Online Dating Insider

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Online Dating Insider delivers cutting-edge insight and commentary on all aspects of the online dating industry. Topics include industry news, site reviews, emerging trends, analysis of dating site features, discussion about safety safety, finance and other issues important to the online dating market. Don't miss our Tools & Services directory, useful to anyone running dating or social networking sites. Subscribe to the RSS feed (you can subscribe via email as well). Your comments and suggestions for stories are welcomed.

Have you seen the new Match Platinum service? Real live humans will search, qualify and narrow the field from the “largest circle of deeply impressive women and men ever assembled.� There must be a new copywriter at Match. The copy is, ahem, a bit over the top, even for a premium service.

Interesting that one you join Platinum (actually, you send them your contact information), they point you to Match.com or Chemistry.com. BTW, Chemistry is a current client.

The Platinum site has a blog at Blogger (a Google company). Surprised it’s not on Windows Live Spaces given that Microsoft software drives much of Match (although they have a jumble of systems on the back end from previous acquisitions). Only a few posts on the matchmaker blogs, someone needs to start writing over there, and lose the black background, ugh.

Meet you new Matchmaker friends, Aaron, Amy, Daniella, Deborah and Elizabeth.
Next up, Match Portrait services. Jay Manuel has the Max Headroom look going on. The Voyeurs Guide, part of the Portrait area, has professionally-taken photos of users. Fantastic pictures. The Profile Toolkit is a video-drives tutorial featuring Jay providing profile and photo tips to create your perfect profile. Pretty good execution and the production quality is great.
I can’t seem to get to the services when I’m logged in, does someone from Match want to share how to do this?

This is so far ahead of what other dating sites are doing. Multimedia tutorials, site tours and audio clips are so much more compelling to view than plain text. I hope all sites offer these types of services in the future.

One more thing I noticed this morning is Match taking notice that my profile is hidden and mentioning Chemistry as an option due to the enhanced privacy options. A good use of dynamic use of user settings.

Whew, a lot of new stuff coming out of Texas.

• Chemistry.com Hiring Matchmakers
• Engage.com Launches new dating site
• Chemistry.com is live
• Match subscriber churn and broken friendship profiles
• Match launches Chemistry.com