Online Dating Blog

In the U.S., Maryland is considering changing the law on how marriage brokering web sites (think “Russian brides”) would work. The idea is that there would be much more controls placed around these sites that could in some way be debilitating to them. Recently I was reading a post that claimed that Facebook was saved by one line of text in this bill (HB65).

Facebook (and services like it) are explicitly excluded as the article correctly points out. However, the article goes on to suggest that Match.com and eHarmony were going to be in big trouble because of this legislation. The author of the article has this wrong because neither eHarmony nor Match.com charge based on location or sex which is what the bill speaks to (from the article):

International marriage broker does not include: an organization that does not charge a fee based on gender or country of origin to any party for the services provided.

Match.com cost me exactly the same amount as it did my wife.

While the article chose poor examples, there are dating services that may be affected by this. As an example, Mate1 is free for women but men must pay. I’m sure there are other dating services like this and it sounds like an area where the bill may affect the dating service.

In the grand scheme of things I don’t think that the every-day dating service provider has anything to worry about. We’ll have to wait and see if this affect any sites like my example above. I’m not going to assume this is going to affect sites like Mate1 but, then again, we may see the days of free usage for the women going away.