Match.com will begin screening its users against the national sex offender registry after a woman filed a lawsuit against the company saying she had been assaulted by someone she met through the popular online dating site. Match.com President Mandy Ginsberg said the company had considered screenings for years, but the fact that they were historically unreliable lead them to decide against it. “We want to stress that while these checks may help in certain instances, they remain highly flawed, and it is critical that this effort does not provide a false sense of security to our members", she said. Match said it expected to be able to implement the policy in 60 to 90 days.

See full article at Washington Post

This is MAJOR news for the online dating industry! While many paid dating sites have been considering background checks for nearly 7 years, the fact that Match.com has stepped up with this offer will set the new standard for online dating. Other dating sites will have to step up if they wish to remain competitive. Free dating sites and social networks won’t be offering background checks which could make them a lot less popular. We all know in order for dating sites to thrive, they have to have women and lots of them – Women will ultimately go where they feel safe.

What do you think? Good move? Do you think this will have a major impact on the online dating industry as a whole?

Match.com is offering a FREE 3 Day trial to test out their service. If you’ve been thinking about trying online dating, this is a great place to begin. Match.com is one of the best there is for online dating. The service is legitimate, they’ve been around for a long time so they have a great handle on the dating business and the results could be real for you. This offer won’t last forever, take a chance and give it a try.

Maybe you’ll find just what your looking for!

WASHINGTON POST – Apr 25 – More than twice as many couples who married last year met through online dating services than at a club or social event, according to a new survey by Match.com.

The survey found that 17% of those who married in the past three years met online, making it the third-most-frequent method of introduction, behind meeting through friends, at work or school.

A Harris Interactive poll sponsored by eHarmony found that only 9% of couples married that year were introduced through such services. (The Harris study claims that 2% of recently married American couples met through eHarmony.)

Full story @ Washington Post

You’d be hard pressed to find one person who doesn’t know someone who met their partner online. Just a quick message to my friends on Facebook returned overwhelming response as to how many of them met their spouse online or knew someone who did.

It’s growing more and more common and as experiences yield proper tips and suggestions to online dating habits, I think more and more people are willing to take that plunge.

History has shown that in times of crisis, whether it’s a plunge in the stock market, a devastating earthquake, hurricane Katrina, or something as epic as September 11th, people tend to turn to dating sites in times of need.

The stock market crash of 1998 is a perfect example of this. Some dating sites reported as much as three times as many new memberships than usual on September 29th when the stock market fell 700 points. It was the best single day in their entire history. According to Gian Gonzaga, senior research scientist at eHarmony, "It makes a lot of sense. People seek out companionship in times of stress. Studies repeatedly show that being in a relationship can help a person’s psychological and physical health."

Online dating services like PerfectMatch.com and Match.com say that the bad economy is resulting in increased growth and paid memberships for people looking for love.  Match.com announced this month that November was its strongest month for memberships in more than seven years.

"During these trying times, people are looking for hope in their inbox and they are finding it on Match.com," says Thomas Enraght-Moony, CEO of Match.com.

Match.com is one of the largest online dating services, with more than 15 million current members.

During the mid-summer to early fall time of increasingly high gas prices, mass layoffs, and banking scandals, online dating service PerfectMatch saw a 47% increase in memberships for its dating service.

A poll done by Opinion Research Corp. also found that younger, single people who were stressed about the economy and its impact were more likely to seek out a relationship.

As an industry, no one hopes for bad things to happen, but in the end, it is good for the bottom line.

Copenda, the revolutionary social people search engine that allows people to search for their soul mate or new friends in social networks and dating web sites. Their complex algorithms crawl semi-structured data from multiple social networks and online dating sites such as Myspace, Bebo, Facebook, hi5, friendster, match, plentyoffish and more.

More and more people are using the web to meet new people and communicate with their friends. The main places people use to meet new friends or look for dating are social networks and online dating sites.

One of the major problems in meeting new people in social networks is that users need to scan and dive deeply into the profiles to initiate a connection for relationships or dating. Although many users use social networks for dating purposes, the social network user experience is not suited for this purpose. Online dating sites, on the other hand, are designed for this purpose but suffer from low status among the younger generation.

Copenda uniquely integrates an innovative user interface with dating site features such as personality search and social network features such as ranking, comments and tagging.

Check it out!  What have you go to lose?  If Copenda can make like a little easier by pulling all your online accounts into one convenient location for dating, this could be quite a time saver for you.

No doubt about it – times are tough. Online dating sites are flooded with singles who have found themselves victims of tough economic times – but does that make them any less loveable?

According to a recent survey by Match.com, of 2,700 members, 71 percent said they would still date someone who just lost their job.

If you find yourself in a transitional period in your life and in between jobs, perhaps investing solid time in a proven dating site like eHarmony.com might just give purpose to your professional downtime and a leg up on your love life.