Dating sites get sued all the time. Match, Yahoo and plenty of free dating sites spend a portion of their time on class action lawsuits and people upset off because they didn’t get a date.

Longtime readers know that I’ll put up with a certain amount of unsavory practices from the usual suspects, but True is the one site, natch, the only site, that gets my blood boiling. The hypocracy of their business practices and marketing is astounding. True, like so many sites, makes a lot of money from people who forget to cancel their account, often making it near impossible to cancel your credit card.

The practice is so widespread, I have to shake my head in wonder. How many dating sites trade long-term growth and success for the short buck? Serves them right in my book.

I have folders full of emails and documents from people who have sued True.com. Nobody send me anything legal-related about any other dating site, but when True is in court, the floodgates open.

The United State District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Dallas) has ruled a class action lawsuit against Irving-based Internet dating service True.com can proceed. In an order signed on December 3, 2008, Judge David C. Godbey denied True.com’s motion for summary judgment on Thomas Wong’s class action lawsuit for (1) violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, (2) unjust enrichment, (3) money had and received, and (4) breach of contract. The order in Thomas Wong v. TrueBeginnings, LLC, Case No. 3:07-cv-01244-N is attached. Internet dating service giant True.com was started by Dallas entrepreneur Herb Vest.

Plaintiff’s attorney is Jon G. Shepherd, Alston & Bird LLP, 220 Ross Avenue, Suite 4650W, Dallas Texas, 214-432-7771.

Now I don’t know a lot about this situation, and for every True.com lawsuit there are 100 more going on in the industry, but that’s what happens when you throw yourself out there trying to look like angels when you’re really the devil. This is the 4th lawsuit I’ve heard about this week, wonder why that is?

Related posts:

1. Class action lawsuit filed against True.com
2. True Catches Second Fellon
3. True Ousts Sexual Predator

AOL Latino and TRUE.com are launching a new dating and relationship area called Amor y Amistad (Love and Friendship). AOL Latino users will have to shell out $59.95 a month for the priviledge of belonging to “the leading scientifically based online dating site.”

Sources tell me that True has a new background check provider and a few other large dating sites are beginning to offer background checks. True won’t be able to say they are the only site offering checks for much longer.

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Is True going to send out a press release every time they catch a felon? What about suing married men? They could have their own channel on PR Newswire.

True, the leading scientifically based online relationship service, announced earlier today that it filed a civil lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas against a convicted felon and registered sex offender in Florida for misrepresenting his felony status when attempting to access TRUE’s members.

A top five dating site (in terms of traffic) gets millions of visitors a month and only two are convicted felons? If felon/married, then sue, if not felon/married, let through the door. Am I missing something?

They should hire Chris Hansen and do a show called “To Catch a True Predator.” Hansen would sit in his usual spot in a suburban living room in middle America and an endless stream of people would come walking in the door and he would let all of them go. There is a SNL skit in the making.

Don’t get me wrong, of course it’s important to keep people safe on dating sites. It’s the way companies go about it and the hypocrisy involved in the process that bothere me to no end. If you really want to see people get nailed, go watch Cheaters.

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Fresh from the comments, Brandon at Net Choice says:

Today the Illinois legislature did what the Florida legislature wouldn’t do – crush a bad online dating bill in committee.

I had a premonition that things would go well in Springfield. Hey, it’s the Land of Lincoln and Illinois is the state where I was born!

But superstitions aside, the members of a House Judiciary Committee really carried the day here with their probing questions and clued-in skepticism about HB 563, the Internet Dating Disclosure and Safety Awareness Act.

Thanks Brandon. Leave your name and a link to your blog next time.

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Welcome visitors from the New York Times. Readers of this blog know I have a good deal of contempt for True.com, one of the most talked about online dating sites in recent years. True, which attracted 3.8 million visitors last month and boasts 16 million members, spent $52.2 million over the first 11 months of last year on Web ads, more than double the amount its rivals spent online.

The NY Times has written an article about True, “Hot but Virtuous Is an Unlikely Match for an Online Dating Service.” I was quoted towards the end of the article. Herb Vest, True’s founder, admits, among other things, that the dating site sends out fake winks to members, attempting to justify the feature as an icebreaker for those too shy to initiate conversation.

Dan Consiglio, a 49-year-old engineer from Vancouver, Wash., said he received dozens of winks from women after signing up for True, and responded to many of them. He got only one response, from a woman who kindly informed him that she had not, in fact, winked at him.

I’m glad Vest owned up to some of the company’s most questionable practices, but remain frustrated that True can be so irresponsible and cruel to members and still make so much money.

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A mixed bag of news this week for True.com.

Hitwise and other sites are reporting that true.com traffic doubled in the second week of feb. True now has more unique visitors per month than singlesnet and match.com combined which supposidly are #2 and #3. New myspace campaign ?
Paradigm Shift

The (Florida) House has quite a number of committees meeting today; however, most of the bills are really nothing special. The Environment and Natural Resourcs Council will consider HB 531 by Rep. Kevin Ambler, which requires online dating services to provide a “dating safety�? disclosure, including whether the site conducts backround checks on its members. The bill is being pushed by True.com, a site that conducts background to weed out married people and criminals.

The State of Sunshine. Spyware Ad Injectors
Deskwizz/Searchingbooth, Right Media and Ad-Flow (Rydium) Injecting various ads into True.com

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I’m seeing more and more Myspace profiles like this one of a young woman who says:

Friends keep asking me to take revealing pics of myself. I’ve taken some but myspace won’t let us post nude pics. If you want to see my revealing ones, I’ve uploaded a ton of pics to my free profile here.

Here goes to the url http://www.wintersux.com/hotty/ which resolves to the True.com signup page. I hope True is making money hand over fist on advertising because there sure ain’t nobody dating on the site.

This must be quite embarrassing to Psychology Today, which endorses True.

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This is hilarious. Ze Frank, who hosts a great daily videoblog, has a segment about the True.com video ads that are showing up in places like Myspace. Watch him chat back and forth with the video ad, thinking the girls in the ads are actually chatting live with him, gave me a big chuckle. Ze is totally in the League of Awesomeness (if you know the show you get the reference).

I’m still bummed that Match.com tried to stoop to True’s level but blatantly ripping off the fake videochat concept, especially when they spend a lot of time touting how much grey hair their members have.

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According to Alex Mindlin at the New York Times (reg req’d), men and women are about evenly balanced at major dating sites, it’s the niche sites where women often outnumber the men.

I would like to know how Hitwise knows if visitors are men or women. Too bad they didn’t list the breakout of the sexes for True.com, Mate1 and some of the other dating sites which rely on scantily-clad women in their advertising.

Here are the top 10 Dating Industry search terms for January 2007.

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I’m in New York today, taking the day to enjoy the city after a day with clients. I love the city (lived here in tthe mid 90′s) but I can’t wait to get back to Boston.

Adrants writes about new True.com ads that at first glance make you think that men and dogs go together better than men and women.

In other dating site news, it turns out that over 300 people have gotten married on PlentyofFish. I would think that for the hundreds of thousands of dollars Markus makes each month that at least a few people would hook up on his site. 400k people log in every day, for the past few years, and only 300 people got hitched. It’s a start, but that’s nothing compared to other major dating sites like eHarmony which take 90 people off the market every day on average.

Mark Brooks at Online Personals Watch is providing media relations services to PoF. We’ll see if there are any newspapers out there that actually write more than Living Arts puff pieces about online dating. My Yahoo news feed for dating news is practically unusable, the same old small town papers writing the same old stories from 2005. The business and technology journals are better, but not by much.

Hopefully there will be some noteworthy news in the coming weeks.

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