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Match.com Upgrades Online Dating Service

(onlinedatingmagazine.com - June 17, 2003) Match.com today announced the re-launch of its dating site and social community, offering an array of new features along with broadened dating opportunities. While long-term relationships and marriages were once de rigueur among many of Match.com's millions of members, today people also come to the site seeking new romantic friends, or a casual dating experience. The re-launched site will accommodate the diversity of relationship interests among Match.com's broad base of users and provide new ways to connect, flirt and better manage the online dating experience.

"Since 1995 Match.com has played a pivotal role in introducing and legitimizing online dating, and we commonly did this by focusing on members who found marriage partners on the site," said Tim Sullivan, president of Match.com. "As online dating moves into the mainstream, we will continue to meet the needs of our many members who are seeking marriage or a life partner, while at the same time expanding the scope of the site's consumer value. As Match.com's demographic has been trending younger over time, we recognize many singles aren't necessarily seeking long-term relationships, and the new site will welcome people seeking to date more casually."

New Match.com Site Features

» Profile Questions -- Profiles come to life with more optional open-text questions, allowing members to talk about things like favorite hot spots and books they've recently read. Questions like, "Confess, Tiger: what turns you on ... and off?" and "Brag a little: what's your best feature," are designed to get members closer to the information that leads to the sizzle of attraction and chemistry.

» Dating Options -- While profiles discussing intimate encounters and casual, short-term relationships were once discouraged on Match.com, the new site allows members to discuss a greater variety of relationship types and more freely and genuinely present themselves using photos, videos and profile language.

» Do We Match? -- Members can view a side-by-side comparison of their own matching criteria in relation to someone they find attractive and simultaneously evaluate qualities they do or don't have in common.

» Wink -- As Match.com turns up the heat, members can now let someone know they are interested by winking at them similar to how we flirt with each other in off-line social settings. Once a day, members receive an email of those members who have most recently winked at them. Or members can visit the site to see more profile summaries -- up to 200 -- of people who may have recently sent a wink their way.

» Favorites List -- Allows members to bookmark their favorite members as they browse through search results and return to them later when they're ready to craft their email or instant message.

» Email History -- Destined to be popular with active daters who can be challenged in their efforts to keep track of the many romantic interests they find on the site, this feature provides members with an email log that details all emails sent to and received from other Match.com members, sorted by date or username.

» Send Match Results to a Friend -- Spreading the love, this feature allows members, or even people who are already spoken for but browsing for others in their life, to send an entire page of potential new friends or dates to a single friend who may not yet have checked out the quality inventory on Match.com.

» About Face -- This viral, animated email greeting allows users to choose a talking character (or upload and easily animate your own photo), select a voice type, and then create a personal message for this character to deliver to a friend or potential match.

» Photo Management -- Members can reveal more of themselves by posting as many as 25 photos, and now they can post photos larger in file size than what the site previously accommodated.

The re-launched Match.com is a significantly faster site, according to the developers, providing a more "equitable matching opportunity to better engage visitors and members in the online dating experience."

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