BUSINESS WIRE — Aug 11 — ThinkPartnership continues to ink various letters of intent. The latest Member's Edge, which it is proposing to buy for $6.5 million-half in cash, half in common stock. Member's Edge operates both a Family Discount Network and a Voicemail program.
Mark Brooks: THK owns Cherish.com and other internet dating properties.
BUSINESS WIRE — Aug 10 — Robert Coshland, who served as Senior Producer at Disney's Buena Vista Games division, has left to head start up studio Republik Games, Inc. as CEO. The new company is already at work on a soon-to-be-announced online dating game and a related web community.
Mark Brooks: I'm surprised we haven't seen much connection with gaming on online dating sites yet. It should be a nice retention tool.
SUN-SENTINEL — Aug 10 — A recent press release claimed that 43% of singles have Googled their new hottie before the first date. A press kit from Yahoo! Personals came in a silver cylinder with a bright red heart plastered across the front. In crisp white letters across the red heart, it read: "A New Best Friend? Yahoo! Personals presents dating advice for pet owners." When I removed the lid from the mail canister, it barked at me. I barked back. I mean, really, that was only polite, right?
Mark Brooks: People go nuts over their pets in America. Makes sense to encourage them to go nuts over each other.
Mark Brooks: I'm one degree of separation away from Pierre Omidyar, eBay's Founder, courtesy of the CEO of Meetup.com. VC's abound, CEO's and product managers are all a referral away. Well done Linkedin.
WIRED NEWS — Aug 08 — Cyworld blends homepage building and social networking with other online activities, including Sims-like role-playing. It's owned by South Korea's SK Communications and jumped from 10 million to 13 million users in 2004. A quarter of the country's 48.2 million people have signed up, including 90% of the 24- to 29-year-old age group. Users get their own page, a virtual living room called a minihompy where they can create diaries, publish images, network, host legal background music and more. Members personalize their minihompy with virtual objects they purchase from Cyworld, and enhance it with up to 10 tracks of background music they can buy and play for visitors. 100,000 tracks a day are sold through Cyworld. Cyworld's online stores accounted for 80% of Cyworld's $54 million revenue in 2004, selling such digital goods as virtual furniture, page backgrounds and avatars. The word Cy in Korean means relationship. Cyworld uses real names for users' pages, so if people meet at a party, it's increasingly likely they'll swap Cyworld addresses, not phone numbers. People ask, 'Do you Cy?' Cyworld is spreading across Asia this year. It launched in China in June 2005, hopes to reach Japan in October and has Hong Kong and Taiwan on its to-do list. Cyworld U.S. is slated to launch in early 2006.
The full article was originally published at Wired News, but is no longer available.
PR WEB — Aug 6 — Meta4 Networks, a private label Online Personals service in Asia, announced partnerships with several major website operators in Greater China including ESPN STAR China, HiNet (dominant ISP in Taiwan) and China Times Interactive. Meta4 Networks is focused on operating the back end operations for online personals services and has agreements with 150 partners in 18 countries. RELEASE @ PR WEB
BBC NEWS — Jul 29 — Many of the Dubai's black-shrouded UAE girls say they cannot check out the latest fashions in Zara or sip a smoothie in a cafe without being bombarded with the phone numbers of hopeful admirers. UAE population has increased roughly eightfold since 1975. Traditionally, a young man's first amorous approach to a woman is supposed to be a marriage proposal made by his parents to her parents. Bluetooth is a feature built into some mobile phones which enables the user to transfer data to another wireless device nearby. But crucially, it also enables one person to contact another within a 10 metre radius without knowing their phone number. Ahmed Bin Desmal's friends joke that he is a "Bluetooth king". The 20-year-old says he has used the technology to send notes to girls he sees in public places. "In our country it's very rude to go up and talk to them," he says. "I sent some notes, they liked them – they took my number and they called me. I say nice things – I'm into poems." Saud, 22, met the girl he describes as his girlfriend two years ago on the internet, through instant messaging software. Although they talk on the phone, he has seen her only five or six times, by following her from a distance as she shops with her family in a mall. He says she's beautiful. FULL ARTICLE @ BBC NEWS
DALLAS NEWS — Aug 4 — Rhodes showed up his date revealed she had a picture online that was at least 35 years younger. Terri ended up meeting a man who was married with two children. As dating moves from clicking in bars to clicking a mouse, questions are arising about what online dating services are doing to protect subscribers from deception. The Texas Legislature joined several states that were considering legislation to require disclosure of background checks but the proposed Texas legislation died at the end of the session. The databases that background check companies use are generally out of date by up toa year. There's also difficulty in defining an Internet dating site; i.e. online chat rooms and craigslist classifieds. Proponents like Herb Vest, CEO of True.com, contend that checks will help weed out unsuitable mates. True.com’s screenings result in the rejection of ~ 5% because offelony criminal records, and another 4% who already are married. “It’s not foolproof, but I think it’s very effective,” Vest said. “We’re very serious about enforcing these rules.” Match.com and Yahoo! Personals rely on subscribers to alert them to dishonest members.
NY TIMES– Aug 5 — When Neil Clark Warren and Greg Forgatch, the founders of eHarmony, a popular online dating site, were making the rounds last fall looking to raise venture capital, they weren’t merely seeking money to bankroll a big TV marketing blitz. Rather than wait for eHarmony to go public, which might never happen, or for some bigger company to acquire it, which also might not happen, the company’s founders decided to look for venture capitalists willing to cash out some of the stake they and others held in the company. They had no trouble finding eager venture investors, even though a big chunk of the investment would end up paying for vacation homes and other personal luxuries, rather than building the company. In eHarmony’s case, 116 people benefited financially when the company, which was started in 1999, announced last December that it had raised $110 million. The word within the venture capital community is that less than $30 million of that sum went into the company coffers. Mr. Forgatch said that was inaccurate, but he would provide no specifics. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
BERLIN — July 26 — "iLove Handyflirt" is the first software product that enables simultaneous real-time chatting between up to 9 people, with no need to pay for expensive text messaging. iLove customers can order "iLove Handyflirt" and test the advantages of iLove both online and on their mobile phones. Subscribers create their own profiles, update them as needed, and send their data to the iLove online server. Users can contact any iLove member who is online. Up to 25,000 at peak times. RELEASE @ ILOVE