Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

Online Dating For People With Sexually Transmitted Infections

BBC - Mar 28 - Some sites, such as H-YPE or H-Date, are aimed specifically at people with the most common types of incurable STIs, such as herpes and HPV. Others, such as PositiveSingles - which has 30K members in the UK, accumulating 100K new members last year worldwide - and DatePositive, which has ~ 6K profiles, allow users to search for people with almost any sexually transmitted infection.The rise in these dating sites coincides with increasing rates of STIs. There was a 2% UK rise in new cases from 2010-2011, according to the Health Protection Agency's latest statistics. On most sites, users can write as much or as little about their condition as they like. As with any relationship, shared experiences can also lead to shared understanding.

by Tom Heyden
See full article at BBC

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Hivmatch.co.uk Exaggerates Member Numbers

DATE POSITIVE - Dec 10 - Datepositive.net was alerted to a statement on hivmatch’s website claiming that it has five times as many members compared to other websites. To investigate, they took out a membership on hivmatch.co.uk and discovered that their site has ~1000 members presumably all with HIV. Datepositive.net has ~4000 members, and more than 1600 have HIV. FULL ARTICLE @ DATE POSITIVE

Mark Brooks: Alexa shows a 34k traffic rank in the UK for Datepositive.net, while HIVMatch.co.uk is unranked.

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iDating For STI Sufferers

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK -- Nov 9 -- New dating websites are springing up designed to give a choice to single people with STIs. Along with their favourite films and hair colour, users now also list their condition. 'We set up our site in September 2006, says the co-founder of datepositive.net. 'But we had no idea how much demand there was. Within hours of a small story appearing in a newspaper, the website went crazy. Now we have 3,000 members and it's growing all the time.' FULL ARTICLE @ TELEGRAPH.CO.UK