CBS NEWS — Apr 14 — Vladimir is an undercover detective hunting down Russian women who bill themselves online as brides. "They suck out $3,000 to $5,000, then simply disappear," he says. He helps clients find out if their online love is real or an Internet phantom. "I’m a little surprised at the sheer volume – three to four a day is pretty significant and you have to bear in mind that we’re probably not receiving all of the complaints," says James Pettit, the U.S. Consul General in Moscow. "One big warning, do not send money for visa and tickets," says Garrett. FULL ARTICLE @ CBS NEWS
Month: April 2005
Internet Scam that Led to Heartbreak
ARIZONA REPUBLIC — Apr 15 — The Russian brunette he met online appeared to be everything Steven Coffman was looking for. He had known her for less than two months. But he was ready to propose. Coffman arranged a visit to the US for the woman, who said her name was Elena. The cost was $2,000, which he thought would cover her visa and travel costs. Then the day came. Coffman went to Sky Harbor Airport. The Russian beauty didn’t ever arrive. "I never thought I could get fooled by something like this," Coffman said. "I know now I was naive.
Mark Brooks: Perhaps he could have flown to Russia and met her…and been duped by the Russian mob. Best to play local. Or, if you do want to date long distance, be mentally prepared to turn your visit to a distant love into a lone holiday.
Social Butterflies Flock to Internet Friend Sites
TELEGRAPH — Apr 10 — Friendster was the first big hit. But when your mom gets her own Friendster profile, you know it’s time to move on. Enter Myspace, Habbohotel, Linkedin, Jewster, Orkut and Tickle. Danah Boyd, a UC Berkeley doctoral candidate (online communities) says such sites connected her to like-minded people when she was an isolated teen. Judith Meskill, editor of the Social Software Weblog recently met someone she had been corresponding with online. “I showed up and, plop, in the middle of the grassy knoll was a guy sitting in a wheelchair and flailing like he had no motor control. He was wearing a football helmet, with a bent straw that he would use to punch out words on a Ouija-board-size keyboard. He was laughing; it was amazing. We were both laughing. I never knew it (from chatting with him online).” Says Tickle.com CEO James Currier: “People are reaching out for richer interaction. In your real life, you probably only interact with 100 people. On the Internet, you find ones most like you and that have same interests as you.” Flickr.com combines blogging, social networking and photo sharing. On Last.fm, users create a profile with a list of songs, and the Web site connects users with similar musical tastes. “Of course it’s addictive,” Boyd says of these social Web sites. “It plays into human nature.”
The full article was originally published at Nashua Telegraph, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Flickr was just bought by Yahoo. Fotolog.net is a popular competitor.
Approval of True.com Legislation in Florida
PRNEWSWIRE — Apr 14 — The House Criminal Justice Committee voted 5-to-2 in favor of HB 1035, and members of the Senate Commerce and Consumer Services Committee voted 6-to-2 in support of SB 1768. The bills would require providers of online dating services to disclose if they do or do not conduct criminal background checks on their clients. When True first applied the background checks to their database, True.com screened out 11% of its site applicants. In Florida alone, there were more than 475 instances where site applicants were found to have sexual offenses felony convictions or provided false or inaccurate information. "We have an opportunity to help Florida's users of online dating services. They have a right to know if criminal background checks are or are not being conducted on members they are talking to online and possibly meeting," said HB1035's sponsor Representative Kevin Ambler. "This disclosure requirement is an important public safety measure that will help safeguard honest Floridians from dangerous sexual predators and convicted felons looking for potential victims." The legislation further requires firms who do run criminal background checks to disclose that the screening is not fool-proof and also to provide consumers with safer dating tips.
Mark Brooks: The legislation still needs to get past another committee stage before final vote. ConfirmID was an early attempt at ID confirmation by FriendFinder. It bombed. Users won't pay for background checks en masse unless it is incorporated into standard service offerings. When a man is interested in a woman he needs to communicate… a. he's interested b. he's safe. On the one hand, the more online dating can improve over the real world (i.e. meeting someone at a bar), the better the industry will do. On the other hand, background checks are a tough pill to swallow, especially when rammed down the industry's throat with legislation. True.com's CEO has had practice at driving through legislation. HD Vest was based on an illegal business model. Herb Vest made it legal. This juggernaut will not stop. Time to take the background checks legislation more seriously.
Will Meetup Users Pay or Leave?
BUSINESS WEEK — Apr 13 — Meetup made its reputation when Howard Dean backers used the meeting site to form local groups. The number of "meetups" has jumped 50% from a year ago, to more than 2,400 a week. Meetup told its 2 million members that it's time for their groups to pay up. Organizers of each Meetup group, of which there are currently 54,000, are to pay $19 a month, or $9 a month for existing groups. Founder and CEO Scott Heiferman says he hopes the move will help the 29-person NYC company turn a profit by yearend. Friendster, with 14 million registered users, hopes to make money from advertisements and corporate sponsorships. LinkedIn launched a for-pay service, charging up to $95 a month for job listings. As Heiferman says bluntly: "Meetup doesn't deserve to continue if it's not creating value."
The full article was originally published at BusinessWeek, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: There are too many dead groups on MeetUp. Charging a nominal fee will ultimately enrich the user experience. Good move.
Comcast’s Dating On Demand:
TV PREDICTIONS — Apr 15 — Dating on Demand can be found on Comcast's Video On Demand lineup and permits singles to post two-minute videos explaining what they are looking for in a mate. If a Comcast viewer likes what he or she sees, they can go to DatingOnDemand.com and send a message. Posting a video is free and includes a six-month membership to DatingonDemand.com and its sister site, HurryDate. The feature is difficult to use, out of date and lacking in willing participants. There were only 32 videos posted on Comcast's system in the Washington, D.C. area as of yesterday. I have to say that this is the worst execution of a new TV technology feature I've ever seen. Comcast does not promote Dating on Demand anywhere on the system. If you didn't know it existed, you would never find it. Despite the initial problems, Comcast's Dating on Demand has great potential. Comcast first needs to give Dating on Demand a total makeover.
Mark Brooks: Is Hurrydate getting stiffed?
Prying Eyes are Everywhere
USA TODAY — Apr 14 — A growing amount of free personal information is so easy to find online that many Internet regulars don’t think of it as spying. Plug a name into Google and you have an instant background check of your best friend, your brother-in-law or that guy or gal you met last night at a bar. "You can bug people the way spy agencies used to do 20 years ago – really cheap now," says Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. But now, idle curiosity prompts many Net users to nonchalantly do "soft surveillance" – plugging a name into a search engine to see what turns up. "Everyone does it," says James Hong of San Francisco, founder of online dating and photo-rating Web site Hot or Not. "I do it on new employees; I do it if I meet a cute girl, and I want to know more. Maybe I’m crazy, but who doesn’t do it?
Online Dating May Not Be A Perfect Marriage Match
NBC5 — Apr 13 — "Well, there are a lot of things that online dating does well," said Mark Thompson of WeAttract.com. "Arranging marriages is not one of them. You see lots of happy couples. But what they're not going to tell you is that out of about 2,000 people they match up, only one couple is actually going to get married." Advertisements, some say, are in need of regulation. "These companies should be following the FTC guidelines for advertising," said Glenn Hutchinson, also of WeAttract.com. "If they're really prominently showing couples that have gotten married through their site, then they need to be very candid about how frequently that occurs and how many users actually find those happy marriages." Many Web sites do not share success rates.
The full article was originally published at NBC5, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Online dating holds great promise. The sites that deliver will prosper. The sites that do not will pull the rest of us down. Most sites do deliver. The industry just needs to do a better job of reporting success stories.
IAC/Match – Peripatetic Diller
DAILY RECORD / BUSINESS WEEK — Apr 13 — Diller was born in San Francisco, the son of a wealthy real-estate developer, and he was not a good student. At Beverly Hills High, he was fired from the newspaper for his frequent absences. At age 19, he dropped out of UCLA. Why had he and so many other CEOs, such as Bill Gates, not graduated? "We’re nonconformists. We’re impatient. I didn’t want to say yes in a room at a desk for four years." Diller has gone from the mailroom of the William Morris Agency to ABC to chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures ("Raiders of the Lost Ark") to the Fox Broadcasting under Rupert Murdoch. Sometimes Diller had trouble expressing himself and sometimes he succumbed to clichéish thinking and occasionally even contradicted himself. But he clearly is very intelligent. His comments: ON MURDOCH: "I’m a frightened Tweetiecat compared to him. He’s real savvy. He can take an opportunity and make it happen." ON ONLINE DATING: "For certain people, it’s a better way than randomly meeting someone across a room. It’s magical. It’s a great service. It’s led to an incredible number of marriages." "Would he consider launching divorce.com? the moderator asked facetiously. No, but "We’re working on conflict resolution." ON JACK WELCH (consultant to IAC): "He’s the greatest manager I know, without question – with his experience, his spirit and his energy. He keeps yelling at me, telling me what to do. He’s taught me to have a nonbureaucratic infrastructure and make it work. When I’m in a room with my colleagues, he’s the CEO. ON SELLING EXPEDIA: It’s so large, it has been dominating the company. ON WHY HIS COMPANIES HAVE HIGH TURNOVER: "I believe in conflict. I like people arguing passionately about what they think is true – when there isn’t enough information. Some people don’t like that atmosphere – noisy and harsh. I’m not changing it."
ConservativeMatch Co-Hosts Leadership Conference Reception
BUSINESS WIRE — Apr 13 — ConservativeMatch and Young Conservatives of Pennsylvania are co-hosting a reception at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference on April 15th.
Mark Brooks: ConservativeMatch is enjoying PR exposure because of it's focus. Tagline; 'sweethearts not bleeding hearts.'