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, finance and other issues important to the online dating market. Don't miss our Startups 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.
Check out our full suite of dating site consulting services.
Reader Beth asked about Lavalife Prime, which prompted me to poke around the press release and the website.
Lavalife Prime is a social network that looks like a dating site, starting with the search for both men and women front and center on the home page.
The text on the home page says “Have fun connecting with other like-minded mature singles aged 45 or over” yet the search age starts at 40 with five-year increments ending at 55+. Bunching together everyone over 55 is a complete insult to seniors IMHO, not to mention that fact that at 40 or even 45 is not a boomer age. Once I got over that gaff, I moved on to the signup page.
The first page of the signup form is basic, the next page is where things start to get interesting. You can select from a whole list of templated life experience to start or write your own. You can accompany each of your Life Experience entries with your own pictures, music or video segments. Depending on the entry, you can also choose to add icons that indicate it’s about, Travel, a Restaurant, Sports etc. Reminded me of a more organized Myspace.
I like that Prime gives you the option to enter an audio, video or text Life Experiences. Finally we’re starting to see dating sites build out more expressive profiles, it’s about time!
The forums have less than five posts, which will increase rapidly as more people find out about the site. Typical topics, see the screenshot for details.
Every single person on the site so far is from New England, looks like they are doing a geographic rollout.
I’ll have more on LavaLife Prime as I spend more time pretending to be a Baby Boomer. In the meantime, check it out yourself at http://lavalifeprime.com/.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Personally, I prefer lavalife prime IM aka 1 on 1 chat because it is more like MSN and Yahoo’s Messenger in a way. Also, instead of just seeing names (which I can’t remember anyway) you see members photos.
The bigger bonus is that lavalife prime is totally free!