Last Thursday and Friday I attended the European internet dating convention. Here are the pics. The conference was better attended than last year with 65 attendees and was more heavily attended by European dating companies. Last year half the attendees were American dating companies. Execs from U.S. notables Date.com, Match.com (UK based exec), and adult sites Sexsearch and Iwantu were present. Here’s a smattering of info for you from some of my favorite presentations:
Alex Burmaster is Jupiter Research’s new European online dating analyst
– Germans are most likely to be online daters
– British men are most willing to pay for online dating
– Pre-screening to provide matches is the most popular feature to help find love online
Jan Becker, CEO of German leader Friendscout24
– There are 11 million singles in Germany with 1 in 3 single in big cities
– 43% of European users on the web have used online dating (Statistisches Bundesamt 2005)
– Top sites are be2.de and Parship.de for high end ‘introductory type’ (personality profiling) services
Christian Vollman, CEO of iLove
– iLove had over 2 million uniques in May 2005 according to Nielsen Netratings
– iLove bills mainly via SMS billing
– Their mobile JAVA application has been downloaded 12,000 times so far
Nick Davis, Marketing Director for mobile enabler Mobestar
– Most European providers have recently launched 3G services. Japan is experimenting with 4G
– There are 10 million European 3G users with 18 million expected by 3/06
Eythor Arnaulds is VP at mobile enabler Enpocket
– ‘EDEN’ is Enpocket’s Dating Engine, receives 2 million hits per day, has 22 operators worldwide and powers Match on an exclusive basis in the U.S.
– Airtel in India has 700,000 paying mobile dating members averaging 600 messages per user!
Final Panel Session
– Match is now operating in 32 countries in 19 languages; most significant markets being U.S., Germany and France
– Parship.de is the German leader for personality profiling based services (personality profiling)
– Parship.de charges 179 Euros for 6 months!
– In Europe, the credit card does not rule. One service collects just 30% of it’s payments via credit card
Other notable presentations include
– Frederic Bien, Director of Flirt.com
– Richard Exon, Bus Dev Director for Bartle Bogle Hegarty gave an excellent presentation on TV advertising
Marc Lesnick, the internet dating conference organiser, ran a speed-networking session as an experiment on the second day. We’ll see more speed-networking sessions at future events. Socials in the first evening and a Prague penthouse party on Friday evening completed the event very nicely.
The next iDate is the big one: See you in Miami Feb 1-2.
HINDUSTAN TIMES — Mar 3 — Says The Pew Internet & American Life Project, of the 15 million that started or ended a romantic relationship in the past two years, 15% say the Internet played a crucial role in the event. Of 8 million people that tied the knot, 14% indicated the importance of the Internet. In India there are scores of indigenous dating sites, catering specially to the Indian community. However, most of these are either outdated, or technically inferior to foreign/global sites. i.e. DatingClubIndia.com. Adsmela.com on the other hand, is more like an online version of a newspaper classifieds column, while Indiandating.com stands out with a neat layout and diverse offerings. New communication techniques are getting introduced, and handheld devices are making the entire Net experience easier and more accessible. 
