singles in their database your chances of finding your ideal match especially for heterosexual couples is very high.

At JDate.com basic membership is FREE. You can set up your basic profile and use a variety of features to give the system a test drive. I suggest that you upgrade to any premium membership plan so that you will be able to get full access to the site features and be able to send unlimited emails and “whisper” instant messages to members. The best deal is to sign up for the 3-month membership which will give you enough time to search and correspond with other singles so you don’t feel rushed and with over 6,000 new members joining every day you will have access to new members.

Upgrading to the 3-month premium membership saves you a 33% off their standard 1-month plan. With this package, membership is less than a $1 a day which is a lot cheaper then a cup of coffee these days.

Jdate Subscription Plans:

1 Month for $34.95 (Guaranteed monthly renewal of $34.95 after 1 month.)
3 Months for $99.95 (Guaranteed discounted monthly renewal of $33.95 after 3 months.)
6 Months for $149.00 (Guaranteed discounted monthly renewal of $24.95 after 6 months.)

JDate.com is a registered Verisign site with secure credit card forms and SSL encryption.

Company Information:

JDate.com, is owned and operated by Matchnet plc which is a publicly traded on Prime Standard Segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (Ticker: MHJG). JDate.com is a very trusted Jewish Dating service brand which has over a million profiles of jewish singles in their database. Jdate has also acquired JCupid.com, another trusted brand in online jewish dating.

Company Address:

Sparks Network
8383 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 800
Beverly Hills, CA 90211
Tel: 323-658-3000
Fax: 323-658-3001
customer service email

Write your own personal review of Jdate.com or comment below.

Perfectmatch.com Information

Site Name: Perfectmatch.com
Established: May, 2004
Member Size: 6 Million + Active Members
Description: PerfectMatch is an online dating and relationship site for singles seeking long-term relationships. PerfectMatch utilizes a scientifically based compatibility and personality test co-developed by Dr. Pepper Schwartz and PerfectMatch.com.
Special Features: Duet Compatibility System – Highly Compatible Matches – Review Matches Free – Email Message Center – Dating Tips– Singles Search Feature – Advanced Matching

Perfectmatch.com Site Review:

You’ve done the dating scene. And now you’re ready to move on to that next important stage: Sharing your life with a soulmate. Perfectmatch.com is a community of serious, committed adults looking for a long-term relationship. Unlike online dating sites, their approach utilizes a scientifically based personality profiler developed by leading relationship expert, Dr. Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D. Our more refined approach, based on over 30 years of research, results in fewer, but more qualified matches. Dr. Schwartz holds the distinction of being the only relationship expert on the Web who’s a published authority, as well as a professor at a major US university.

The Personality Profiler doesn’t just match people simply because they have similar character traits. It actually describes and explains complete personality types. This is the only test of its kind. And the only one grounded in research on the individual characteristics that matter. Better yet, it’s the only one that tells you which traits your partner should share and which should be different. The Personality Profiler is based on the same theory that inspired the famous Myers Briggs Type Indicator. It’s the most sophicated and effective romantic matching tool on or off the net.

The Perfect Match email introductions you receive will be the result of an exhaustive and ongoing search. They carefully examine the community for members identified as having a high probability of compatibility with you. Based on your personality profile, DealBreakers and other vital attributes identified in your profile, they’ll present you with hundreds of matches – having no connection to you other than sharing a zip code – the matches must meet rigorous standards. The Perfectmatch.com process wasn’t designed to be fast, it was designed to be successful.

Summary of Perfectmatch.com

The Perfectmatch Profile includes four key elements. The main area of the profile includes general, appearance, lifestyle and an overview of the member’s values. The About Me area includes numerous insightful questions, providing a snapshot of the member likes and dislikes. The information page includes the members Personal Statement. And lastly, the Image tab includes the images the member has posted. The profile also includes key icons allowing you to communicate with members, such as Mail (send Email), IceBreakers, Bookmarks and an icon allowing you to view the member’s personality assessment results.

A Perfectmatch.com basic membership is FREE. You can set up your basic profile by completing the Personality Profiler test. We suggest that you upgrade to the 3-month membership plan which will also allow you to use their search feature if you aren’t having success with the matches. Other relationship sites like eHarmony don’t have the search feature even with a paid membership. The 3-month plan will give you enough time to receive mulitple matches as new members are joining and it includes a Ten Point Profile Review & Tune-Up by an experienced Perfect Match Member Services Counselor. You save about $50.00 with this option and you’ll be able to familiarize yourself with the system and enhance your profile in the meantime.

Perfect Match Subscription Plans:

1 Month for $49.95 (Guaranteed monthly renewal of $49.95 after 1 month.)
3 Months for $99.95 (Guaranteed discounted monthly renewal of $49.95 after 3 months.)
6 Months for $159.95 (Guaranteed discounted monthly renewal of $14.95 after 6 months.)
12 Months for $249.95 (Guaranteed discounted monthly renewal of $49.95 after 12 months.)

Perfectmatch.com is a registered Verisign site with secure credit card forms and SSL encryption.

Company Information:

Perfectmatch.com is owned and operated by MarketRange Inc. Perfectmatch.com is a very trusted brand in the online relationship space and have over 1 million profiles of serious singles in their database. Find True Love at Perfect Match today.

MarketRange Inc.
dba Perfectmatch.com
11410 N.E. 124th Street
PO Box 241
Kirkland, WA 98034
customer service email: ms@perfectmatch.com

Write your own personal review of Perfectmatch.com or comment below.

Infidelity is one of the hardest things to face in a relationship. If you find out that your girlfriend has cheated on you, the first thing you must do is take a deep breath and relax. Feelings of anger, hurt and betrayal are strong emotions that can blur your judgment. While some people prefer to end such a relationship at once, others might prefer to talk about it if they feel they genuinely love the other person and want to give their relationship another chance.

Depending on what you want to do, it is recommended to talk to your mate and find out what made them do this. Talking about it may help in getting a clearer view of what should be done next. If you think that you won’t be able to ever trust them then you should just break the ties or take some time apart from each other. It is still really important to get an understanding to exactly what happened and why they decided to cheat on you with someone else.

Cheating can come in different forms and levels of severity too. You might consider it cheating if you find out that your lover was kissing someone while they were intoxicated. This might be a pretty big deal to you but sort of an excusable incident. If you found out that your partner slept with someone else then that is obviously a much larger issue. What happens if you find out that your lover has been emailing or chatting with someone else online romantically? This is an instance where you need to find out what needs you are not fulfilling or what problems they are having in communicating these issues.

Trust your instincts in most cases but don’t accuse your partner that they are cheating unless you know 100% as this can cause a lot of dissension in your relationship and drive them away from you. Being overly protective can be just as bad as cheating. Nobody likes to be with a overly jealous person that is always wanting to know where you are and who you are with. Build up the trust in one another, keep communication lines open and you won’t have to worry about them cheating on you or looking else where for physical and emotional connections.

-Brian R.

Match.com Information

Site Name: Match.com
Established: April 21, 1995
Member Size: 20 million +
Description: As one of the first dating sites on the Internet, Match.com has a mission to “take the lottery out of love.” Match.com helps singles increase their chance of finding a soul mate by providing a large online community of men and women looking casual and serious relationships.
Special Features: Daily 5, MatchWords, Connections, Mail, Winks, Favorites, Dr. Phil’s MindFindBind, Make Love Happen Guarantee, Instant Messaging, Reverse Match, matchMobile, MatchTalk, MyMatch, Singles Search, MatchMyFriends

Summary of Match.com:

Match.com has a member base of over 20 million singles in 37 different countries, providing a rich and diverse online community of singles from around the world. Match.com boasts that each year, over 200,000 members find the person they were looking for on the site and the site is viewed an average of 5 million times a day. With a large database of profiles, Match.com has developed unique tools to help singles narrow down their choices. Other than the usual criterion of age, zip code, and interests, members are able to search for individuals by MatchWords. MatchWords helps singles quickly find others with common interests by utilizing keywords that describe who and what they are.

Match.com Website Review:

Signing up for Match.com is fast and easy. You go through three sections including about you, your match, and in your own words which includes a section where you can write creatively about yourself. Next, you can add photos of yourself. At Match.com, you can add up to 25 photos! After the sign-up process, you can start searching through millions of profiles for someone you might be interested in. To help with the searching process, Match.com offers a variety of searching options. As described by Match.com, MatchWords are words that people use to describe themselves. I would think of them as keywords or tags about yourself. As a free member, you can add MatchWords in the MyProfile section and then search through those to find people near you with the same MatchWord. Also as a free member, you can take advantage of Match.com’s Wink feature, which allows you to “wink” at someone that you are interested in. About two days after signing up, I’ve already received almost 20 winks. There’s definitely a lot of people on Match.com.

To utilize Match.com’s premium features, you will have to become a subscriber. As a subscriber you can contact other members directly through IM and send/receive email messages in your own Match mailbox. You can also personalize the searching process by finding out who has viewed your profile, use a one click search by type, remove particular members from your view, and organize and keep tabs on all your emails, winks, and favorite matches in one place.

Special Features on Match.com:

Daily 5 – They present your best 5 matches daily via email based on their matching technology. If you see someone that you are interested in then let them know and they’ll give you an introduction.
MatchWords – Search for singles by MatchWords, which are keywords people use to describe themselves.
Connections – Manage your emails, winks, and favorite matches in one place.
Reverse Match – Find members who have specified characteristics that you have.
matchMobile – Get free wink and email alerts, send/receive emails, and search for matches on your mobile phone.
MatchTalk – Talk with your Match.com connections on your phone anonymously.
Email Read Notification – Find out when your matches read the emails you have sent.
First Impressions – Improve your chances of being contacted by our newest members. Your profile will be among the first emailed to them.

Match.com Subscription Plans:

6 months $17.99 per month (includes Email Read Notification, First Impressions, Highlighted Profile & Love Guarantee)
6 months $16.99 per month (includes Make Love Happen Guarantee*)
3 months $19.99 per month
1 month $34.99 per month

* Make Love Happen Guarantee – Qualify for a free Love extension if you subscribe to the six-month Love package and have not met someone special after 6 months. Match.com is a registered Verisign site with secure credit card forms and SSL encryption. You can subscribe online or by phone at: 1-888-838-9045 8am-8pm CST.

Company Information:

Match.com was launched in April of 1995. It is the world’s largest online dating and personals property. If you are looking for www.match.com, Match dating, AOL Personals, MSN Personals or Match.com then visit the official website at: Match.com. Match.com is based in Dallas, Texas and is owned and operated by IAC/InterActive Corp (Nasdaq: IACI).

IACi
555 West 18th Street
New York, NY 10011
(212) 314-7300
info@iac.com

Write your own personal review of Match.com or comment below.

On the other side of this is the issue of becoming to comfortable in your relationship that you don’t want or are not ready for any change. I have been caught in this trap before where I knew that our relationship wasn’t growing or going anywhere yet I chose to keep things going status quo and ended up having a good portion of my life flash before me before I woke up one day and called it off. I was too comfortable and didn’t want to rock the boat and it was just too convenient for me. A lot of this comes from being in a physical relationship where you don’t want to lose the comfort of sleeping with someone. The emotional side of me was really frustrated with the lack of communication and substance of our relationship but the physical side of me liked to have a sleeping and sex partner.

Share some of your complicated relationship issues and let’s explore if they are real problems or things that can be fixed to uncomplicate your relationship status.

Facebook.com has changed the game and face of dating via friends of friends which is classically how a lot of people actually meet in real life. The interesting thing about my friends hook up on Facebook is that his girlfriend lives in Montreal and is quite younger then he is and if they were both on a dating site like Perfectmatch.com or Match.com that there is a great chance that they would have never met no matter what they put down as their dating preferences because he is a very unique person in what musical tastes he likes and his taste in girls. He comes across as a rock-a-billy meets urban business man and he is tattooed almost top down. He seems to be attracted to the hipster-pin-up girl type. How do you tell that to a dating site? It just seems so complicated but whenever I see that type of person I usually say something like “So and So would probably like her huh?”.

Facebook can also be scary if you are a female that is trying to stay away from old creepy boyfriends and stalkers that can search for you by name or trolling your friends lists. Good thing Facebook fully understood this and put a ton of work into your privacy settings on who can see you and they even have a feature that allows your name to be unsearchable in their database. Pretty impressive stuff. It still doesn’t work too well for celebrities and sport figures. I have a friend that manages a few sports people and their wives won’t let them create facebook or twitter profiles for stalking groupies.

The permission based friendships are a great ice breaker and way to see who the person contacting you is friends with if you have never met them. If you think about a typical dating site you rarely see group photos on people’s profiles which doesn’t help you when trying to determine whether someone is a social person or what type of friends they might have. Facebook is all that and more. I have wedding photos, travel photos, concert photos, videos and links that I have posted to my profile. People that you meet on Facebook seem to not have a problem putting up personal items and posts since they feel that only people that they have approved are consuming the content.

I can’t wait to see what the face of Facebook will look like in about 3 years from now. Will it still be around or will the next social phenomena like Twitter takes its place? I know all of the early adopters of Facebook are pissed that us old folks have taken over and that it is just a fancy version of what Classmates should have been 10 years ago.

-Brian R.

1. PlentyofFish (free dating site)
2. Match.com
3. Singlesnet
4. Yahoo! Personals
5. DateHookup.com (free dating site)
6. eHarmony (up one spot even with all of that TV advertising)
7. Adam4Adam (down one spot)
8. True.com (not sure how they are still top 10)
9. SeniorPeopleMeet.com
10. BlackPeopleMeet.com (both #9 and #10 are now Match.com properties)

Not much has changed in the online dating landscape except that the People Media niche properties jumped up high on the list probably because of that great partnership with AOL Personals. Some of the other note worthy sites that just made it into the top 25 list were Mate1.com (#15 to #12), Zoosk.com (#20 to #17) and the affair website AshleyMadison.com at #24.

1. PlentyofFish.com (free dating)
2. Singlesnet.com
3. Match.com
4. Yahoo Personals
5. DateHookup.com (free dating)
6. Adam4Adam (gay personals)
7. eHarmony.com
8. TRUE
9. Blackpeoplemeet (owned by Match)
10. Manhunt.net (gay personals)
11. Seniorpeoplemeet.com (owned by Match)
12. OnlineBootyCall.com
13. OkCupid (free dating)
14. Christian Mingle
15. Chemistry.com (Match.com premium dating)
16. Mingle2.com (free dating)
17. Mate1.com
18. Dream-Marriage.com
19. Black Singles
20. OutPersonals.com (gay personals)
21. SingleParentMeet.com (owned by Match)
22. Woome.com (live video dating)
23. Cupid.com
24. Zoosk.com (facebook app dating)
25. MSN Match (this should be added to Match.com)

I am not sure why Hitwise isn’t tracking the Friendfinder network, Meetic and Perfectmatch.com. I wonder where Date.com/Matchmaker.com, Lavalife and Jdate show up on this list.

Comscore ~ 6/09 / Unique Visitors

1. Singlesnet (3,428,000)
2. Yahoo Personals (3,159,000)
3. PlentyofFish (3,026,000)
4. Match (2,990,000)
5. TRUE (2,780,000)
6. People Media Sites (2,001,000) – BlackPeopleMeet, SeniorPeopleMeet.com
7. eHarmony (1,678,000)
8. Spark Networks (1,368,000) – Jdate, AmericanSingles.com
9. Mate1.com (1,301,000)
10. DateHookup.com (721,000)

If you add People Media to Match then they would be around 4,991,000 uniques which put them on top. Match recently acquired People Media’s network of sites. I am surprised to see eHarmony so low on this list considering all of the money they spend on TV placements.

“Peter” in this case is the Facebook user logged in to his account. The woman in the “Hot Singles” ad is his own wife. This isn’t an ad directly served by Facebook, but rather one from a third-party ad network that operates within the social network. Facebook does however use member photos in ads. You’re automatically opted-in by Facebook. That’s right, you have to actually go into your settings to turn this off. Your face may have already been used to advertise any number of things to the people on your friends-list. You can opt-out of being featured in ads by following these steps below:

Sign-in to your Facebook account and click Settings -> Privacy Settings -> News Feed and Wall -> Facebook Ads -> Appearance in Facebook Ads drop-down and click “No One.”

Online dating is one of the only verticals that seems to be working with Facebook advertising right now since you are able to filter out and target ads to users’ age, location, gender and whether they are married or single. In this case the advertiser didn’t mind advertising to married men since they do make up a good percentage of online dating site users anyways.

IAC/Match.com is buying into the niche groups subscription dating business with the acquisition of People Media from private equity firm American Capital Ltd. and various investors for $80 million in cash. The deal will add 27 dating sites with a combined 255,000 paying subcribers to the IAC (NSDQ: IACI) portfolio, including BlackPeopleMeet.com, LDSPlanet.com (Latter Day Saints dating), SingleParentMeet.com, SeniorPeopleMeet.com.

People Media earned $11.6 million in 2008 before depreciation and amortization, while Match.com reported $9.9 million in operating income before amortization. Fourteen-year-old Match.com had some 5.8 million unique users in May, compared with nearly 4 million for People Media’s combined sites, according to comScore Media Metrix. Both have a portal deals in place: Match.com powers MSN & AOL Personals online dating in the U.S and other countries; People Media has a similar deal with AOL Personals niche dating communities.

Match.com CEO Greg Blatt explains in the announcement that the combined company will continue to look for ways to play off the interest some people have in dating by demographics. Despite the disparities in the two businesses, Blatt expects to share product development and online marketing expertise and to market “a broader array of services” to the combined customer base. On area that isn’t mentioned: international expansion, which would seem likely given Match.com’s presence across in 24 countries and its overseas investment in European service Meetic.

The IAC has plenty of cash left: IAC Chairman and CEO Barry Diller has said he’s willing to spend on the right properties. The $80 million cash payment for People Media barely makes a dent in the nearly $2 billion on hand. That gives them more than enough reserves if they should decide to follow through on the Yahoo Personals acquisition that has been valued at about $500 million. Read the IAC formal press release: IAC’s Match.com to Acquire People Media from American Capital.

“We would love to have Yahoo Personals, and there are discussions about that,” Mr. Diller said on a conference call. IAC owns rival dating site Match.com. Yahoo management has thrown around the idea on whether to sell its dating site for several years. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has expressed a new desire to sell-off products and services that aren’t core to its business.

Gene Munster, analyst at Piper Jaffray, said Yahoo Personals could be worth about $500 million, or three to four times an estimated $150 million in annual revenue for the unit.

This consolidation in the dating vertical would be huge leaving only one other top tier competitor, eHarmony left in the space. Sites like American Singles, Perfectmatch.com, Mate1, and Lavalife would move up a notch as new acquisition prospects. I am surprised some of the portals and newspaper properties like McClatchy Company haven’t purchased their own Personals site since classifieds are such an integrated service to the papers. Most portal sites like Comcast.net, Earthlink.net & ATT.net all have personals channels where they partner with sites like Match.com and eHarmony.com.

I wonder how much overlap in subscriber base exists between Match.com and Yahoo Personals and whether they would merge the databases into one if Yahoo would then become Yahoo Personals powered by Match.com or be left as a stand alone brand. It would make sense to me that they merge the data and then allow the Yahoo base full access to additional Match members and vice versa. This could increase conversions on both properties and really allow Match.com to move further ahead of its major competition eHarmony. The acquisition could also be very beneficial for the Chemistry.com brand that Match has struggled to grow and giving it a wider audience on Yahoo Personals would allow for a premium match-making service option.

-Brian R.

eHarmony’s latest move with their creative seems to be targeting the main stream dating scene and not being so scientific in approach and more natural in their messaging. I just don’t get why they aren’t doing targeting when they can so easily. There are 12,211,940 people on Facebook that live in the US, over 18 and single. You can even drill down your target to different cities and education and have the option to pay on a CPC or CPM.

-Brian R.

Break ups are definitely no fun for both parties involved. One of the most important things for you to come the realization is being comfortable with yourself again and not having a dependency to just jump right back into another relationship until you have had enough alone time. You have to get your head cleared even if you are getting out of a relationship to be with another person. You should have enough respect for your last partner to settle your differences with them and let the wounds heal a bit before you just jump in head first to another one. People are always making this mistake and end up paying for it in the long run. I would recommend that you spend some time with your friends especially the ones that you might have pushed away when you were together with your last partner.

One of the other hard things for people after a break up is investing the time to learn about another person and getting back into the dating scene. I seriously recommend you spend a few weeks or months being single again and enjoying yourself, family and friends. Once you are comfortable with your status of being single you will see that you will have opportunities all around you to meet new people. You can try online dating if you are trying to meet someone outside of your immediate circle of friends or the bar scene if you want to keep it casual. Church is also a good place to meet singles if you are at all religious. If you are a guy then you might want to try some Salsa or Swing dance classes as there is usually about a 4-to-1 ratio of women to men. If you are a pet lover then there are tons of singles that walk their pets in dog parks and to dog friendly eateries. Pets can be an easy conversation ice breaker if you have any issues with approaching strangers. If you are into sports and outdoor activities then get involved in league play where there are big groups of players like softball, bowling or volleyball.

-Brian R.

This Matchmaker.com banner is classic. Look at the girl looking at her computer with the phone in her hand. Remember when their logo was a illustrated match:

This was actually a Match.com banner with the faux drop downs. The CTR on these was ridiculous and then all of the publisher sites banned them since they weren’t functional HTML:

This is a remake Kiss.com banner of the famous Romance Wizard black banner that had a really high click through rate and again didn’t work.

I think this one went to a Russian mail order bride site. The finger in the teeth again is classic 2000 dating site imagery.

Single? Lonely? Looking for a strange looking girl with John Lennon shades on? Tribute to the defunct DatingFaces.com website.

This is some real direct messaging. Find a Date? Click Here! That about sums it up. I really thought that DatingClub.com was going to make it back in the late 90′s. They signed a couple of bad business development deals and fell off the map. I think the Looksmart deal killed them. Remember that search engine/directory?

uDate.com decided to just make a statement and say “uDate…the best matchmaking site there is!” The first thing I did when I started at uDate was improve the banners but could never get them to change the home page away from that dreadful purple we had.

Find millions of eligible singles at Match.com. I like when they started using “Go” instead of “Click Here” on their buttons for the call to action. I always thought that was funny for some reason. Ready…Go!

If you have any other old classic dating banners laying around taking up 20k of space on your hard drives then send them my way so I can share. DIGG This Page

-Brian R.

Under an agreement filed the previous week, True.com will compensate customers who were incorrectly charged for services since 2003. Customers were incorrectly charged membership fees after canceling their accounts or after accidentally clicking on links, according to the federal lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Texas. The agreement still must be approved by U.S. District Judge David C. Godbey before the refund process can begin, said Jonathan Tycko, an attorney representing plaintiff Thomas Wong.

Thomas Wong filed the lawsuit in June 2007, claiming he was billed at least three times by True.com after trying to cancel his membership. He claimed the company violated state and federal laws.

According to the settlement, True.com must also revise its auto-subscription system to avoid future members from being accidentally charged. This is going to put a real hurt in their renewals and I am sure that we’ll be seeing less of this slutty advertising that they have been doing for the past 5 years.

Both parties will identify eligible former customers and refer them to a Web site for refunds. Those charged one month of membership would receive $35 and those charged for more than two months would receive $50, according to the court documents. Some members would also be given a free 45-day membership to the site.

Jonathan Tycko said at least 150,000 members are expected to get a cash or membership refund, but the number could grow once the agreement is finalized. Gary D. Eisenstat, an attorney representing True.com, said the company believed it had a strong defense against Wong’s allegations, but decided it was more economical to settle the lawsuit. What kind of defense do you have against people that cancel their memberships and still get billed. That is called billing fraud and the adult industry has been notorious for this type of behavior and with CC payment systems already putting a ton of pressure on the dating industry with bad debt and charge backs I am surprised that they even still have their merchant account.

Give True.com a try to see if you can cancel their membership and not be continuously billed each month. Ha.

There comes a time in every relationship where you start wondering if the person you are with is the one that you want to spend the rest of your life with. There are some very important questions that you need to ask yourself which include compatibility, children, money, addiction, sexual fulfillment, family and fidelity.

How compatible are you with each other really? Do you see eye to eye on most issues and share enough interests where you won’t be alienating each other with hobbies that don’t relate. You have to make sure you don’t have persistent problems that you can’t seem to fix and that continue to irritate you.

One big problem in a lot of relationships is the timing of when you want to have kids. I have had a bunch of friends that have had major break-ups over this issue. You need to make sure you are aligned with when you want to start having kids so you don’t have one person ready and the other in a different mind state.

Money causes us enough emotional stress as is and once you put a relationship in the middle it can get pretty crazy. One thing to realize in a relationship is that you are going to have to give and take and sometimes times may be rough financially but to stay focused and if you lose a job or don’t think you are making enough money to keep your partner and yourself satisfied that in the end money isn’t that important. Just make sure that you are not living above your means and that you save whenever you can for rainy days.

Everyone has vices of some sort whether it be coffee, smoking or drinking but the important thing here is to make sure that they don’t consume you and that you are balanced with any addictions you might have. I love caffeine and sweets but I try to minimize my intake just because I know it isn’t healthy for me. If you have a partner that is addicted to some sort of drug and you are not comfortable with their use then you should seriously consider getting out of that relationship because once you take it to the next level things will only escalate more. If you are a non-smoker and your partner is a smoker and you want them to quit then you should work this out with them immediately if it really is a big issue for you. If you don’t mind then don’t bring it up and make them feel lower then you because they make this lifestyle decision. It can and will cause dissent in your relationship.

Sex is a much larger issue then most couples realize. Are you always the one wanting more attention and sex? If that is the case then you need to make your partner aware that you aren’t receiving the amount of love and affection and see if it is just that they are currently too busy with work and life or if they have a much lower sexual drive then you. You would be surprised to see that women actually crave sex just as much as men do but might not make it so apparent. Be sure to communicate your feelings so you don’t always feel like you are getting turned down when you want intimacy.

Some couples ignore or overlook the importance of having positive relations with your family and vice versa. Family is the ones that’ll be there when you get into arguments or break ups. They usually have a large effect on your actions since they know your personality the best and what is good for you when your thoughts might be clouded emotionally. If you plan on having kids then they are a great outlet for help in many various ways.

Fidelity is the big relationship breaker unfortunately. When you get hitched you are making a commitment to that person to be loyal, truthful and faithful to them. If you ever have thoughts of infidelity then you should either confront those feelings with a friend before you make the bad decision to act on them. If something your mate has done is making you feel this way then you need to get that issue sorted out quickly before you throw away everything you have built in your relationship. Cheating never ends with a good story. It’s that plain and simple.

-Brian R.

The IAC said that the Match European operation contributed about 13% of their operating income before amortization. That equals about $11.9 million of their overall unadjusted 2008 operating income of $91.3 million.

Meetic, which operates 10 online dating services in 15 European countries and Latin America, offers both online and mobile-phone based programs and has been a fast mover in online dating across the UK and Europe. Match.com is essentially licensing the Match.com brand for its European operations to Meetic, and Meetic will optimize the two brands on a market by market basis.

This deal basically puts an end to any competition in the UK dating market since Meetic has already acquired the other big contender DatingDirect.com and Match.co.uk had uDate.com through an older acquisition. It’ll be interesting to see how much money eHarmony wastes in the UK market this year trying to get a food hold of their US-based brand established. It is almost like Classmates trying to enter into the UK market and compete against FriendsReunited.com. It just won’t work.

-Brian R.

People are always wondering what is an acceptable age gap for relationships. Many couples are worried about how their friends and family will perceive their relationship if the age gap between them is too wide. My wife is 10 years younger then me but women tend to mature much faster then men in most cases so I don’t feel the age difference much. I am in my late 30′s now and when I was in my 20′s I dated women my age or maybe a few years younger. Some of the more important things that you should be focused on instead of any age differences is to make sure your motives and goals for your relationship are inline with each other. I didn’t date my wife because she was much younger then me, we had a lot of common interests and connected on an emotional level because of past life experiences.

If you are in your teens still and dating a man or woman much older then you then you just need to make sure that you are not doing it for the wrong reasons. If you are a younger woman and feel that an older man is more mature and gives you more stability in your relationship then there is probably not any problem with this type of relationship. One issue I have seen with relationships where there is a wide age gap is that typically (not all of the time though) the older person is in the mode or mind set to settle down and the younger person wants to go out and still explore. I have seen some of these situations turn into jealous relationships where the older person will try to command all of the time spent together and suffocate their partner and this can be unhealthy if that is not what the other person is wanting in the relationship.

In the end if you are in love with your partner and not their age then you will have a healthy relationship together and shouldn’t worry about any social criticisms that might occur. Hey, if they can do it in Hollywood and make it work with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and with Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher which both have a 16 year age gap then your friends and family should accept your relationship too. If you have a unique situation that you would like to share or get advice on post your comments below.

-Brian R.

AshleyMadison.com Information

Site Name: AshleyMadison.com
Established: 2001
Member Size: Over 12.7 million Members
Description: Ashley Madison is an online dating service and social network service marketed primarily to people who are already in a relationship

Site Review

The name Ashley Madison is a little deceiving and not so upfront and obvious as other cheating sites like LonelyWivesAffairs.com. Ashley Madison has been really strategic in their advertising targeting traveling married business men on in-flight magazines and with billboards in Times Square saying “Life is short, have an affair.”

It is free to join Ashley Madison but in order to contact other members you’ll have to purchase contact tokens at $49 for 100 tokens. Each contact costs five credits or about $2.75. One of the obvious downfalls to the service is because of the nature of the business targeting cheating husbands and wives you don’t see many photos on profiles.

Under the AshleyMadison.com Affair Guarantee Program, if you don’t find someone within the initial 3 months after purchasing the “Affair Guarantee” Membership Package, we’ll refund you $249, being the amount you paid for participating in the Program. At the $249 price point this is obviously targeting business professionals that might be interested in extramarital affairs while traveling. Most of the other cheating dating sites seem to promote lonely and horny housewives where as Ashley Madison is very blunt about infidelity and sex on the side hookups.

There are several features that you can use on the site for free once you have signed up and are debating whether to upgrade and buy tokens. You can send pre-composed “Winks” to members for free. To send a wink, access the member’s profile details page and click “Send me a wink”.

Keep your personal pictures confidential with a Private Showcase key. If an admirer wants to see your photos you can send them a Key to view your Private Showcase and let them see more of you. To send a key, access the member’s profile details page and click “Send me a private key”. You may revoke keys at anytime by accessing the member’s profile detail page and clicking “Revoke the private key”.

The Search Tool is free which allows you to see who’s available online now. You can also block a member by accessing their Ad Profile details page, scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking “Block”. If you use credits to send a mail message to any member that becomes involuntarily suspended, they automatically refund those credits back to your account. That way, you can initiate contact with confidence.

AshleyMadison.com reports that the sign-up ratio between males and females are about 8.5 men for every 1.5 women. Another interesting statistic is that about one out of every 10 men actually purchases credits enabling them to contact female members, which bring the active ratio closer to 1:1.

If you are looking for Ashley Madison, AshleyMadison, www.ashleymadison.com, Ashely Madison, Asley Madison then you are probably looking for AshleyMadison.com.

Ashley Madison Address: 2300 Yonge Street, Suite 1906, P.O. Box 2313, Toronto, ON Canada M4P 1E4

Are you a second time a rounder with kids? Single parenting can be a difficult task when trying to get back into the dating scene while keeping your children safe and out of the picture until you are ready to introduce them to someone that you get serious with. We have found a great Baby Sitter matchmaking, SitterCity.com, which also helps you find a nanny, senior care, pet care, a house sitter or a tutor for your child. SitterCity.com also ensures your safety while helping you locate a babysitter with a four-step screening process to carefully guide you through the hiring process so that you can make the best decision to protect your loved ones.

Below is the four step process that SitterCity suggest you use for screening:

• Step One: Read online reviews and ratings on a caregiver’s profile.

• Step Two: Conduct in-person interviews with your favorite caregivers.

• Step Three: Check a caregiver’s references which are also listed on the caregiver profiles.

• Step Four: Run a background check. They are partnered with LexisNexis which is a leader in background checks.

To make the screening process even easier, Sittercity has tons of articles for care seekers, interview questions and tactics to ask the prospect sitter. The background checks are done with an easy-to-use tool that can get you a response in just minutes and allows you to preserve each others privacy with respect to personal information like Social Security numbers.

A standard background check includes an identity check that verifies the applicants legal name, current address, SSN, previouses addresses and any aliases. You can and should also conduct a national criminal search that checks records appearing in state and count criminal record databases, state sex offender registries and prison, parole and release files from state Department of Corrections.

It just takes a few minutes to sign-up to post a job notice to start your search for a babysitter. You will also have to confirm your own email address. You can sign-up for a 7-day free trial to the service and if you decide to upgrade to a full membership to continue using their services you will have access to post unlimited jobs across all care types, view full caregiver profiles and contact information, see caregivers’ background checks for free, run background checks on caregivers, view and contact caregivers’ references.

Below are the two full membership packages that SitterCity.com offers:
Annual Membership: $7.99 month, no signup fee
$95.88 one-time payment billed now and good for a year

Monthly Membership: $9.99 month + $39.99 signup fee
$39.99 one-time payment billed for the first month, then $9.99 billed each month thereafter

Let Sitter City find you a trusted babysitter so you can take some time our for yourself so that you can find new romance in your life. There are thousands of single parents out there that are looking for relationships with serious minded singles. What are you waiting for?

If you are looking for SitterCity, Sitter City or www.sittercity.com then visit the official site at: SitterCity.com. Don’t forget to use this special promo code for 10% off: SCSAVE10

-Brian R.

Writing an effective personal ad is a hard task for many people because you are writing about yourself which can seem a little vain but if you just apply a little effort, creativity and imagination you can create a story around all of your interests and personality traits. Below are a few sample profiles that we created based on fake people with specific interests and professions. Of course these were written by a professional copywriter but the most important thing to take from these profiles is the casual language and story telling structure. Keep your profile personal and talk about what you experienced in life, what you enjoy doing and what you are looking for in a partner.

Male, 36 – architect – likes eating out, sports and scary movies

I love my life. I love what I do. I love making the most out of opportunities and I want to share my life with a woman that feels the same way! I have a great sense of humor and need to be with a woman that can make me laugh; not only with jokes, but a few knee slappers definitely wouldn’t hurt your chances.

If you’re looking for a man that will try to win you over with bragging and possessions, you’re looking at the wrong profile. I’m an honest and modest guy who loves a night on the town at a fancy Italian restaurant, followed by a scary movie and a white cherry Slurpee!

I’m looking for a down-to-earth woman that is not afraid to try anything and everything, and is ready for whatever life throws at her. She must be prepared to laugh at everything – including herself and if she knows what a “first down” is, or what “off sides” means, she would be just what the doctor ordered.

Male, 27 – artist – likes kung fu, reading and music

Painting is my life… but don’t run away just yet! I make a good living and have a lot of free time to spend with my elusive better half.  I’m an easy-going, well mannered African American who, according to friends, is not too terribly rough on the eyes and does not need constant attention… I can certainly entertain myself eighty percent of the time but would enjoy a partner in crime for the other thirty percent. (Math was never my strong suite.)

When I’m not relaxing on my couch with a Douglas Noël Adams book, listening to my favorite Wu-tang album or painting a self proclaimed “masterpiece”, I’m usually eating sushi with close friends or renting a classic Bruce Lee film.

I’m a sucker for a woman that expresses herself through art, music or performance and if you can prepare a delicious, home-cooked feast (or at least know a good delivery joint), I’m yours forever! I’m looking for someone who doesn’t mind staying in more often than not but is not afraid to go out on occasion and let her hair down – someone who is well-read, optimistic, and has a good ear for music. Tell me about yourself…

Male, 30 – contractor – likes baseball, politics and children

I’m here with a positive attitude and I’m ready to meet new and interesting people with whom I can spend my free time. A long-term relationship could be nice, but I’m definitely looking for friendship for starters.

In the short span that I have walked the earth, I’ve done pretty much everything when it comes to employment and have won countless bets when people say they can guess a job I’ve never done at least once – currently, I the owner of my own contracting business where I build houses for a living and I love every minute of it. I have two wonderful boys, ages six and eleven; they are everything to me and anyone that I choose to be with must love children! Oh, and baseball, because we are obsessed with the New York Yankees and spend a great deal of our free time attending games during the season – and hopefully post season.  My family is very close and extremely important to me and I get along best with people who feel the same way.

The perfect woman, to me, would be someone that can have an informed discussion about local or national politics and is not afraid to disagree with me or play devil’s advocate from time to time, gets excited about great seats at Yankee Stadium, loves or even has children and wants to see where our relationship leads while letting it set its own pace… no rushing.

Male, 40 – software engineer – likes travelling, wine and fine art

I’ve been to the beautiful Savannah Desert of South Africa, the Indian Himalayans and the sandy beaches of Thailand. I’ve meditated in rain forests of Central America, inhaling the intoxicating scent of the flourishing vegetation just after the afternoon rainfall. I’ve sailed from San Diego to the Caribbean – but for all the paths I’ve traveled, ours have yet to cross.
Maybe I was facing the wrong direction in Germany, when I was cooking at a gourmet restaurant on the German Riviera and you strolled past? I looked for you in Spain, while I sat in a narrow alley café; dipping my churro into chocolate so thick it reminded me of a cup of pudding – bittersweet not just in taste, but in actual fact, because you weren’t there to share it with me… or were you? It’s not that my life isn’t full. Between family and friends, my work as a software engineer, my yoga classes, hiking and volunteering in my community, I’m happy in my life, especially giving service to others. Also, I consider myself a wine “connoisseur”, but what fun is great wine without you to share it with?

I see us hiking together, swimming, going to local art openings or museum, discovering out-of-the-way mom and pop cafes. We’ll probably be the last couple to leave, since we’re deep into a conversation not about people, but about ideas and philosophies. I’m loyal and sincere, and promise to treat you with courtesy and respect. If respect comes first, then true intimacy naturally follows. But consider yourself warned: I’m old-fashioned and will want to open doors for you! Since we’ll be discovering a whole new world together, I expect you’ll get your chance to open a door or two for me as well.

Male, 50 – Col. United States Army (ret.) – restoring classic cars, skydiving and water polo

After 20 exciting years serving my country as an Explosive Ordinance Disposal expert in the United States Army (I made things go boom), I’m ready to follow my dreams of restoring classic cars with a woman that will roll her sleeves up and jump right in there with me – I have a 1920’s Ford Model T that needs ‘our’ attention first, and our sense of adventure second. I’m a bit of a modern day Indiana Jones in that I rather enjoy discovering hidden waterfalls or undiscovered mountainous lakes and don’t shy away from things like jumping out of perfectly good airplanes for fun.

I like to stay fit by working out a few times a week and would expect my partner to join me more often than not. Although I am an avid water polo enthusiast and a goalie on my gym team, I don’t expect you to jump in the pool with us; although it most definitely would not hurt your chances!

I’m looking to meet a woman that can show me a few things along the way – life is a journey and that is far from over and I know there is much more out there to see, learn, live and love! Why don’t you take a leap with me? Of course that’s a metaphoric leap, not the literal sense… as in, “out of a perfectly good airplane.” But that would be excellent as well!

Now don’t even think about copying one of these examples. Sit down and write your own personal ad and let that personality shine.

-Brian R. (profile examples written by Chris Cairns – copywriter extraordinaire.)

Here is the latest Top 25 Hitwise internet dating rankings list from 12/08:

1. Singlesnet.com
2. PlentyofFish.com
3. Match.com
4. Yahoo Personals
5. Adam4Adam.com – gay club
6. DateHookup.com – free dating site
7. Manhunt.net – gay personals
8. eHarmony.com
9. BlackPeopleMeet.com (People Media site)
10. True.com
11. OnlineBootyCall.com
12. OKCupid.com
13. Mingle2.com (formerly Justsayhi.com free dating)
14. OutPersonals.com (Various, Inc / Friendfinder Network)
15. SeniorPeopleMeet.com (People Media site)
16. Cupid.com
17. Mate1.com
18. SingleParentMeet.com (People Media site)
19. Love and Seek (People Media site)
20. Ashley Madison (Married affairs, not really dating)
21. ChristianMingle.com (Sparks Network)
22. Plentyoffish.com Forums (duplicate)
23. BBPeopleMeet.com  (People Media site)
24. Chemistry.com (Match.com / IAC)
25. BlackSingles.com (Sparks Network)

If you add up all of the Sparks Network property sites they would easily be top 5 along with People Data and their sites on this list. They forgot Gay.com personals, Friendfinder.com and the rest of their sites and international sites like Meetic and DatetheUK.com that are much larger then half of the sites on this list above.

-Brian R.

It was interesting to read other people’s reaction to the site launch. Match.com like other large businesses is just fighting for market share. That is all it boils down to. They aren’t afraid of free dating models as they know the quality is the concern and that people will usually start off on a free site then migrate to a membership based service and pay for 3-4 months. They are just trying to position themselves to capture more of these types of referral leads. Sites like PlentyofFish.com, OKCupid.com and Mingle2.com (formerly Justsayhi.com) think that they are competing with the big boys when they should be doing partnerships with them. If you watch how the free sites in the adult industry work with the premium pay sites then it would all make sense instead of using Google AdSense as your revenue stream. Businesses that rely on Google are getting lower valuations because you are relying on the big boys buying advertising on Google’s content or site targeted network. I am an online media buyer and I usually don’t buy on Google’s content network due to fraud and low quality traffic from domain parkers.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this site doesn’t take off unless they are going to pour some serious marketing dollars into it. Dustin at DateHookup.com spent a lot of money and time to get his traffic and SEO going. I think he was like 3 years invested when he started hitting critical mass. I don’t think Match has that much patience for this project to go gold. My prediction for 2009 isn’t that the free dating sites will be fighting the pay sites but that we are going to see some acquisition activity on the free dating sites by the big boys. I would like to see Markus get acquired but I don’t think he has a good grasp of what his site is actually worth as he keeps comparing it to Facebook and other social network acquisitions. Trust me POF is far, far away from anything related to FB. Trust me, I am grossly addicted to Facebook and can’t even stand being on the POF homepage but I love what Markus has done for the industry.

If you want to check out Match.com’s new free dating service it is called DowntoEarth.com.

The site is visually appealing and I love that they are focused on the US and Canada to stay away from scammers in Africa and Eastern Europe. Hopefully they have some good IP address detection and proxy server blocking software built into the site.

-Brian R.

DatetheUK.com Information

Site Name: DatetheUK.com
Established: August, 2001
Member Size: 3+ Million Members – UK Based Dating
Description: DatetheUK is the UK’s online singles meeting place.
Special Features: Chat – Who’s Online – Talk Live – Video Chat – Send SMS – Voice Mail – Block Members – Singles Events – Dating Stories – Saved Searches – Rating – Singles Forums – Dating Blogs – Flirt History

DatetheUK.com Site Review:

DatetheUK is a leader in the UK online dating market and has been custom built to service UK singles with many cool features not found on other top and premium dating services. They have a very simple and quick sign-up process to get you online in just a few minutes searching their huge database of photo personals. You can continue to build your profile at your leisure adding photos from your mobile phone and filling our your personality questionaire. The site features live chat and online flirting, secure email services as well as a comprehensive free dating search and match process. Their postcode based singles search lets you find other people for dating within a few miles of you. Date the UK has been developed based on the feedback of a group of UK online dating services customers. Date the UK continues to listen to customer feedback in order to build the premier UK dating agency and add new features and functions to help you find dates in the UK.

Like with any other dating service, the more information you provide in your dating profile the more likely that someone will find you. Include your postcode (which will always be hidden to other members) to use the UK location search for sure otherwise you’ll be buried in their database. I found that their was a very high percentage of members that had posted one or more photos on the site. A photo personal increases your chances of response by up to 8-10 times. If you are feeling shy about putting up a picture then you can flag your photo only to appear for friends and then you chose who gets to see your pictures. This is a great feature that has been adopted from other popular social networking sites but that you don’t generally see on a dating site.

Searching singles databases can be tricky because most of them are top down searches and put photo members first and you end up thumbing through old and new profiles all the time. Date the UK allows your search results to be displayed with the most recent visitors to Date the UK first and you can also search to find people who are online dating now or members who have recently joined the site.

Summary of DatetheUK.com

Along with all of the great features that Date the UK has integrated into the site they have their own matching technology called “Search Plus” which allows you to find dates and rank them according to the profile criteria that matters to you. The online chat service feature is great and makes it easy for you to see who is online so you can engage in chat and setup a quick date for the evening.

You can use your mobile phone to pay for your dating membership by selecting ‘Pay by Mobile Phone’ in the ‘Make Payment’ page. You can also SMS chat with other members using your phone. Another cool feature is to search speed dating events in your area that are powered by SpeedDater.co.uk. Premium memberships are available in Gold and Platinum options with different features attached to each. You can pay by credit card, Direct Debit, Mobile Phone or by cheque or postal order. One other cool payment add-on feature I thought was really cool was that you can pay £3 more per month and allow a standard member email you with no cost to them or you can make your profile stand out more for the same cost and they will highlight your profile when you appear in search results and will make sure you’re at the top.

DatetheUK.com Subscription Plans:

Gold Membership Plans
1 Month = £19.99 – less than £0.67 a day
3 Months = £34.99, less than £0.39 a day
6 Months = £44.99, less than £0.25 a day
1 Year = £69.99, less than £0.2 a day

Platinum Membership Plans
1 Month = £24.99 – less than £0.84 a day
3 Months = £39.99, less than £0.45 a day
6 Months = £54.99, less than £0.31 a day – Love Guarantee
1 Year = £74.99, less than £0.21 a day

The Love Guarantee – Buy the 6 month platinum membership and they will give you a free Love Guarantee; if you are not in a happy relationship within 6 months they will extend your full membership for another 180 days! If at the end of the year, you still haven’t found what you are looking for, we’ll simply extend it again, for another 6 months! This is a cast-iron, rock solid guarantee. No questions will be asked; you won’t have to fill in any forms and there are no catches. All that they ask is that you tell them by email that you want it extended – any time during 6 months of your membership. They’ll do it there and then, no hassle.

Platinum Membership Benefits:

• Technical support within 12 HOURS.
• Send and receive email via our secure system. UNLIMITED.
• Chat for hours with other members. UNLIMITED.
• Upload your photo and check others out. UNLIMITED.
• Go back to previous emails at any time. Available for 1 year.

Gold Membership Benefits:

• Technical support within 24 HOURS.
• Send and receive email via our secure system 50 mails per day.
• Chat with other members. 50 chat sessions per day.
• Upload your photo and check others out. Maximum of 5 photos
• Go back to previous emails at any time. Available for 60 days.

DatetheUK.com is a registered and secured VeriSign site and McAfee Secured.

Company Information:

DatetheUK.com is a privately held company operated by EasyDate with their main offices in Edinburgh, UK. Find serious relationships, friends or hook-ups at DatetheUK today.

EasyDate (DTUK)
PO Box 23777
Edinburgh EH3 7XY
Tel: 44 (0) 870 626 0581
customer service email: admin@datetheuk.com.

If you are looking for datetheuk, date the uk or datingtheuk the UK online dating and relationships site you are most likely looking for is datetheuk.com.

ooVoo Webcam Meeting Software

I just came across this slick group video chat application called ooVoo.com. You can have webcam meetings with up to 6 people with high resolution video. I wonder if a dating service will integrate a feature or application like this for meeting rooms or virtual speed dating. There hasn’t been an application in online dating that has been revolutionary for years outside of sophisticated matching algorithms that usually send you bad matches 90% of the time.

ooVoo also allows you to record your video chats, send video messages, add video effects, call your non-ooVoo friends with their VOIP technology, send files, text chat and find friends. If I was a large online dating brand I would be knocking down their doors to acquire this business.

I have heard that students use the application for group study and since you can send files to people your homework and notes can be shared. When you make phone calls a neat record of your calls is listed, though Skype’s history tab in the contact window is a little more convenient. ooVoo lets you easily use your webcam to replace the placeholder avatar with your own face. Transferring files in ooVoo is easy and when you receive new files, they arrive with very clear and helpful dialog. You can create a Video Message in Oovoo as simple as hitting the red Record button. I am not sure how they intend on monetizing the application as it seems to still be in beta right now but they do have a webcam store with some good quality cam links so you can upgrade your video experience and quality. The application is available for both PC and Mac users which is also a huge plus for them.

I have partners in two different cities and we just might give this a shot since Skype didn’t turn out to be a easy enough solution for us all. My Mac came equipped with a webcam so I am all ready to go.

ooVoo Download

-Brian R.

FriendFinder Networks Inc, an owner of niche dating websites and publisher of the adult men’s magazine Penthouse, filed for a $460 million IPO. FriendFinder has plans to use the proceeds of its IPO primarily to pay off debt, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Penthouse Media Group, a Florida-based company bought FriendFinder, Inc in December of 2007 for $500 million in an effort to gain a leading position in the online adult market with FriendFinder’s AdultFriendFinder.com property. According to the regulatory filing, FriendFinder’s net income between Jan. 1 to Dec. 6, 2007, was $48.6 million, but down 20.5% from the full year in 2006. FriendFinder had seen a lot of new competition in the adult dating space with competitors like SexSearch.com and Fling.com coming on the scene and growing quickly. In July this year, Penthouse Media Group changed its name to FriendFinder Networks Inc. in getting ready for the initial public offering. This is an amazing story considering how many people over the years have said that Friendfinder.com would never be able to sell or be acquired because of its association with the adult industry. To top that off they are even going public. I will be quick to pick up some “FFN” stock as I know that sex sells and we have been an affiliate of AFF for years.

FriendFinder has close to 1 million paying subscribers to the adult sites, paying an average of $19 per month, and 78,000 paying members to its general sites, paying an average of $16 per month. Most of the revenue comes from the paid subscribers as dating sites typically don’t have outside advertising on them because of conversion dilution concerns. 44% of the FF revenue comes from their affiliate program which is where the risk factor comes in as the competitive programs have been really aggressive with payouts to try to take some of this market of adult webmasters.

Andrew Conru, former CEO of FriendFinder, Inc., Medley.com, Inc. and Various, Inc. will finally get his well deserved payday in the industry. He started in the dating industry in the mid 90′s with one if not the first dating site, Webpersonals.com. He sold the property in 1995 and started over again with Friendfinder.com. His dating empire grew to about 27 different niche dating and social networking properties under the company Various. Conru was always reinventing the industry and testing new verticals and had niche sites like BigChurch.com, SeniorFriendFinder.com and MillionaireMate.com. According to the SEC documents that FriendFinder filed, Andrew Conru might still be on the payroll as an Independent Contractor. It must be strange being a contractor for a business that you built and owned but very rewarding to watch it go public on the NYSE.

-Brian R.

There are tons of single Military personnel in all branches of the armed services including the Army, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard and Navy. Single enlisted men and women sometimes have a hard time dating since there call of duty usually keeps them busy traveling or defending our country.

Military admirers have become increasingly popular with support of our troops overseas. With this recent rise in popularity, niche military dating sites have been on the rise as well and civilian and military singles are connecting through email correspondence and chat on these sites.

Dating a person in the service can be a difficult but rewarding experience. I was raised as a military brat and my father was in the Army for 20+ years which allowed me to travel extensively in Europe and all across the US. I lived in small German towns and learned the native language and culture. I have a good friend who is in the Navy and has gotten the opportunity to travel all through the South Pacific. If you are a single civilian or a service personnel and interested in dating men and women that are admirers of the military then you should give one of these sites a try below:

Military Singles – Recommended.
Military Love Links
Military Friends
Uniform Dating – UK Military Dating
Military Singles Connection
MilitaryDate.com

-Brian R.

DUO.co.kr Information

Site Name:Duo.co.kr
Member Size: 23,000 members
Description: DUO.co.kr is an online dating and relationship site for Korean singles.

Site Review

I recently came across this Korean dating service Duo.co.kr from a post on Online Personals Watch and it looks like matchmaking is booming big time in South Korea even with the global economic crisis we are facing.

Young Korean singles are rushing into marriage and women without jobs are finding financial security in married life. Duo.co.kr has seen the number of visitors jump to 35,000 in the second week of November 2008 from 23,800 in the first week of September 2008. Another leading Korean matchmaker service, Sunoo, experienced a two-fold increase over the same period. Wedian reported a whopping eight-time surge over a month starting October 22, 2008. Many Korean parents have signed up for the services because they want to get their children married off while fathers are still in work.

South Korea was hit by the East Asian financial crisis in 1997-1998. I was visiting Korea with my mother at this time who is from Korea and the country was in turmoil and the same concerns were expressed by parents to find financial stability in their children’s lives. In South Korea, it is customary for guests to bring envelopes of cash to marriages to help finance the costly event. The names of the contributors are carefully recorded to return the favor on similar occasions. Koreans have held the tradition of matchmaking for centuries and is still widespread culturally througout Korea, especially in the upper class.

Wealth and social status of the families involved, the occupations of grooms and brides and even their physical appearances are weighed carefully by traditional matchmaking agencies before they arrange meetings with the families.

The DUO website was established in February, 1995 under the slogan of “Creating a new matchmaking culture” and invested in preparing marketing research for six months and building a database system for one and a half years.

In the initial stage of company’s existence, it was difficult for them to break through preconceived ideas of the general public because of negative images about matchmaker and marriage agencies. DUO has since earned the public trust by concentrating on their concept and distinction of a marriage information service.

DUO has held a top position in the Korean dating industry in size/scale, public confidence, and customer service and has a database size over 40,000 members. They conduct strict and thorough pre-screening based on 150 categorized data points with nationwide networking. They even have an extended member connection with the US through the LA Korean community.

DUO also has built several connecting services into their matchmaking portfolio with a service for people that have been married and divorced and are back in the dating scene and a site that helps you plan your wedding once you have found a partner.

DuoReMarry.com – for the second time around singles with relationship advice and tips.
DuoWed.com – Wedding Planning site once you have met your soulmate.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they extended their service to Japan which has a lot of cultural similarities. If you are an American that is interested in Korean men or women then you should learn how to read Korean before using the site as it is very ethno-centric for Korean users only.

How much does it cost to be a DUO member? Get ready for this one…They have a membership called “First Marriage” that costs you $1,500 for 8 meetings, profiles offered unlimited and if you have positive feedback then 2 bonus meetings.

Related Article on Korean Matchmaking:
Korean matchmaking tradition goes high-tech

Bar Scene Dating is Out.

Is love and romance tied to the economy? Many would think that a dating service membership may be considered a service that you buy into if you have discretionary income but Reuter’s reported recently in an article “Falling stock markets spur searches for love online” that a list of web sites have reported increased activity since the economic crisis hit in September, 2008. People are looking for a companion during these rough times and are saving money on the traditional dating scene of meeting in bars and have headed to the internet in search of their partners instead.

I guess it is nice to have a partner with you for comfort when times get a little tough. People are understanding this need and while they can’t control the factors of the economy they can take charge of their personal lives.

Match.com reported that it had experienced its largest membership increase in the last 7 years in the month of November. Perfectmatch.com said that it saw a 47% increase in the number of members in the 3 months to November, 2008 as compared to the previous 3 months. Is online dating an recession proof business? All of this data seems to be supporting that theory and it sort of makes sense that if people aren’t going out as much and using traditional methods of meeting people that they will most likely be spending more time on their computers looking for love online instead.

One of these dating companies should do an “Economic Love Stimulus” package promotion and discount their membership for a week or so. Thomas Enraght-Moony, CEO of Match.com says “During these trying times, people are looking for hope in their inbox.”

I know that the winter season generally makes people feel lonely if they don’t have a date to bring to all of the holiday parties and family gatherings. You also have the anxiety of the New Years celebration where you want to bring in the new year with someone special. Of course the greeting card companies coming knocking right after with Valentine’s Day. It is so hard to be just single and happy anymore and know we got the economy pressuring us too. Wow. Quit saving your hard earned money and go buy a dating membership or you can just cancel your Netflix account and quit sitting at home watching movies by yourself.

added: LA Times article: No recession for online dating sites. – 12/28/08

-Brian R.

How to End a Bad Date

Have you ever found yourself on a first date that is just horrible? You can’t seem to connect on any level or the conversation and energy in the room is making you very uncomfortable. You just want to end this date as soon as possible but don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. Is there a way to do it pleasantly? Usually not.

I have found that the best way to keep the others persons feelings intact and to not cause any scene is to be very honest and direct so that you aren’t misleading or making up any excuses to end the date.

Here are a few suggestions for weary daters:

• Let them know that they don’t seem to be the type of person that you are looking for.
• If you want to be more casual about it let them know that you think that you both could find someone who is more compatible with each other and how hard that has been for you.
• Tell them simply that you don’t think that this is going to work and that you don’t want to waste their time and they should appreciate your honesty.

What do you do after you have this uncomfortable conversation? It is usually good to just part ways and to leave separately. Call a cab or a friend to come pick you up if you both came together. It’ll just make the situation more comfortable faster by doing this.

If the date is going bad right from the start and you are catching negative vibes then I suggest you just cut things short and both of you will be able to walk away with minor bruises. I think that most daters can appreciate the honesty over being lead on or left confused or wondering.

I usually recommend keeping your fist dates very casual in public settings so that if anything goes wrong it makes for an easier exit. Coffee shop dates or luncheons are great first dates for this exact reason. You can slip out and be done with the nightmare before it scars you from the dating scene. Happy dating and remember to be direct and honest.

-Brian R.

Interracial dating is no longer uncommon what with a growing acceptance and respect for different cultures and ethnicities. In fact, more and more singles are broadening their horizons and looking towards interracial dating when it comes to finding someone special. To cater to such individuals, a number of interracial dating services have sprung up that offer singles the opportunity to create their profile and search for prospective matches. These websites not only provide a large choice but also make it possible to search for singles of a different race who may be located locally in your area. What’s more, you can even chat with other singles and get to know more about them by visiting specific chat rooms for interracial relationships. Here are a couple of interractial dating services that you can join and visit:

Interracial Romance – Recommended.
Black and White Singles
All Interracial Dating – powered by TangoWire
Interracial Dating Central

Let us know how your experience goes with these sites or how you have handled interracial dating issues.

-Brian R.

Ending the Relationship

A relationship can be successful when both individuals involved are happy and satisfied with the way things are going. If you are sure that you do not want to continue and want out, prepare yourself to break the news to your partner. This is not going to be easy for the other person no matter how convinced you are that it is entirely their fault.

• Meet in person: Do not discuss this over the phone / email or chat. Instead, meet them personally to talk about how you feel.
• Be calm: Make sure that you are calm and composed while talking about a break-up.
• Do not blame the other person entirely: Share the responsibility when you tell them why you feel that relationship is not working.

Also, make sure that your talk does not end abruptly or on a harsh note. It is always better to maintain friendships after breakups as you most likely will see each other again socially or might even get back together on different terms. Sometimes that timing is just not right and your priorities might not be in sync with your partner. No one is really to blame in this case. Being open and honest about the situation is a good thing and you’ll usually see it reciprocated.

If you have just broken up and ended a relationship with someone then take a little time to analyze what went wrong so that you don’t just go out on a rebound and get into the same mess again. This is probably one of the biggest relationship blunders: The Rebound. Everyone needs a little time for healing even if the relationship wasn’t a long or intense one. You might think that you are ready to be back in the relationship game but you need to also factor in or consider whether your ex has gotten over you so that you don’t hurt someone elses feelings because of your own selfessness.

-Brian R.

The new website named Compatible Partners will provide a dating service with “male seeking a male” or “female seeking a female” options. The site will be launched by March 31st. The settlement was the result of a discrimination complaint filed by Eric McKinley against eHarmony in 2005, which will be dismissed under the settlement agreement. The New Jersey complaint is not the only legal action to be brought against eHarmony for failing to provide a same-sex option.

In March, lawyers in California brought a lawsuit against the company on behalf of San Francisco resident Linda Carlson, who was denied access to eHarmony because she is gay. eHarmony was founded by evangelical Christian Dr. Neil Clark Warren and had ties with the influential religious conservative group Focus on the Family. Since eHarmony has taken on the $110 million investment from two Silicon Valley venture capital firms, Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures, there marketing has become a little more main stream and hopefully this law suit will open up the companies views on servicing the gay and religious singles communities.

eHarmony.com has grown to a top dating service with it’s focus on TV commercial spots and partnerships with large portals like AOL Personals and Comcast.net Dating. Have you had a positive or negative experience with eHarmony? Post your comments below.

Sign-up to be notified when the site goes live: Compatible Partners

-Brian R.

I Love Me

Satisfaction in a relationship can take several forms – physical, emotional and mental. As a relationship matures, companionship becomes important as well. Whether it is a husband-wife relationship or that of a boyfriend-girlfriend, for it to be successful, both partners must be receptive to each others’ needs and desires. If you want to keep your partner satisfied, start by being there for him/her while understanding just when they might need some personal space as well. Share your partner’s interests and be there to listen when he/she needs a good listener. Surprise your partner once in a while by sending a bouquet of fresh roses, planning a weekend away or simply cooking a nice meal.

We can all get caught up in the rat race sometimes and when you get home from work it is easy to tune out and just shut down. Try to leave your work problems at work so you can come home with an open mind. If you or your spouse are at home taking care of the children then keep in mind that as much as you just want to just pass them off to them when they get home that they need a little time to adjust back to home life and this could be the cause of unneeded stress at home. If you have family that lives close by and that can watch your children then be sure to reach out to them to give your and your loved one a little personal space. Hire a sitter if they are old enough and plan out date nights. Everyone needs a break from the daily routines that we are engulfed in. Make sure you make these plans and cherish that time spend alone together.

We all have different expectations with our physical needs. Make sure that you and your partner talk about these needs so you have a mutual understanding. It is always nice to have a balance with your partners sexual needs so that you or your partner doesn’t become frustrated. You don’t necessarily want to plan out and calendar your ‘love-making’ but you should have a general understanding of whether you are not spending enough intimate time with each other.

-Brian R.

• Communicate With Each Other Daily: Call, email or voice chat.
• Keep Him / Her Informed: Talk to your partner about your successes and failures, no matter how insignificant they may be.
• Meet as Often as Possible: Spend quality time with one another whenever possible.
• Surprise One Another: Cards, flowers, gifts and love letters can help you to keep the romance alive and make every day special.
• Get a webcam so you can chat with each other online with video. It’s always nice to see someone’s face when you miss them.
• Make sure you schedule out the dates that you are expecting to do visits with each other. This helps reduce anxiety and worry about whether either of you are making any effort to see one another.

Good luck with you long distance relationship and hopefully it is only for a short term and that one of you will make the commitment to move closer so that you can remove the distance gap that might be creating any pressure on the relationship. If your partner is in the military and that is what is causing the long-distance relationship then make sure you keep yourself busy by surrounding yourself with other people that might be in the same situation as yourself. Don’t go out hitting the bars thinking that your partner might be doing the same thing. Stay focused on your relationship and be patient with the prospect of when they will be returning home.

-Brian R.

Netclub’s parent company at the time, Trader Classified Media, acquired Webseduction.com back in 2003 giving it a nice foothold in the French Canadian market. Netclub was actually started back in 1997 as a free dating service in France and the service is still 100% free for women and men have to pay 5.00 € for a Gold VIP monthly membership. They have over 4 million personal ads on their site and continue to grow in both Canada and France and have added English to their site. I joined and the sign-up form hadn’t been internationalized for US yet and the date of birth fields were still in European format and the “Area” and “State” fields were backwards. It also didn’t have Seattle listed as a city for Washington but instead “King” for the county that I live in. Either way I sorted through the form and the process was lightening quick. It didn’t even have my verify my email address or ask any other profile questions. I didn’t see much activity or profiles that were in the US but if you are looking for French Canadians or French speaking people in general the database was huge.

Match.com operates 35 country sites in 15 different languages. Netclub.com is probably a top 3 French dating site depending on which website measurement tool you look at and while they are not 100% free the cost of entry is low and the quality seems to still be there. According to JupiterResearch, European online dating is expected to grow 30% this next year.

I have heard rumors that Match.com is looking to launch a free dating service in the US market. I wonder if they will use the same model as Netclub since it seems to be working well for them. The only issue they will encounter is seeding the database in an already busy marketplace for free dating. This might mean acquiring a site like PlentyofFish, Justsayhi, or DateHookup.

-Brian R.

DateHookup.com Information

Site Name: DateHookup.com
Member Size: 877,00 Members
Description: DateHookup is a free dating site for singles.

Site Review

There are plenty of free dating services online now with the introduction of social networks a few years back and the low barrier of entrance on building web dating application software. Most of the free dating services are run as “Mom & Pop” shop type sites and typically you’ll see the software developer also doing the graphics for the site as well as answering all of the customer service inquiries.

DateHookup.com is owned and operated by an acquaintance of mine in the industry, Dustin W. He runs the website out of Sacramento, CA and manages a few other properties outside of online dating as well. It is pretty impressive that he has built this dating community and software with very limited resources and it has become a top 5,000 site that reaches over 877,000 U.S. monthly people according to Quantcast.com. The site is popular among a 35-49, slightly male slanted following. I have seen a few reviews where people have posted negative comments about his service saying that it was ridden with spammers and that he ignored customer service emails, etc. Well, this is one of the pitfalls of using a free dating service online. They are usually a 1-2 person operation so you can’t really blame them for anything when they are working around the clock to keep the spam out and trust me the Nigerian spammers are aggressive and dealing with people logging in from proxy’s around the world and copying profiles from other dating site can get tedious to police especially when they know your service is free to use for sending users messages. The best bet is to keep your guard up when getting contacted by someone on a free dating service and to make sure you never fall for the send me gifts and money scams ever. Ask for multiple photos of the person to ensure they are who they say they are. You can even ask them to take a picture with a sign that has your name on it if you are at all suspicious of a scammer.

DateHookup.com has a great dating forum community that is pretty active but you’ll need to sift your way through some of the garbage topics that people talk about. It can get a little smutty at times but aren’t all bulletin boards like that. Dustin usually has about 8,000 – 10,000 singles online at any given time and the site is very easy to use and search for singles in your area by proximity and age.

Like all free dating sites, he makes money on his advertising with Google AdSense and with other premium dating services. He does really well with the search engines for organic results (non-paid) and also buys keyword advertising on sites like Google, Yahoo and MSN. This helps keep his community very active so you can always be assured that new members are joining daily.

Date Hookup is a great place to start your online dating adventure and explore how dating sites work and how to maximize your experience on them. I see that many people use free dating services as a stepping stone before they join and pay for the premium dating sites like: Match.com, Perfectmatch.com, eHarmony and Lavalife.

If you are looking for other recommended free dating services then give these a try as well: Meeta.com, PlentyofFish.com, OKCupid.com, NetClub.com and Webdate.com.

Looking for DateHookup, www.datehookup.com, date hookup, date hook up or datehookup.com? Visit DateHookup.com official website.

Many singles seek their perfect match on online dating websites and will even take the time to fill out extensive questionnaires and personality tests in their quest to meet that someone special. While there are conflicting views about whether these kinds of tests really work or not, most individuals do not mind taking them.

The basic concept behind these personality tests is to show how compatible a person may be with another, based on their individual rankings. While there are chances that you will be able to find people with whom you interests match, there is also the possibility that these matches may not be perfect. Hence, it is recommended to keep your eyes open for all possible matches – you never know when cupid may strike.

Most of the sites that have personality matching tests will also allow you to search their database by age and demographic location in case you are not getting a huge number of matches based off of the personality quiz results.

Some reputable online dating and relationship services that use personality and compatibility tests as part of their offering are: Perfectmatch.com, Chemistry.com, eHarmony.com and OKCupid.com.

Take the time to fill out the personality quiz questions correctly so that you are properly matched to people that are compatible with you and not randomly matched. If you do not have the time to fill out the entire questionnaires that some of the sites ask then you can usually skip through the process but you’ll need to return at a later time to finish it so that you can properly use their site and system.

There has been great success in using these sites with thousands of marriage success stories. If you are looking for a serious relationship then you should create a profile on one of the above trusted sites. Share your success stories with us below in the comments area.

-Brian R.

A lot of married couples and those dating each other find it hard to keep the fire alive in their relationship. Here are some simple tips for keeping your relationship fresh:

• Be unpredictable from time to time – Make a hotel reservation and ask your spouse to join you for a overnight stay and romantic dinner.
• If you are facing a difficult phase in your relationship, remind yourself and your spouse what brought you two together in the first place.
• Surprise your girlfriend by sending her a beautiful bouquet of red roses and not just for holiday’s like Valentine’s Day or her birthday.
• Go for a romantic walk in a local park, beach or lake if you live close to one.
• Take up common hobbies & indulge in adventure activities together such as water skiing, rock climbing or sky diving.
• Whisk him/her away on a cozy picnic or a short holiday trip.
• Ask them where their dream vacation would be, get the time off from work and plan the vacation and include them in the details of the trip.
• Go on a romantic cruise. There are many cruise liner companies that specialize in various types of cruises for couples. This can be a nice trip to spend one on one time with each other in a nice relaxing environment.

If you have any other fun ideas that you have done that really surprised your loved one and helped put the fire back in your romance then post them here.

Most single working professionals are finding it hard to take out quality time to look for the right person to go out with. In such a scenario, the two most common options for finding a prospective date include trying to meet someone in a bar or nightclub or joining an online dating service.

Though there are conflicting views about which is better, what applies to both these dating options is the need to take precautions in order to maintain safety. Most online dating websites allow you to keep your personal details private and maintain anonymity. On the other hand, while meeting in a bar, you must be careful about who you speak to and interact with.

I met my wife at a concert in a nightclub venue so I got lucky but a lot of my friends have met people online through social network websites and dating sites like Match.com, Yahoo Personals and eHarmony. Online dating has become very mainstream and you will often hear people sitting at a table next to you at lunch talking about how they went on a date with someone that they met online. Match and eHarmony have been pretty instrumental in bringing it to a mature mainstream audience with television commercials. Many talk shows have had segments with online dating sites like Perfectmatch which was featured on Dr. Phil. These sites usually have a dating and relationship coach like Dr. Pepper Schwartz for Perfectmatch and Dr. Helen Fisher for Chemistry.com. They have helped create the personality compatibility tests that you see in the sign-up process.

People that are very social will probably continue to frequent the bar scene but you’ll be surprised how many of those people are also dating online. Many singles in their early 20′s don’t think that they need to use an online dating service and that there is just a bunch of older people on them. The reverse is true, the technologies on online dating sites have been setup to allow people full control over their preferences including age, sexual preference, smokers, drinkers, ethnicity, location, etc.

At the end of the day, it is your personal choice that really matters so go out and date and find that special someone.

Meetic.com Information

Site Name: Meetic.com
Established: 2001
Member Size: 13.9 Million Registered Members
Description: International dating service with personality matching and free search technology.
Special Features: SMS Photo Uploads – Email Message Center – Video Intro – 2-Way Matching – MeeticMessenger – Video Call – Online Help – Local Search – Members Online

Meetic Website Review:

The international dating website Meetic.com has been around since 2001 and offers those singles who are looking for love an opportunity to search for other singles in an attempt to find their ideal match. Meetic comes across as well laid out and offer singles the opportunity to create their personal profiles by signing up and becoming a member of the Meetic singles community. In order to sign up, you need to fill out details such as your username, password, email address, your age bracket, birthday as well as residing country. Once you are a member, you can log on to the MeeticMessenger and chat with other singles in real time. Another additional feature is the ability to make video calls so that you can see who you are chatting with through your webcam.

Summary Of Meetic:

Meetic was orginally a European based dating site but their membership has grown worldwide through acquisitions and by launching other foreign language sites in Spanish, French, Italian and German. You can also access these communities by their country domains: Meetic.fr, Meetic.es, Meetic.it, Meetic.se, Meetic.dk and Neu.de. The site is relatively easy to navigate around and search for singles in your area or around the world. The sign-up process is fast and painless with a bunch of general drop down questions and some questions on your physical description, your personality and lifestyle activities and habits. You can also fill out a questionnaire about what you are seeking in your potential mate so their system can match you up with single prospect members.

Meetic’s Membership Plans:

6-month Meetic-Pass: $ 19.99/month (Billed in one payment of $119.94) – 50% off
3-month Meetic-Pass: $ 26.99/month (Billed in one payment of $80.97) – 33% off
1-month Meetic-Pass: $ 39.99/month (Billed in one payment of $39.99)

Meetic.com is a registered Verisign site with secure credit card forms and SSL encryption with verified by Visa and offers Paypal as a payment option.

Company Information:

Meetic.com offers its services in 9 languages in 13 European countries, as well as in 3 other geographical regions. The company has approximately 13.9 million registered profiles. Meetic was founded by Marc Simoncini in 2001. The company is based in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
It is a public company traded in the PAR exchange under the ticker: MEET.

Company Address:
Meetic
41 rue Paul Bert
Boulogne, 92100
France
Phone: 33 1 44 71 94 94
Corporate site: www.meetic-corp.com

updated 10/22/08.

Write your own personal review of Meetic.com or comment on their service below.

Gay couples around the globe have been fighting for equal civil rights under law as domestic partners and for the legalization of gay marriages. This has been a hotly contested topic in many states and elections and was also a question to both Obama and McCain to take a position on the topic. Both have taken the position of opposing outright marriage but supporting civil unions. Religious organizations and Republican politicians have usually taken a strong stance against gay marriages. Obama said he believes that same-sex couples should have the rights and privileges as married couples, but that the relationship should be called a civil union rather than a marriage.

In the US, same sex marriages were not considered legal for a long time. However, recently things have changed. Thanks to a court ruling, same-sex couples now have a constitutional right to marry. This news has been taken as a positive step towards giving equal rights to individuals in the US. Currently, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California are the states that have legalized gay marriages.

On May 17, 2004 Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize gay marriages. The State of Massachusetts has also become so progressive on the topic that it issues licenses to gay couples from Rhode Island and New Mexico since neither state explicitly prohibits same-sex marriage.

In a 4-3 decision, Connecticut’s Supreme Court overturned the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

New Jersey is the third U.S. state to offer same-sex civil unions behind Vermont and Connecticut. The new same-sex civil unions law, which went into affect on February 19, 2007, granted gay and lesbian couples the same rights as marriage. Although same-sex unions in New Jersey are classified as civil unions, couples are granted the same rights as married heterosexual couples.

On May 15th, 2008, California’s Supreme Court ruled that banning same-sex marriage in the state was discriminatory. In a 4-3 decision, the justices ruled that people have a fundamental ‘right to marry’ the person of their choice and that gender restrictions violated the California’s state Constitution equal protection guarantee.

On May 29, 2008, New York issued a directive that only recognizes gay marriages from couples legally married outside of the state.

No matter where you stance is on the topic of gay relationships you should agree that gay couples should have all of the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. It is not unusual for companies to have programs with health care benefits to the partners of heterosexual employees. Some are now extending them to the partners of their homosexual employees as well. This is definitely a growing indicator of the growing social acceptance of homosexual relationships being equivalent to heterosexual marriages.

In August of 2000, the automakers Daimler-Chrysler, Ford Motor Company and General Motors announced that they would extend health care benefits to gay couples.

Other large companies which now provide domestic-partner benefits are: AT&T, American Express, American Airlines, Amoco, Avon, Barnes & Noble, Boeing, Citigroup, Chevron Oil, Clorox, Coca-Cola, Coors Brewing, Disney, Eastman Kodak, Gap, General Mills, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Levi Strauss, Mattel, Microsoft, Nike, Nynex, Pacific Telesis, Pillsbury, Proctor and Gamble, Quark, Reebok, Shell, Starbucks Coffee, Sun Microsystems, Time Warner, United Airlines, US Airways, US West, and Xerox.

What do you think about the topic of gay marriage and whether gay couples should be allowed domestic partner benefits?

An important thing to keep in mind if you and your mate decide on taking some time apart from each other is not to be depressed about the situation but to take the time to reflect on the relationship. You can keep your mind busy by reconnecting with your friends that you might not have been spending much time with as you were engulfed in your relationship. Relationships can be confusing at times and sometimes as much as you try to make them work they just don’t or won’t.

If you were the one wanting the space make sure you communicate the issues that are bothering you about your mate and if you are the one that was “suffocating” the relationship then try to take a step back and allow your partner to clear their head. Don’t go the complete opposite direction but just let your partner know that you are there for them when they are ready to re-engage. It will be important to keep the communication lines open and to not alienate each other and when the time is right you’ll both be in a much happier and healthier place.

-Brian

If you are not a U.S. citizen and would like to marry an American Citizen, your fiancé (an American Citizen) must file an application for the K-1 Visa at the American Consulate on your behalf. A number of other documents must be filed along with the Application form including a valid passport, copies of birth certificate, divorce decrees, if any, police verification certificates, reports of medical examinations, photographs as well as evidence that the fiancé will support you, etc. On approval of the visa, you must get married to your fiancé within 90 days. For more information on getting a fiancé visa, visit the official U.S. Consulate website.

Here are some of the services where you’ll be charged a fee:

• Filing an Alien Fiancé Petition, Form I-129F
• Nonimmigrant Visa application processing fee. (non-refundable): $131.00
• Medical examination
• Fingerprinting fees, if it is required. $85.00
• Other costs may include translation and photocopying charges, getting the documents required for the visa application (such as passport, police certificates, birth certificates, etc.). Costs vary from country to country and case to case.
• Filing Form I-485 Application to Register Permanent Residence or to Adjust Status

It doesn’t matter what country in which your fiancee lives in, the K-1 FIANCEE VISA is the only proper visa and method for them to use to enter the U.S. for the purpose of marriage. If he/she enters the U.S. on another type of visa or visa waiver you can still get legally married but they will then need to depart the U.S., obtain a K-3 spousal visa at the U.S. Consulate in her country of residence and then re-enter the U.S. on the K-3 visa in order to remain in the U.S. permanently as your spouse. Our suggestion to you is to not try to do this without the help of an attorney that specializes in Fiancee Visas. We highly recommend the services of HOLMES & LOLLY at www.fianceevisas.com. They have processed over a thousand applications a year since 1991.

Be ready for a long detail oriented process if you are determined to get married to a non-US citizen. The approximate processing time for a K-1 Fiance Visa is about 3-6 months from the initial filing to fiance’s arrival. After you file your petition, you have to wait for the USCIS to approve it and send it to the State Department, who performs a background check and then forwards it to the U.S. Embassy. When the embassy receives the file from the state department they then send a packet to the applicant instructing them to what documents they’ll need prior to the visa interview. Once you collect all of the needed documents, you’ll need to schedule an interview with the embassy in the Immigration section of the embassy. After a consular officer has reviewed the case, your Fiance will be interviewed.

Your Fiance will be required to sign a statement regarding his or her legal capacity to marry and intention to marry. Provided everything is in order at the time of the interview, your Fiance will receive a visa the same day. All supporting documentation including the K petition, birth certificate, Nonimmigrant Visa Application, and medical exam will be placed in an envelope and given to the applicant for presentation to USCIS at the port of entry. Good luck getting through the process. It is a huge time and emotional investment but will be well worth it once you can get your fiancee over and living with you.

If you have been through this process and have other advice, post it below.

Here are the top 3 sites ranked by Hitwise in the U.K. – 8/08
1. PlentyofFish.com
2. DatingDirect.co.uk
3. Gaydar.co.uk

Here are the top Canadian sites ranked by Canada Comscore – 7/08
1. PlentyofFish.com
2. Lavalife.com
3. eHarmony.com

Hitwise US also reported the Top 10 Industry Search Terms – August, 2008

The terms listed below are ranked by volume of searches that successfully drove traffic to websites in the Hitwise Lifestyle – Dating category for the 4 weeks ending August 30, 2008, based on US Internet usage.

Rank / Search Term / Volume
1. match.com 4.44%
2. plentyoffish 3.88%
3. singlesnet.com 3.05%
4. plenty of fish 2.71%
5. singlesnet 2.58%
6. plentyoffish.com 2.17%
7. adam4adam 1.67%
8. eharmony 1.16%
9. yahoo personals 1.10%
10. datehookup 0.97%
Source – Hitwise

Ever felt jittery about going on your first date? Considering the fact that this can be the beginning of a wonderful relationship, it makes sense to spend some time to consider where best to go on your special first date. Plan an evening that gives you both the opportunity to know each other better in a comfortable & relaxed atmosphere. Impress your date with something different then a typical movie and dinner date. Here are a few great date ideas that we came up with that might or might not work depending on where you live and what entertainment you have access to.

1. Bingo – If you have a local bingo hall in your area at a church, community center or casino then Bingo is a pretty good time as it is a pretty social event where you can people watch, win money and prizes and interact with each other.

2. Ferry Ride – For those of you that live on a coast or next to a large body of water it is pretty fun to ride the ferry to a neighboring island just to explore your surroundings. This makes for good one on one conversation time with a scenic backdrop.

3. Amusement Park – If you are a young a heart person and want to be in an environment filled with action and activity where you can choose rides from bumber cars to scary roller coasters to see if your date has a stomach for extreme activities or not.

4. Bowling – This is definitely an oldie but goody activity where you can rent a lane, wear shoes that have been worn by 100′s of people and show off your skills or lack of them and embarrass yourself in public.

5. Bike Ride – This is a nice low impact sport. Many people have their own bikes. You can pick a meeting spot to start your ride like a lake or park that you can meander through. Don’t be a show off and just pace your ride so it is enjoyable and not competitive.

6. Volunteering – This is an activity that more people should be putting aside time to do. Volunteer yourself at a homeless or youth shelter with your date and see how they interact with strangers and youth. It is a good exercise to see their real personality.

7. Tour a local winery – This one is easy and highly popular for the socialite types. Who doesn’t enjoy a nice glass of wine. The spirits will help you stay calm and might even open you up a little to the uncomfortableness of the first date. Just be sure to not over drink and make a spectacle of yourself.

8. Horseback ride – If you don’t live by a body of water then there is probably plenty of options for horseback riding on marked trails. I am a big fan of this

9. Hot Air Balloon ride – I have done this before and it was pretty scary for me but can be one of those bonding moments as you hug each other in fear.

10. Aquarium or Zoo visit – Everybody loves some kind of animals and fish are fun to watch swim about aimlessly. Both of these activities are interactive and easy conversation starters.

11. Farmers Market visit – Check out the great deals from your local farmers and merchants. If you don’t have a Farmers Market then visit a flea market or swap meet.

12. Comedy Improv show – This is an easy date idea. Stay away from the front row seats if you don’t want to be made fun of. They can usually pick out couples that are on a first date too.

13. Dinner Theater show – A little more exciting then your typical dinner. Dinner theater is a great entertainment dining experience.

14. Sporting Event – Are you both sport fanatics? Try a baseball, football or hockey match for your local professional team, college or high school.

Go ahead, get out and enjoy yourselves! Got another great first date idea? Post if below.

Jealousy has happened to the best of us at one point in our lives. Hopefully you learn the lesson and didn’t let it become a personality trait that you carried over to your next relationship or infatuation. There is nothing more harmful to a friendship or relationship than a jealous person. Jealously brings out some dark and unattractive characteristics in people. You might think that you are just being concerned or communicating to your lover but there is a limitation to how much communication and understanding why you are curious about where your lover is and what time they are coming home and who they are hanging out with.

Here are a few good tips to keep you out of the “Jealousy Trap”:

• Give each other space to have friends of the same sex or opposite.
• Have trust even if you have been in relationships where your lover cheated on you. Don’t blame someone else’s relationship ignorance on your current lover.
• DO NOT ever go through his/her personal belongings including receipts, phone logs, text messages, emails, etc. This is a relationship killer. If you don’t have the trust in your mate then you probably shouldn’t even be in the relationship in the first place.
• Don’t send numerous text messages or phone calls if your lover isn’t picking up or answering calls. They could be busy or out of range. This just makes you look crazy and the person on the receiving end of this type of activity will usually not find this attractive.
• If you are in a new relationship and super excited about it, be sure to keep a level head so that you don’t crowd the person out and look too pushy to get settled down. Enjoy yourself and take the time to learn more about each other over time and not in one month.

Being suspicious about your lover will only lead to the end of that relationship. Nobody likes to have someone snooping around in their personal business. If you have a strong suspicion that something is going then be sure to communicate the issue without being confrontational just in case there is a misunderstanding and no truth in it. If you catch your lover in a blatant lie then just bring it to light and let them know that you don’t want them to ever lie again to you. Let it go if it is not too big and if it happens again then you can just break the relationship. I often see couples that get caught up in the ‘tit for tat’ battles and they start dwelling on old issues over and over again just to gain an edge in the relationship. This isn’t healthy and if you are always looking to score points in these kind of battles then you are probably not in a good place with yourself and your relationship.

Arguments and small fights are common but just try to make sure it doesn’t turn into a blame game battle. One of the most important traits I have learned that are important for females is that must have their own set of friends outside of the relationship so that you aren’t their lover and best friend but that they still have a support group of friends to talk to in helping them resolve issues they might have.

Good luck and don’t be a “Bugaboo” boyfriend or girlfriend. It is an ugly thing.

-Brian R.

eHarmony.com Information

Site Name: eHarmony.com
Established: December, 1998
Member Size: 4 Million + Active Members
Description: eHarmony is a community of serious singles looking for real and meaningful long-term relationships. Take the Relationship Questionnaire and receive your free, in-depth Personality Profile (a $40 value).
Special Features: 29 Dimension of Compatibility Test – Safe, Anonymous Communications – eHarmony Advice – eHarmony Labs – Flexible Matching

eHarmony.com Site Review:

At eHarmony, new members must complete a pretty lengthy questionnaire that helps determines key characteristics, values, beliefs, emotional health & skills. They use a sophisticated matching algorithm that matches you to other single members based off of these answers to help you find compatible and long lasting relationships. This is a scientific approach to online dating and relationships but has proven to be effective and is gaining popularity while large traditionally sites like Match.com and Yahoo Personals have also introduced their own personality/compatibility tests to their services. eHarmony is a site and service for the serious minded singles that are looking for a quality relationship and not looking for numbers. The approach is more personalized and specific to your personal preferences and personality traits.

FREE to Review Your Matches. You can review the profiles of your compatible matches for free. And when you are ready to start communicating with them, just select one of eHarmony’s membership plans (1-month, 3-month, 6-month, or 1 year). Both parties are notified simultaneously when a match is made. Both must be paid subscribers in order to communicate. Either side may initiate communication.

eHarmony recently launched an online ID verification service for eHarmony members for an additional fee. If you subscribe to this service, the verification will be posted with your profile. The service, which is a partnership with RelyID, a leading provider of age and identity verification services, gives eHarmony members the opportunity to easily validate profile details which are viewed by other potential matches. This service helps members feel more confident and secure in communicating with other members, and help decrease the odds of an unpleasant surprise when they meet for the first time.

Summary of eHarmony.com

Founded in 2000 by Dr. Neil Clark Warren, eHarmony’s Compatibility Matching System helps you find compatible long-term relationships. On average, eHarmony reports that around 236 members get married every day in the United States as a result of being matched on eHarmony. (Harris Interactive Study, 2007). eHarmony is available in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

Many people ask the question on how eHarmony matches are chosen? The eHarmony compatibility matching process occurs in several stages. The use the Match Settings that you selected with regard to geography, race, religion, smoking, drinking, etc. to create a group of candidates. Then, based on your answers from the relationship questionaire they determine which people in their database you might be compatible with for a long term relationship. Finally, their system compares you individually with each potential match using their 29 key dimensions of compatibility to rank which dimensions are most important match for each candidate. Sound complicated yet? Well, leave it up to the black box to help you get matched up to someone that you are most likely to be compatible with and then you can sort through those matches that are emailed to you by physical attraction features and reading their profiles. eHarmony even has a feature called Flexible Matching where they temporarily relax the Match selection criteria which you indicate are least important to you.

Many other areas that people mess up when creating their Match settings is that they will select not to be matched with a drinker. That will disallow all drinkers including a person who has a glass of wine at a special event or party will not be available to you. This effectively eliminates about 85% of your potential matches. Once you have completed the compatibility test and are signed up on eHarmony and wish to access and change your Match Settings you can edit it your preferences by:

1. First Logon to your eHarmony account
2. Click “My Settings” tab at the top of the page
3. Click “Match Settings” link
4. Click “Edit Preferences” link next to the item you would like to update

Be sure to click the “Save and Continue” button after changing any selection.

I have even seen on some review sites where customers asked if eHarmony matched on income. All of eHarmony’s matches are based on compatibility and not on criteria like income that has proven not to be an effective criteria for a successful marriage or relationship. eHarmony has a high proportion of female users: 63 per 100 according to eHarmony’s Profile on Quantcast, an independent open internet ratings site.

eHarmony Subscription Plans:

1 Month = $59.95 – most flexible eHarmony plan
3 Months = $119.85, saves you 33% off the monthly rate, $39.95/month
6 Months = $179.70, saves you 50% off the monthly rate, $29,95/month
1 Year = $239.40, saves you 67% off the monthly rate, $19.95/month

eHarmony.com is a registered and secured VeriSign site, registered with Trust-e site privacy and a member of the BBB OnLine Reliability Program.

Company Information:

eHarmony.com is a privately held company, with investors that include Technology Crossover Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Fayez Sarofim & Co. eHarmony.com is the Internet’s No. 1 trusted relationship services provider. Find serious relationships for love and marriage at eHarmony today.

eHarmony
P.O. Box 60157
Pasadena, CA 91116
customer service email: eHarmony Customer Service.

If you are looking for eHarmonie, eHarmone, eHarmoney or e-Harmony the online dating and relationships site you are most likely looking for eHarmony.com.

We operate a white label Jewish Dating site powered by Jdate.com at: Jewish Personals. It offers a quick sign-up process to begin searching for other Jewish singles in your area.

Other notable Jewish online dating services include sites like: Frumster.com, JLove.com, JSingles.com, JMatch.com, JewishCafe.com and JPeopleMeet.com. Frumster.com claims to have 5 weddings a week from their site. I would guess that Jdate.com is probably doing about 10x this on a weekly basis. Many of the Jewish singles sites listed above also host and have Jewish singles events listed in different cities around the world. Jdate.com is also available in hebrew at: Jdate.co.il. They are the industry recommended service for Jewish introductions online and a well trusted brand. Good luck in your search to find a Jewish soulmate online. Send us your testimonials and any other sites we should mention or add to this list.

-Brian

Check out the Snapshot report from Compete.com on eHarmony.com, Match.com, Yahoo Personals, Singlesnet.com and Plentyoffish.com. This month’s trend is pretty interesting considering that eHarmony just signed that deal with AOL Personals which is eating up half of Match.com’s space that they have exclusively occupied for years. Match.com’s business is very partnership focused with some presence in paid search and sprinkled display ads that appear on social network sites once in a while. eHarmony continues to pound the concrete with it’s cable network commercials with a different twist that looks to be focused more on a mainstream demographic. eHarmony also participates in paid search and bids aggressively on top terms like “dating” and “personals”. They have been a little more strategic lately with their business development efforts trying to put a dent into Match.com partnerships. This should be a pretty effective strategy considering they are becoming a household brand for dating now even though they have a 1-hour long sign-up process.

Yahoo! Personals has the power of their network behind them for free ad placements on the Yahoo home page and through out their properties. They buy paid search but aren’t aggressive at all. Yahoo Personals does really well in SEO on top dating terms because Google loves big brands and keeps squeezing the small guys out of the mix.

On the free side of things PlentyofFish.com seems to still be holding ground and growing. I see him buying a lot more paid search on Google lately and he evens bids on high cost terms for traffic. He must be working a pretty decent arbitrage to be able to afford this. I wonder what his gross to net spend is on Google AdWords and AdSense. Singlesnet.com had a strong year but they seem to be losing a little steam lately. They were all over the social networks and ad networks and are still buying heavily on search but I don’t see any partnerships with portals and ISPs. The ad model will eventually get too expensive and is not consistent to grow your business. In order to keep up with the growth they have seen they really need to secure some partnerships in the US. The one shady thing I have seen with them on search is that CPA networks that they have been working with are spamming the paid search listings and occupying several spots of shelf space. I have reported them several times but those networks are pretty aggressive at getting new ads back up in place of the ones removed.

We’ll start with a company, Relationship Exchange, that has been doing white label dating for quite sometime. They are owned and operated by Vintacom Media group up in Canada and Dreammates.com is their private brand and Dating.com also runs off of their platform. You can find a ton of partner information on their corporate site at: WorldDatingPartners.com

A new contender in this space is WhiteLabelDating.com. They are growing fast in the UK market targeting newspaper websites that are losing advertising dollars by the day and other portal and entertainment based sites. Since Internet World 2008 in May they have launched 482 new sites. Their database has also increased by 175% and revenue has grown by 58% month on month. Pretty impressive stats.

The 3rd company that does a great job at niche related domains in the Military, Seniors, BBW Singles, Pet Lovers, Active Singles, etc is Tango Wire. They don’t have a private brand but instead focus on the technology side of their business. We use them to promote our Military-Singles.com partnership domain. All of the other Army, Navy, and Military Singles partners contribute to our conversions as all of the profiles are in the same walled garden and as we send in new profiles we are adding to their databases and vice versa. They handle all billing and customer service related issues and offer easy to use customizable templates to setup your home page.

If you want to sell or auction off your domains then some good services to use are Sedo.com and Moniker.com that have several auctions a year at different domain conferences across the world. You have to submit your domains for review and acceptance into their auctions so they usually only take premium domains. Sedo.com will act as your domain broker and you can actually list an asking price and your domain will then appear in their marketplace for purchase. We have bought and sold many domains from these services and they are all highly respected companies in the industry.

added 12/29: I just came across a UK based white label dating service: Easy Date White Label Dating. They are the company behind the popular UK dating site DatetheUK.com and SpeedDaterUK.co.uk.

-Brian

The page looks to be co-sponsored by the two websites. My experience with this in the past doing business development partnerships in the dating vertical is that both sites will hurt in this relationship having to split the traffic and the consumers will get very confused as to what service they belong to.

I can understand AOL trying to diversify their revenue in the online dating/personals section of their business but this is a dangerous move especially since the Match.com brand is so integrated into Love.com which AOL owns and operates. Match.com should get aggressive in pushing eHarmony out of this partnership and making it exclusive again.

eHarmony must have sold the deal to the AOL execs as ‘casual dating’ versus ‘serious relationships’ but the truth is that people don’t really see any real difference in the two sites as Match.com owns and operates their own serious relationship site Chemistry.com that they could have easily integrated into this deal.

Serious relationships sites are categorized by the simple fact that they have “Personality Tests” in there sign-up process to filter or weed out “casual” daters. This is funny when you think that sites like Plenty of Fish even have personality tests and they are one of the largest casual dating sites online. I guess POF is a serious-casual dating site then right?

Here is a quote from the CEO from eHarmony, Greg Waldorf: “We’ve always regarded matching services like eHarmony as distinct from more casual dating sites,”

EHarmony claims to be comfortable charging for its services while others offer free dating sites because the company is in the business of finding partners, not dates. Some 236 people eHarmony users are said to get married on average every day, according to a Harris Interactive study. That statistic is still very hard for me to accept or understand how they got those numbers confirmed.

I wonder if eHarmony will ever launch Gayharmony or Jharmony websites.

-Brian

Share some of your online dating experiences if you have used social networking sites to find love online and if you think it is a safe option being that so much more of your personal information is available on some of these sites like Facebook.

- Brian

Meetic.com is based in Boulogne-Billancourt, right outside of Paris. They are looking to expand into Germany and the U.K. dating markets. I don’t see a shortage of singles out there so at 10 Euros a share it seems like a good bargain. Any of the US site analytics companies always report international websites completely wrong with the exception of Hitwise. I would say that Meetic is probably the largest international dating service next to Match.com with tens of millions of singles in more than 20 countries.

Bloomberg.com Europe Article: Meetic Plunges to Record After Sales Miss Estimates

Plenty of Fish Information

Site Name: Plenty Of Fish
Member Size: 5.3 Million Members
Description: PlentyofFish is an online dating site, popular primarily in Canada, the UK, Australia and the United States. The service, based in Vancouver Canada generates revenue through advertising. While it is free to use, it offers premium services, such as message tracking in which members pay for credits that can be used for higher tiered services. The site also offers a paid version.

Site Review

Are you new to the world of online dating and looking for a good starting point with your love life? There are a ton of dating services and resources available to single people online and new ones cropping up on a daily. I recommend that you join a few different services from the free dating sites to paid subscription services and you’ll see that most of the functionality between the two are about the same but that the real apparent difference is in the quality of the users.

Plenty of Fish (www.plentyoffish.com) is one of the largest and more respected free dating services online with about 800,000 active users. The guy behind the operation still runs the company out of his apartment with his girlfriend and a few employees now that handle photos and customer service issues. He spends most of his time on removing fraudulent users from the site which is obvious from the lack of design aesthetic on the site. According to data collected by Comscore Plenty of Fish had about 1.4 Million unique visitors back in November 2007. POF has been on a steady growth curve according to Quantcast and Compare.com.

POF has a basic but easy to use interface and the sign-up process is fast. You can search or browse for singles in your area or get sent matches via email. If you are serious about meeting someone be sure to upload a photo of yourself. Profiles without photos are almost non-active and get almost no attention. Plenty of Fish uses the UserPlane AV Webmessenger system for instant messaging which I wasn’t able to get working on my Mac Firefox browser.

I would say that free dating services like PlentyofFish.com, Meeta.com, OKCupid.com, DateHookup.com and Mingle2.com are great places to start your journey into the online dating universe. Most of these sites have very fast sign-up processes that help you get into using the service quickly. You can divulge as much as you want on your profile or keep it limited and private but keep in mind that profiles with little bio or personality info on them usually get missed and you really aren’t getting the full value or visibility on a site if you are hiding yourself from other people wanting to learn more about you.

Plenty of Fish also has their own Compatibility Predictor (CP) test that measures five broad relationship variables that are each essential for building romantic relationships. Users don’t need to score “high” on each of these characteristics to be in a fulfilling relationship. What’s important is how your profile interacts with the profile of a potential romantic partner. The Compatibility Predictor captures the five key ingredients that can determine whether or not two people have the “right” psychological chemistry. Below are the relationship variables they capture:

Self-Confidence, or the degree to which a person feels comfortable with him or herself. People that are high in self-confidence tend to be assertive and competent in both their private and public relationships. People that are low in self-confidence tend to be reticent and somewhat anxious.
Family Orientation, or the degree to which a person supports and values the family. People that are family-oriented tend to want or already have children, are very close to their immediate relatives and prefer cooking at home to eating at a restaurant. People that are not family-oriented tend to be individualistic, unconventional and very much enjoy attending parties and social functions.
Self-Control, or the extent to which a person exerts control over various aspects of life. People that are high in self-control tend have strong emotional reactions to things and try to regulate those feelings by micromanaging and attending to specific details. People that are low in self-control are usually relaxed, even-tempered and lenient.
Openness, or the extent to which a person is open to and dependent upon others. People that are high in openness tend to like a wide range of things (e.g., food, music, movies, etc.), in part because they are concerned with pleasing other people. In contrast, people low in openness are very independent and opinionated; they know what they like and aren’t apt to change their opinion.
Easygoingness, or a person’s work ethic and degree of mental flexibility. People that are high in easygoingness are very relaxed, broadminded and unaffected by change. In contrast, people low in easygoingness tend be hardworking, firm, and sometimes inflexible.

PlentyofFish.com has grown over the years with new features and better matching technology. They have a huge presence in the US and Canada and usually have about 100,000 users online at during peak hours. The sign-up process took me about 5 minutes and that was including taking the personality test that you have to complete every question on.

Be sure to keep yourself safe dating online and check out some of our Online Dating Safety Tips.

If you are looking for Plenty of Fish dating site, POF dating, plentyoffish, plenty of fish personals, plenty of fish in the sea dating then you are probably looking for the official plenty of fish site at: www.plentyoffish.com

Here is the sites that topped the list:
1. Singlesnet
2. Plentyoffish
3. Yahoo! Personals
4. Match.com
5. Adam4Adam.com
6. DateHookup.com
7. TRUE.com
8. eHarmony.com

Other noteworthy sites that moved up and down were BlackPeopleMeet.com moved up from #11 to #10 and Mate1.com fell off the top 15 to the number 17th position. This list looks a lot different in the UK and other countries. Gaydar.co.uk usually tops the list in the UK and PlentyofFish in Canada followed closely by Lavalife. Isn’t it funny to see that eHarmony.com didn’t even make the top 5 list. Someone needs to tell them that they can’t promote an online dating site by simply buying TV commercials over and over.

If you look at Singlesnet, Match.com and Plenty of Fish on Compete.com you’ll see that Singlenet is still ahead of Match but that PlentyofFish looks to be substantially smaller in size than Match.com. This could be whether the two technologies have factored in partnership deals like Love@AOL and MSN Personals that drive a ton of volume and traffic to Match.com.

singlesnet.com vs. match.com vs. plentyoffish.com – Compete.com results.

Hitwise also reported “Free Dating Site” U.S. Rankings for June, 2008:
1. PlentyofFish.com
2. DateHookup.com
3. OKCupid.com
4. HotorNot.com
5. WebDate.com

This is how the profiles made it to US websites. Companies like Kiss.com (previously known as Foreign Relations), A Foreign Affair and Cherry Blossoms had marriage agency contacts abroad in Russia, Eastern Europe, Philippines and South America. These agents had paper profile questionnaires that the women would fill out and then the agencies would mail a package of these applications with photos attached with paperclips to them of each of the applicants. Some of the women provided their own photos and most of them were professionally taken at the agency offices. Many of the women back then did not have email addresses so almost all of the correspondence was done via letters and phone calls so you can imagine the process. Customers on these websites would order the addresses or full contact information of the woman (around $12 a piece) and most of the services provided Russian (Cyrillic) address labels to put on envelopes to ensure delivery of letters.

Some sites like Kiss.com allowed customers to purchase full color copies of the original photos that were submitted for a charge of $5. Once the letters went back and forth a few times they would then plan to meet in person in the foreign country as this was a requirement for a “Fiancée Visa” or K-1 visa to be accepted. This process could take months and years to finally get completed but I estimate that 1000′s of women successfully married men in the US and around the world through these services.

“Mail Order Bride” is a dating niche that still isn’t fully mainstream yet because people still have pre-conceptions that the women are just “Gold Diggers”. Well if you have been to Russia or any of the former Soviet Union countries you will see that they are doing pretty well nowadays and actually the Bentley car dealership in Kiev, Ukraine sold more cars then the Beverly Hills Bentley shop last year.

Today, there are many Russian and Ukrainian dating sites online but only a few trusted businesses that have real profiles on them. Below is a list of the sites that we recommend using if you are looking for international dating and a woman from South America, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Estonia, Moldova, Poland or the Philippines.

Anastasia International – They have been around since 1993 and have offices here in the US and in Moscow, Russia. They offer romance tours and have 1,000′s of new profiles updated monthly to their site.

Cherry Blossoms – Located in Hawaii, Cherry Blossoms is a trusted brand focused on international dating and mostly helping single men find partners in the Philippines and South American countries.

A Foreign Affair (www.loveme.com) – They were one of the first mail order bride sites online and have been running tours and their international dating service since 1995. They can help you with Fiance Visa applications and International Travel. They are also US based with offices in Phoenix, AZ.

Be prepared to be a little patient and ready to spend a great deal of money on travel and the paperwork that comes with this type of online dating. It can be an exciting experience for you and very fulfilling if you find your soul mate on the other side of the planet. Be weary of scams though. Never send money to anyone until you have met in person.

If you can read cyrillic Russian then here are a couple other popular Russian based dating services: Date.ru, Mamba.ru and Kiss.ru.

-Brian

If you aren’t familiar with Quantcast, they are an website analytics company similar to Web Trends and Google Analytics where site owners place javascript tags on pages they want to have tracked. They also use methods similar to the Hitwise and Comscore measures to estimate site popularity and website demographics.

Here is a snapshot of the eHarmony data and below is a link to the eHarmony traffic profile on Quantcast:

http://www.quantcast.com/eharmony.com

4,086,445 uniques in the US May 2008
204,275 uniques in Canada
27,960 uniques from Ghana
18,940 uniques from the UK

Monthly Traffic Summary – US
Page Views per Month – 352,187,056
Average Page Views per Visit – 15.68
Visits per Month - 22,465,275
Average Visits per Unique - 8.46
Uniques per Month - 2,655,417

One other interesting data point from looking at their analytics is that they aren’t at all visible as a brand outside of the US where you see Match.com in tons of international markets. Looks like eHarmony might need to get some of that $110 million dollars they raised back in Dec. 2004 to work. I’m glad they at least dropped Dr. Neil Clark Warren from the commercials.

1. AmericanSingles.com
2. BBWRomance.com
3. BigChurch.com – Owned by Friendfinder
4. BlackCupid.com
5. BlackSingles.com
6. Black People Meet – African American dating
7. CatholicMates.com
8. Chemistry.com – Serious Relationships
9. Cherry Blossoms
10. ChristianCafe.com
11. Date.com
12. DatetheUK.com
13. DatingDirect.com – UK focused
14. Duo.co.kr – Korean dating and matchmaking service
15. eHarmony.com – Starting to be a little less religious.
16. Fling.com – adult personals
17. Friendfinder.com
18. Great Expectations.com – Offline matchmaking
19. InterracialRomance.com – New!
20. InterracialSingles.com
21. JDate.com – Jewish singles; large database
22. JLove.com – Jewish
23. JSingles.com
24. LargeAndLovely.com
25. Lavalife.com
26. LesbianRomance.com
27. LonelyWivesAffairs.com
28. LoveHappens.com
29. LoveMe.com – Foreign Brides
30. Match.com – Top Notch
31. Matchmaker.com – Run by Date.com
32. Mate1.com
33. Meeta.com – Free
34. Meetic.fr – International dating service
35. MetroDate.com – Local dating
36. Milf-Date – Mothers I Love to Freak.
37. Military Date
38. MilitaryFriends.com
39. MilitaryLoveLinks.com
40. Military Singles – All Military focused niche site
41. Military Singles Connection
42. Mingles.com
43. Neu.de – New!
44. OKCupid.com – Free w/ Cool Quizes
45. OnlineBootyCall.com
46. PlentyOfFish.com – Free
47. PerfectMatch.com – Serious Relationships
48. Relationships.com
49. SinglesNet.com
50. SpeedDateUK.co.uk
51. True.com
52. Udate.com – UK focused; owned by Match.com
53. Uniform Dating
54. Webdate.com – Free
55. Web Personals
56. Yahoo! Personals – Main stream

Let me know if you see some sites that I might have missed that deserve to be on this list.

-Brian

In Australia, Match.com was chosen by ninemsn, a joint venture between Microsoft Corp and PBL media, to become the exclusive integrated dating provider on ninemsn. Under the agreement, Match.com will reach an audience of more than eight million people a month in Australia and expects to significantly increase its market share in the country. The new service, “ninemsn dating provided by Match.com” is fully integrated within the ninemsn network, including Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Messenger Today and Windows Live Spaces.

“We are thrilled to partner with ninemsn. The decision to select Match.com as their exclusive online dating partner further validates the strength of our product and fortifies our global partnership with MSN,” said Thomas Enraght-Moony, CEO of Match.com.

In Latin America, Match.com is partnering with Terra, the region’s largest internet portal. With this partnership, Match.com will be the exclusive online dating provider for Terra’s sites in 18 countries across Latin America. This new agreement extends Match.com’s existing relationship with Terra, where Match is the online dating provider for Terra in the US. Visit Amor@Terra.

“The opportunity to be affiliated with a company like Terra is incredibly exciting and we’re so pleased to be partnering with them. The partnership is truly a testament to the strengths of our product, our international team and the ability to apply our expertise to optimize the service at a very local level,” continued Enraght-Moony.

Match.com’s international business continues to be a key driver of the Company’s success. In Q1 2008, Match.com saw an eight percent growth in international subscribers and a twelve percent growth in revenue per subscriber. Match.com currently operates more than 37 local country sites in 15 languages, and the company’s reach spans six continents.

Which Black dating sites should you join? The answer depends on your personal dating needs and preferences. Black dating sites offer Black individuals the opportunity to find friends and dates with an African-American background. There are many reasons for wanting to join a ‘Black dating’ site, but most people wish to do so because they would like a partner who shares their heritage and cultural values.
There are Black dating sites designed exclusively for Black individuals, and most major online dating services offer the opportunity to search for a particular ethnicity such as Black or African-American. Although there are some less-than-desirable sites in any market, most black dating sites offer fabulous features such as photo profiles, live chats, message boards, instant messaging, and more. As you can tell from some select black dating message boards and chat rooms, Black dating sites can sometimes be a great way to build community and make Black friends in addition to finding a date of that particular ethnicity.

If you’re not Black, but would like to date Black individuals, you may still be able to join a Black dating site. However, don’t be surprised if some people do not respond to your correspondence. After all, they joined the Black dating site to date people of a specific background, and you may not meet their expectations.

BLACKPEOPLEMEET.COM

With over 570K U.S. monthly unique visitors, Blackpeoplemeet.com is considered one of the leading African American dating sites on the web. Free to join, create your profile and browse members, but to contact other members you must pay for a full subscription – depending on the length of subscription you choose, the cost is relatively low compared to other sites that offer the same services. With a subscription you’ll be able to see member photos, listen to audio greetings, watch video greetings, send messages and chat with thousands of black singles that are online every day. 

BLACK PLANET LOVE

Blackplanet.com features more of a complete, social community rather than just another cookie-cutter dating site – with everything from member discussion boards, news and articles, blogs, and even job listings to conventional dating site features such as chat and messaging, you’ll never find yourself without something to keep you busy. This site is the largest and most resourceful black online dating site out there. After creating your free profile, you’ll have the ability to browse groups, watch videos and thanks to a partnership with Vibe Magazine, listen to tons of music; all of this without ever leaving Blackplanet.com.

You can also join Meeta.com’s Free Black Dating Service, BlackSingles.com and Black Cupid. Meet other black singles for online dating.

Gay online dating is a market that is growing consistently, with information and statistics on gay and lesbian online dating services prolific in the online environment. Gay dating sites are a useful resource for gays and lesbians to find a partner, and not feel harassed or judged like with some online dating sites that, in the past have frowned upon or even rejected gay applicants. With online dating as a whole headed in an upward direction, gay online sites have followed suit and seem to be evolving as fast as or even faster than some straight dating sites.

Below are some gay dating sites we recommend:

GAY.DATE.COM

Gay.Date.com is part of the hugely popular and famous mainstream straight dating site, Date.com, and as such it has all the same great features. As a reputable and long-running site, Gay.Date.com has a huge members’ database and excellent technical support. Unlike many other gay dating sites, Gay.Date.com is strictly a non-nude site. Many other gay dating sites like Gay.com offer an adult and non-adult search forms, where you can search for nude and non-nude pictures respectively, others offer completely different section to those looking for sex and those looking for relationships, allowing you to choose in which section you want to create your profile.  If you’re looking for long-term, lasting love, then you can’t do much better than Gay.Date.com, as it has the features, membership base and technical support to making your quest for love on the net both enjoyable and fruitful.

ALT.COM
 
The website is a kinky BDSM, bondage, fetish and alternative lifestyle personals web service run by the same people who run AdultFriendFinder, the FriendFinder network. Alt.com promotes self-expression and aims to give people the courage to practice alternative sexual lifestyles and techniques such as bondage and domination.

Members of the site complete their profiles with answers pertaining to personal sexual preferences, activities, and lifestyles. Alt.com features webcam chatting for its subscribers. As well, anonymous emailing, chatting and instant messaging are available to paid members. The site also provides a “Purity Test” link asking the visitor to take the test to determine the level of one’s sexual preferences or otherwise one’s purity. All-in-all, Alt.com is a good site for experimenting or expanding on your already wandering sexual preferences.

Here are a few other notable gay dating services: Manhunt.net, Lesbian Romance and Adam4Adam.com which is a free service. If you have used any of these and had good or bad experiences with them then post comments below.

With names like AdultFriendFinder.com and Fling.com, adult dating sites contend to help users find one-night stands, swinger parties and other sexual escapades. AdultFriendFinder, the most popular of the sites, over draws 10 million unique visitors a month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. That’s twice the traffic of Match.com and Yahoo Personals, Nielsen says.

Adult dating sites work in much the same way as more traditional sites. Users create profiles by filling out questionnaires — while many dating sites ask users about things like their views on religion and favorite books, adult sites focus more on appearance and measurements. Users are encouraged to post sexually explicit photos. The sites match members of similar locations and interests.

Here are a few Adult sites we recommend:

AdultFriendFinder.com

AdultFriendFinder is the largest and most popular site of its kind. With over 20 million members, you’re sure to find the one night stand, steady sex partner or just sexy friend that you’re looking for. Registration for AdultFriendFinder is free to view profiles, receive messages and more – or you can sign up for a silver or gold membership for even more benefits to help you hook up fast.

Fling.com

With thousands of new men, women, couples and swingers signing up every day, you can check out millions of sexy photos and watch live webcam porn from straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual members. One feature that sets Fling.com apart from other adult dating sites is their award-winning, real-time video chat to get acquainted before you meet, to see before you touch! Fling.com is also free to register and offers photo verified, real members.

SexyAds.com

Join the millions of other sexy singles that have posted their profiles for discreet encounters, adult dating and personals. Sexy Ads has been a trusted adult dating service since 1997.

Strap on your belt and be ready for a ride if you are going down this highway and always be weary of scammers, escorts and the all too friendly lady man unless of course that is your flavor.

Eroticy.com

Explore your sexuality on Eroticy.com adult photo personals. Become a member of the interactive adult community that welcomes singles and couples. Get a free trial membership with no credit card required.

Other adult dating services include SexSearch.com, NaughtyConnect.com, and Alt.com.

Research from Bath University in the UK found that one-third of all net users turn to the internet to establish some sort of relationship, and 20% of the estimated 11 million singles in the UK have used some type of dating service.

Here are a few UK based dating services that we recommend trying:

UK.Match.com – Besides being one of the largest and most trusted dating services already, Match has offices in London, UK and the UK product is managed by its own team to keep the context of the service relevant to the user base and easy to use and understand.

Meetic.co.uk – They are one of the largest European dating sites that recently also acquired Datingdirect.co.uk with over 3.5 Million registered users.

uDate.com – They were acquired a few years back by the IACi Corp but left to still run a stand alone product. uDate has excellent filtering and matching technology to keep your search relevant to what you are looking for in a potential mate.

Friends Reunited Dating – In September 2003, The popular UK Classmates site, Friends Reunited, launched its own free dating site in response to the requests from many of it’s members.

Along with JDate’s already-popular website features like live chat, instant messaging, and message forums, JDate will offer UK-based singles events and parties to bring Jewish singles in the UK together in real life settings.

Here is a quote from President and COO of Spark Networks that owns and operates Jdate:

“We are thrilled to bridge the Atlantic divide and re-introduce the UK Jewish community to JDate. It is a natural evolution that this emerging Jewish group will have the chance to utilize all of the site’s great features to meet their special someone.”

More Info on Jdate:

With over 650,000 active members worldwide, JDate is the leading online community for Jewish singles. JDate is owned and operated by Spark Networks (AMEX: LOV), one of the world’s leading providers of online personals services.

I started working for Kiss.com back in April of 1996 when my current business partner, Norman Clarke got me a job as a customer service / office assistant helping with emails, calls and order fullfillment. You have to go back to 96′ for a minute to understand how websites ran. Our online ordering system was done via emails that we printed out and entered into Filemaker Pro. We ran daily transaction batches using MacAuthorize over a 14.4 modem at the end of the day then emails people addresses they ordered. I think there was about 16 dating websites listed in Yahoo! (back when they were a directory) and the top dating sites were Webpersonals.com, Friendfinder.com and OneandOnly.com. Our boss, Lee Zehrer, a pioneer in internet dating purchased the domain Kiss.com back in December of 1994 and Match.com was registered in January of 1995. Back then internet dating was very much international dating and mail order bride focused.

There were large international dating services like Loveme.com, APrettyWoman.com and CherryBlossoms.com that featured womens’ profiles from Russia, Ukraine and the Philippines. You actually purchased member addresses and had to send them letters instead of emails. Most of the international profiles didn’t have email addresses and Hotmail wasn’t even a big site yet.

OneandOnly.com had launched one of the first affiliate programs and maybe even before Amazon.com and all of the dating directories like Cupidnet.com (purchased by Matchnet, LLC), Aarens.com, Singlessites.com, ASinglesPlace.com and Lovesites.com ruled the search engines. You need to go back to 96′ again when the main search engines were Altavista.com, Excite, Webcrawler, Lycos and Hotbot. Yahoo was powered by Inktomi. Google was still a project in a garage in Palo Alto, CA.

Everyone was racing to be #1 in a category that still didn’t have a good public image or acceptance. You didn’t go telling your friends that you were using the internet to find a date back then. A couple of quiet acquisitions happened in the early days but no major consolidation until OneandOnly.com, based in Dallas, TX and Match.com, then based in SF, CA, were both acquired by Ticketmaster Online-Citysearch. Then Cupid’s Network Inc., owned and operated by Daniel Bender, which included the property Cupidnet.com and AS.org (AmericanSingles.com) was purchased by Matchnet, PLC in May, 1999 for $3.6 million.

This brought a ton of visibility and validity to the online dating industry and tons of new projects got started and funded. There were sites like xSeeksy.com, Spring Street Networks, Socialnet, DatingFaces.com, DatingClub.com (run by Targetmatch out of Isreal) that were trying to take the industry by storm. Portals were signing partnership & advertising deals with these companies left and right. Spring Street Networks went after the low-tech newspaper market with a white label application. Socialnet tried to be a free dating service about 2 years too early. They even offered out their female-CEO as a potential date on the site. DatingFaces went down the ‘butler’ path to try to give you a more friendly experience and couldn’t get to critical mass fast enough. The DatingFaces database eventually got purchased by AOL to launch out their AIM personals service which never took off. People were still dating for free on Excite’s Classifieds2000 and Yahoo! Personals as they were still free services at the time.

Yahoo! Personals then decided to move to a subscription model after a short relationship with Match.com where they saw the revenue opportunity in the online dating space.

Webpersonals has had an interesting history as one of the first dating sites online which is still alive but has been rebranded. Interactive Media Group in Canada bought the URL webpersonals.com from Andrew Conru of Friendfinder.com back in 1997 where it started a free online dating service. In July 2001, Lavalife.com was rebranded and the webpersonals.com brand was combined into the new service. Lavalife was purchased in April, 2004 by MemberWorks Incorporated, a provider of consumer and membership services through affinity marketing and online channels for approximately $152.5 million CAD in cash.

Date.com is a privately owned company based in New York with offices in Miami Beach, Florida. The site was launched on Valentines Day in 1997 and became a subscription-based service with its re-launch in 2000. Avalanche LLC, owners and operators of Date.com acquired the Matchmaker.com service in Feb. 2006 and moved the users over to the Date.com platform but kept them separate from the Date.com user base.
Matchmaker.com was originally acquired by Lycos.com back in June, 2000. Matchmaker was broken into dozens of city and religious communities and had one of the first personality tests used to match potential members.

uDate.com was first launched commercially in February 1999 and was able to acquire customers quickly by offering consumers a feature rich experience. uDate.com, Inc. became the challenger for overall global market leadership of the online dating sector when it acquired the brand Kiss.com in 2001. uDate.com, Inc. became a public company trading under the ticker symbol UDAT on the OTCBB exchange. The Company was headquartered in Derby, United Kingdom. In Dec, 2002 USA Interactive entered into an agreement to acquire uDate.com, Inc for approximately $150 million in USA common stock.

Here we are today and the term ‘online dating’ has become a household term that everyone talks about with their friends and peers over lunch or drinks. I can now hardly run into anybody that doesn’t have an online dating story to tell about their own experience or a friends expeditions in dating on the internet.

Social network sites like Friendster and Myspace have revolutionized the technology and many sites have evolved their feature sets to include many of the social networking functionality. You can hardly watch cable TV anymore without seeing an eHarmony or Match.com ad or product placement in movies like Perfectmatch.com did with “Must Love Dogs”. The industry got past its akward and fast growth period, has done a little bit of consolidation and now faces the challenges of reinventing itself to keep up with technology advances in software development and the entire social media craze. Free dating services like OKCupid, PlentyofFish and Meeta.com are new challengers to the media giants for share of voice.

We’ll see where the next century of dating takes us but for now go out and meet someone online. It’s now officially “Kosher” to do so.

-Brian

note: if you find an inaccurate fact within this article please post a comment or email us directly so we can fix it. I hate passing on bad info.

Citations:
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bakera/ArticleE.htm
http://sec.edgar-online.com/2004/08/16/0001204459-04-000467/Section18.asp
http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/history/lavalife.html
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=62982

Before this season of “Dancing With the Stars” started, all of the dance couples took the Duet compatibility test, with mixed results. Pepper Schwartz talked about the test and the compatibility of the GMA anchors. For each of the DWTS couples, the Duet assessment analyzed personality factors, strengths and weaknesses as well as areas that are similar and complementary. On “Dancing With the Stars” tonight, Schwartz will talk about her analysis of the Duet test results and will reveal who she believes is the perfect match — and most likely to win the competition. And, conversely, who is least compatible and faces the biggest uphill climb.

See a sneak peak of the Duet Test results

Do a search using this box below and you’ll be suprised to see how accurate the results are. You can register if you haven’t already for free but you have to pay a membership to contact old friends and lost loves. Good luck with your search and let us know if you make an old connection from the info in this article.

Got any other great people search resources? Post them below.

Are there really online dating sites that are 100% free? Yes. There are sites that are absolutely free to use and some that make the claim with bait and switch tactics just to get you to sign-up for a free profile or personal ad.

Premium sites like Match.com, Yahoo Personals, Chemistry.com and Jdate.com charge you a monthly membership fee to get full access to communicate to other members. These sites also offer free trials for a limited time to try out the service and features. Are the premium sites worth their weight in gold? I think that users will always look for the free options, use the sites and see that their isn’t much quality control since they are usually operated by a small staff if any. I have heard some of my single friends say that they have seen some of the same users on the top dating sites and it isn’t a bad idea to post your personal ad across a few of the sites. It is usually free to create an ad, upload  photo and wait around to be contacted by a paying premium user but sort of a waste of time when your internal clock is ticking away.

 Here are a few free dating services that I recommend that don’t have bait and switch tactics of getting you to upgrade your membership:

Meeta
Plenty of Fish
Web Date
DateHookup
OK Cupid
Mingle2 – formerly Justsayhi.com

If you are looking for a serious relationship site, try using any of these:

Perfectmatch.com
Chemistry.com
eHarmony.com (not highly recommended as they filter users)

If you know of any other nice free dating services that are reputable then post them in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.

The University of California Berkeley grads, James Hong and Jim Young, have sold HotOrNot for a reported $20 million to Avid Life Media out of Toronto, Canada. Avid Life Media is a network of targeted niche brands that looks to be acquiring web properties but their website has nothing more then a logo of the company on it.

Hong confirmed the sale but would not discuss the price, which was reported on the TechCrunch blog. I originally met James at a dating conference in Miami a few years back which I am sure he was there looking for m&a contacts.

HotorNot was launched back in the big dot-com craze in 2000 and created a social website phenomenon which then led to other similar photo rating sites like facethejury and ratemybody. The site hasn’t changed much since then except for the addition of a poorly executed dating service extension of the site and some facebook apps. Hong and Young will not be regular contributors to the new company. Hong posted in his blog that “All good things must come to an end. Eight years is a long time, and both Jim and I were mentally prepared to move on years ago.”

I wonder what this business would have been valued at in the internet hay days. Maybe 5x what they got?

MySpace will introduce its developer platform Tuesday, which will allow outside Web developers to create applications for the social networking site, just as they do on rival Facebook.

MySpace users, however, won’t get to see the results until next month. To give all developers an equal footing, MySpace is unveiling the platform at a party at its new San Francisco offices and will give the developers a month to create their programs. The applications will be made public in early March 2008.

The new platform takes a page from Palo Alto’s Facebook, which introduced its developers’ platform last year. Developers have created thousands of applications for Facebook, from online music services to games of Scrabble.

MySpace is also one of the partners of Google’s OpenSocial initiative, which will make it easy for developers to create an application that can run on multiple social networking sites.

Developers also will be able to make money by placing advertisements or selling services on the application’s preferences page. That is, when users adds a program to their MySpace profile, they will be directed to a page to personalize the application. On that page, the developer will be able to run ads and keep the ad revenues. In the future, developers also will be able to partner with MySpace to make money through targeted advertisements.

Meeta.com will also cater to alternative lifestyle and religious groups allowing users to maintain their privacy and contact preferences.  A Spanish language version of Meeta.com will also be available in the near future with a later launch.

This free social dating service will include a number of unique features such as the ability to create interest groups or select from a pre-assortment of groups, event/date invitations for singles and event planners, the freedom to add friends, bookmark users and communicate with other users for free, manage security and privacy preferences and build a member permalink identity on the site.

Look out for this new free dating service by signing up on Meeta.com’s beta site launch list. Bookmark the site and sign-up to be notified when the site launches: Meeta.com.

JDate.com has been one of the most successful niche dating sites in terms of converting free members to its premium paid subscription model. We have promoted several other religious niche sites with only half of the conversions that we see from JDate.com. JDate.com was started back in 1997 by Joe Y. Shapira and the publicly traded Spark Network has grown over the years to include other dating properties like AmericanSingles.com, BlackSingles.com, ChristianMingle.com and LDSMingle.com.

Spark Networks Inc. has a market cap of $131 million which has grown in the past few weeks probably because of the anticipation of an upcoming transaction. Comscore Media Metrix had Spark Network ranked No. 4 in November 2007 with around 2.45 million unique visitors. Spark reported $6.56 million in net income with revenue of $68.85 million for 2006. According to people close to the sale, Spark has hired the boutique investment bank AGM Partners to run the sale for them.

This could easily turn into a bid war amongst the suitors as the online dating industry struggles with drops in traffic and conversions this past year. JDate has a very strong and well respected brand in the Jewish community and is a very viral product considering very little is spent promoting it versus their mainstream brand AmericanSingles.com. I just pray that eHarmony doesn’t pony up the money, buy the site and run it into the ground with their religious biases.

Many of you have probably seen last year’s “Rejected By eHarmony” campaign, depicting the people who have been turned away from eHarmony for not being happy enough, gay, or just unmatchable. The campaign proved very successful. According to New York Times, Chemistry experienced an 80 percent growth rate and gay and lesbian members increased by 200 percent.

This time around, Chemistry is planning to spend more than last April’s campaign budget of $20 million. The new ads that attack eHarmony for refusing to match same sex couples and for the evangelical Christian beliefs of eHarmony’s founder, Dr. Neil Clark Warren, will be featured in weekly newspapers and magazines.

Below is an example of one of the new print ads Chemistry will be featuring.

Penthouse Media Group CEO Marc H. Bell has stated that “Various is an attractive addition to our already strong print platform, and one that puts Penthouse in a very robust position in the ever-growing online social networking arena. We like where the business combination puts us and that this transaction will enhance PMGI’s current and future licensing, print and interactive ventures.”

Various, Inc. has developed over 25 online networking communities including FriendFinder Network Inc., Passion.com, Steamray Inc., and Adult Friend Finder, one of the most trafficked websites in the world. The company boasts an extensive and growing member base of more than 260 million people and 1.2 million subscribers.

“We are excited to be combining our substantial internet presence with one of the most recognized adult entertainment brands in the world,” said Lars Mapstead, VP of Marketing for Various, Inc. “Together we will expand in many areas, both online and offline, to solidify our position as the world leader in adult entertainment.”

As prominent companies in the adult entertainment market, looks like Penthouse and Various will benefit extremely by pairing up traditional print marketing with online networking.

This company’s partnership with Commission Junction is currently inactive.
https://signup.cj.com/member/brandedPublisherSignUp.do?air_refmerchantid=1473360

We have been promoting True.com since they rebranded from True Beginnings over to True.com and have always been paid on time and have even had personal contacts there that we have met in person at The Affiliate Summit trade show in Las Vegas. I emailed their regular customer service, the affiliate email True.affiliates@true.com, and our contacts Cornell McGee (CMO) and David Wright (SEO Manager) and both of their emails bounced back. We never received a response to the ones we sent to customer service either.

I just started doing a little research online to find a phone number for them to get some information on what is going on and when they intend on paying CJ so their affiliates like ourselves can be paid as well. I found this phone number on a coupon site and it actually worked and I was able to talk to a customer service rep that informed me that they we’re no longer running any “affiliation programs” but he took down my number and said that he would pass it along internally for someone to call me back with some details as to what is happening.

Here is the phone number to True.com in case you might want to ask them yourself: 1.866.583.TRUE (8783). Customer Service Email: customercare@TRUE.com

I will give it a few days to see if we get a response and will then reach out to CJ to see if they have a status update as well. If you happen to know some information please email it to us anonymously or comment on this post. Here are some other interesting articles that I came across when I did a search on their company name instead of the domain name:

True Beginnings LLC:
http://www.google.com/search?en&q=true+beginnings+llc

Class action lawsuit filed against Irving-based True.com dating website
Website terms incorporated by ‘continue’ button, rules US court
Is True.com Being Untrue to Advertising Partners?

Here is an excerpt from the article on some of my suggestions that I provided to her:

Brian Rauschenbach of the Seattle-based Kiss.com, says cyberdaters should watch out for these red flags:

• Are they being vague or ignoring your questions?
• Do they give inconsistent information about themselves?
• Is the person disappearing for days or weeks at a time?
• Are they only available during odd hours?

Isn’t it funny how we had names like “Cyberdaters” back then? Well, nothing much has changed since 2000 except for the fact that it is now more acceptible to tell your friends that you are dating online. With the introduction of free websites like OKCupid, Plentyoffish and Justsayhi, there is a little more concern over safety and people setting up fake profiles pretending to be someone else. There was recently an incident where a young teenager on Myspace started dating someone and they dumped them and she committed suicide and the whole thing was a hoax.

How do you avoid being a victim of a potential horror story? Here are some additional guidelines to follow in your online dating adventures:

Don’t Race to the Finish Line. Take is Slow
Trust your gut instincts. When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Invest the time to get to know the person over email first by asking them some questions that require more then a yes/no answer. Look for some inconsistencies or odd behavior like I mentioned above.

Be Anonymous with Your Real Identity
Most dating sites allow you to correspond with other members via their own messaging system. If you take the conversation off the website that you met on then make sure you are still using a free email service like gmail or hotmail.

Ask Them For a Few Photos
If you get to a stage where you are feeling more comfortable with the person ask them to send you some photos of themselves in different settings so you can make sure they aren’t hiding anything from you. We have all heard stories where a friend met someone online and when they actually had their first meeting it wasn’t the same person in the photo online. If they say they have a pet then ask them to take a photo with their pet. Everyone has a digital camera nowadays or have access to one pretty easy.

Talk on the Phone Before Meeting in Person
Phone calls are always a good gauge for how a person to person interaction and conversation will go. Be sure to use your mobile phone and to block your number with *67 caller ID blocking or however your phone provider blocks your outgoing number. You can even setup a skype account and phone number if you don’t mind talking into a microphone/headset on your computer.

Meeting in Person for the First Time
You are finally comfortable to meet each other for the first time. Make sure that you don’t get picked up or provide your address of where you live in case the person is a wierdo or creepy. You choose the meeting spot and make sure it is a public location. It is also a good idea to let a close friend know when and where you are meeting the date. I remember doing an interview with TechTV about safe dating and they had told me a story about a woman from Oregon that flew down to San Diego to meet a man that she met in a chat room and she stayed with him for a week and when she went to leave he stabbed her several times and left her to die. She survived and was able to call the police. What went wrong here? Two things – Don’t try to meet people in chat rooms and never stay with someone that you don’t really know yet.

Have an Emergency Exit Plan
If you are in the middle of your date and have an unsure feeling about how things are going then excuse yourself and call a friend for advice and if you feel that you might be in danger then slip out the back door and phone the police if you think the person might follow you out. It is always better to be safe then sorry and you won’t be that embarrased if you don’t make that much of a scene.

Wow! The Date is Going Well
Even if you get to a stage in the date where you are feeling comfortable with the person and decide to go to another bar or to their place make sure you drive and follow them and don’t leave your transportation behind. If you decide to go back to their place to hang out or make-out then make sure you get an address and leave it with one of your friends and let them know that you’ll call them in 30 minutes or so to let them know everything is still good.

The Background Check
Whenever I talk to people about this one they feel like their privacy is being invaded but the truth is that their is a free website that has a bunch of your personal information on it probably unless you have been really good about living under a rock for the past 15 years. Check out Zabasearch.com if you have the persons’ name and address information and want to fact check it against public record data for free. If they give you their SSN you can use Peoplefinders.com and Intelius.com for a full background check for around $30 bucks.

Why does some of this sound like overkill? ”I’ve been on tons of dates before and never worried about this type of stuff.” Finding your future wife or husband on your computer is a little different then meeting someone in a bar that you frequent. I have found that there is quite a mix of normal people and people that are a little less socially adaptive online. You have to do a little more filtering and weeding out when taking to the online dating “stage”. Good luck and I hope you find the love of your life.

-Brian
 

After sifting through a dozen or so online dating sites you will probably come across Match.com and Yahoo Personals which both seem to have very large databases of singles. Well, what is the real difference between the two websites? We have spent time on both sites and can tell you that they are two of the most respectable brands in online dating and that we have seen some members duplicated across the two properties. This duplication is pretty low though and I would estimate them to have about 5-6% overall duplicates on member profiles. Let’s take a look at where the users are coming from on each website. Yahoo Personals gets most of their member base from the Yahoo! portal and through limited search engine advertising they buy. Match.com has strategic partnerships with several ISPs like Comcast.net and they power the personals for Love@AOL and MSN Personals. Match.com has also been very aggressive in advertising with television commercials and magazine ads. Match.com has achieved great success with these partnerships as they fill up smaller dating pools of users in small cities and towns that other dating sites have a hard time doing. I have noticed that in some cities like San Fransisco and New York where Yahoo does billboard advertising that they have a healthier member base.

With this said, if you were to join and pay for a premium dating service I would highly recommend both of these services and it is not unusual for people to have memberships at both of them. As far as features go, I have found Match.com to have a better matching system and Yahoo Personals to have a very simple and easy to use search feature. If you are a woman using either service and are concerned with stalkers and members that won’t leave you alone then I would recommend you use the Match.com website as it has features that allow you to see who’s viewed your profile and photos and you can also remove people from search results and block members from contacting you. Yahoo is a little slower to release new features then most of the other top dating sites so you probably won’t see that many 2.0 type features on Yahoo anytime soon. High School Reunion sites like Reunion.com and Classmates.com adapted many features from dating sites in recent years and now the dating sites are looking to the social networks like Facebook and Twittr for new ideas on how to keep their users engaged and active.

On both dating services you are able to do a free profile search and can submit your own personal ad for free. They have monthly premium memberships that allow you to contact and receive email from other members. Once you are a premium member on Match.com, you can opt to receive and reply to messages from your personal inbox. I usually recommend to people to use an anonymous email like gmail or hotmail to manage any online dating correspondence just in case it doesn’t work out for you. It is pretty easy to link these accounts to your outlook in case you don’t check them regularly.

If you would like to give Match.com a try, we have a 3-day trial membership that we can offer you at: Personals.com. Personals.com is powered by Match.com.

I used to hate when people would talk to me with acroynms and abbreviations like IMHO (in my honest opinion) or RTFM (read the freakin manual). Here are some classics that you probably never heard of.

This is one that you are all afraid of when meeting a person that you met online for the first time. “I thought you said that you were blond and physically fit?”

Have you ever had an online dating nightmare before? Online dating has changed a lot in recent years but back in 2002 it wasn’t something that people really talked about socially with their friends and lots of people were afraid to meet people they had met online in person.

Have you ever “Google’d” someone before? Some sites like True.com say that they pre-screen their users but the only real way to do this is to run a full national criminal background check on a site like Peoplefinders.com or Intelius.com.

If you have any horror stories or find any cartoons that we can add to this collection then feel free to contact us and send them our way.

eHarmony claims to be able to help you find your “Soulmate” using their 29 dimensions of compatibility with their 436 question personality profiler. (takes about 1 hour to fill out) The problem is that the system that eHarmony is built on had originally been geared towards being a Christian dating service website and has always giving preference to Christians with most of its early marketing towards Christian websites and portals. eHarmony was officially founded in 2000 by Ph.D and author, Neil Clark Warren, who has written several books on dating and marriage. The site was built with one round of venture funding of $3M by Fayez Sarofim & Co.There is an eHarmony Blog that has done a little research based off of eHarmony rejection letters and have come up with this list of top five reasons:

Reason #1. You said you are separated or married on page 14. 30% of eHarmony rejects fall into this category, according to a May 2007 article in the Washington Post.

Reason #2. You said you are below 21 on page 14. 27% percent fall into this category.

Reason #3. You said you were married more than twice on page 14.1 “eHarmony also rejects anyone younger than 60 who’s been married more than four times,” according to the Washington Post article. (Their personality test asks these three items only when you’re almost done.)

Reason #4. Your answers don’t add up, i.e., (a) you clicked random answers or (b) for example, you put “1″ under Aloof on the first page, but then checked “Outgoing” on page 6. 9% of rejects fall into this category.

Reason #5. You scored low on the following personality traits — eHarmony calls them dimensions:

* Self-Concept (how you perceive yourself)
* Emotional Status (feeling happy, fulfilled and hopeful)
* Character (honesty and trustworthiness)
* Obstreperousness (the black hole dimension)
* Character (honesty and trustworthiness)
* Emotion Management: Anger (expressing negative emotions constructively)
* Conflict Resolution (resolving issues).
* Family Background (happy childhood and supportiveness of your parents)

This is crazy huh? Well I don’t know many people that are in their 20′s or 30′s that are completely emotionally stable and that haven’t had rough family upbringing. Either a bunch of people are lying on their personality tests or I am hanging out with the wrong crowd.

I found a few other articles of other people that were rejected on Consumerist.com – More eHarmony.com Discrimination Victims

Date.com Information

Site Name: Date.com
Established: February 14, 1997
Member Size: Over 2 Million Active Members
Description: Date.com features millions of quality singles looking for a serious, happy, and healthy relationship. With their large member size, there are more chances to find the type of relationship that you are looking for. Date.com believes that “Every relationships begins with a date.”
Special Features: Chat Room, Instant Messaging, Voice and Video Greeting, Email, Keyword Search, Date Info Webzine & Weekly Newsletter

Date.com Website Review:

Date.com’s registration process is free, simple, and takes only a few minutes. Unlike other dating sites, Date.com gets down to the basics. All you have to do is fill out some information about yourself, such as where you live, what kind of relationship you are looking for and your physical characteristics. Next you have to come up with a creative, eye-catching headline and write a short essay about yourself and who you are looking for. Lastly, Date.com will ask you about your other interests and hobbies. Just three steps is all it takes to begin searching through Date.com’s extensive database.

After registering, you will be taken to Date.com’s member homepage. From here, you can check your IMs, mail, and who viewed your profile. You can also see how many members have joined this week, new members near you, and featured members. To search for other singles, you can specify location, age, interests, and hundreds of other preferences. When you find someone you are interested in, you can show them by clicking “Show Interest.” Date.com also offers professional dating advice in their Date Info Webzine and Weekly Newsletter so you won’t be alone when you need advice.

To communicate with other members via send emails, instant messages, audio/video messages, and join chat rooms, you will have to become a Gold Member.

Summary of Date.com:

Date.com’s goal is to broaden your social horizons so that you have more chances of finding your special someone. With millions of quality singles looking for a variety of relationships, Date.com sure has the potential to help you find the relationship just for you. Registering to become a Date.com member is the first step towards searching for your future date.

Date.com Subscription Plans:

To take advantage of Date.com’s other features you will have to upgrade to Gold Member. The membership fees are:

$24.95 for 1 month
$74.95 for 6 months
$99.95 for 1 year

Date.com is a registered Verisign site with secure credit card forms and SSL encryption.

Company Information:

Date.com is a privately owned company with offices in New York and Florida. It was launched on Valentine’s Day 1997 and, since then, has had 8 million members worldwide.

Date.com
1521 Alton Road #626
Miami Beach, FL 33139

• Have you ever lived with a member of the opposite sex before?

Living together could be totally shocking if you have never lived with a member of the opposite sex before!

• Are you willing to make some adjustments?

As with all roommates, it is important to be flexible.

• Do you have problems in your relationship you think would be fixed by living together?

If you think living together will bring you closer, you are right…it will amplify every aspect of your relationship…the good, the bad, as well as the ugly.

• Have you had thoughts of marrying this person?

If you can honestly say you have considered spending the rest of your life with this person, it could be a really good sign you two are ready to cohabitate.

• Are you thinking about living together solely for economic reasons?

It may be cheaper to live together, but is that worth giving up most of your personal space?

• Do you two having schedules that would conflict or flow easily?

Cross check your schedules…sharing a bathroom at 7 am while trying to get ready for work is not quite part of the Cinderella story, now is it?

• Do either of you have children?

Ok, this is a BIG ONE. I’ll say it again…BIG ONE…proceed with caution if either on of you have kids. Children are very impressionable and need to feel secure in their environment. Think extra hard before merging family households before marriage/life partnership…whatever.

• Have you ever lived on your own?

If you find yourself wanting to move in with your boyfriend/girlfriend because you are afraid to live on your own…hold off. It is important to feel confident in your ability to support yourself or you may find yourself in a relationship for the wrong reason.

• Who is going to cook, clean, do the laundry, and the dishes?

The correct response is…BOTH of you! Just be sure to talk about this before it becomes an issue.

So there you go, take the time and mull over these questions together. By taking the above into consideration, you can get closer to making the right decision about when to live together. Good luck and happy shacking.

By A. Lansing

I was able to try the service free for 24 hours, and after getting to know a nice gentlemen (let’s call him Mr. Kent), ended up buying a subscription.

So far so good, and I especially enjoy the re-assurance that who I am communicating with is truly who they say they are. I highly recommend this site and with their claim of adding thousands of new members every month, there are plenty of wealthy men to go around!

Happy Hunting.

 
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