DAILY UNIVERSE — Oct 18 — Reality TV is going to hit Utah's media world with the first Utah reality TV dating series – "Not on the First Date [NOTFD]." Utah is an interesting place when it comes to dating styles and techniques. Preliminary screenings of "NOTFD" were shown in Provo and Los Angeles.
The full article was originally published at BYU News Net, but is no longer available.
PR NEWSWIRE — Oct 18 — DatingHeadshots (DHS) and SafeDate will provide online daters with dating headshots and background checks. The introductory price starts at $120. "Anyone that posts to an online dating site should be willing to post a recent photo of themselves, with date verification and submit to a background check. They should also demand the same from their potential dates," says Gordon Gooch, President of DatingHeadshots.
Mark Brooks: This is an enticing combination that could get some traction. Online daters will eventually 'get it.' They do indeed need decent photographs, and a background check would help them stand out from the crowd as a safe bet for a date. Merav has done a great job with www.lookbetteronline.com also. DatingHeadShots is the #2 player.
OPW INTERVIEW – Oct. 14, 2005 – Jim Safka just celebrated his first year as CEO of Match.com. Jim came to Match.com from AT&T Wireless, where he served as VP and GM of E-commerce. Prior to that he spent five years at E*TRADE, most recently as VP Marketing, growing the customer base from 200,000 accounts to over four million. He held brand and product management positions at Intuit (Quicken), Warner Bros, and Paramount Pictures, and he has an MBA from Northwestern University and a B.S. Accounting from U.S.C.
Nielsen and Hitwise show Yahoo as being the top online personals site? Is there anything you'd like to say about this?
I believe Yahoo does a terrific job in the category of traffic. However, I think of the online dating category as a subscription business measured in terms of subscribers. If measurement is based on traffic and unique users alone, I don't think that is a clear indicator of who has the most market share. Yahoo! has the #1 site for direct traffic in the U.S (Match.com is #1 globally). However, Match.com has unparalleled distribution through partner sites that also bring people to Match.com; such as AOL and MSN. Here at Match.com we consider such things as: How many paid subscriptions do we have? How many new subscriptions are coming in? How much is each subscriber paying? How many people are visiting and subscribing? Measuring traffic is a great metric if you're running an advertising business. If you look at the number of subscriptions, we have twice as many subscriptions as our competitiors and to me that's the true mark of leadership.
Jupiter Research ran a survey this January and found 35% of online daters were somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with personals sites.
We're constantly doing things to improve our site and to make the member experience more meaningful and successful. In terms of satisfaction, when you take a step back and look at relationships in general and you consider that people have been dating or courting , forever, you'll see that dissatisfaction levels with dating and relationship experiences have always been high throughout history. As the Internet has become part of our daily lives, it expands peoples' possibilities. Now, a lot of people know someone who has met their spouse through Match.com. It's terrific in that respect. At the end of the day, though, people are people, and relationships are relationships. The new medium is a wonderful, fundamentally different way to meet, but it doesn't change the human dynamics.
What kind of paradigm and technology shifts will Match.com and the industry go through in the next 5 to 10 years?
The main thing happening is that online dating is becoming a mainstream way in which people meet people in this generation. It is just the way things work, so there won't be a real adoption curve future generations have to jump over. It will be completely natural for them. Online platforms will be a completely normal experience. It will be much more romantic when integrated voice and video are added. That will make it more natural and exciting. We're looking at location- based services as part of our wireless product, Match.com Mobile. It's interesting when we talk to our customers about these services, but they're not clamoring for it. So we'll see how it goes.
How will Chemistry.com stand distinguished from the likes of eHarmony and TRUE and PerfectMatch?
Chemistry is a breakthrough new product. We have been working at this business and helping people find love for 10 years at Match. It was the original company that started the online dating category, and we've studied single people in great depth. We commissioned what's considered to be the most extensive research identifying the relationship needs, attitudes and behaviors of single people in America, and we've gained important insights from the hundreds of thousands of Match success couples. We worked on Chemistry.com with a world reknowned anthropologist, Helen Fisher, to combine the best of real world interactions with online services. Take the Chemistry Profile. This profile very quickly figures out the types of people we should match you with – people you're most likely to have chemistry with. Users then go through our 1-2-3 Meet process. We do our best to facilitate a face-to-face meeting, because that's the true test of chemistry between two people. After the first meeting, users tell us how it went. We put this feedback back into the matching system, and Chemistry.com takes it into account to help deliver even better matches. We're reinventing this category the way we first did when we started Match.com 10 years ago…
Does a personality profiling system for an online personals site really need to be validated?
I think the personality profiling products need to be evaluated by the market and validated through successful customer experiences. We ask the questions that really matter to consumers. Is it delivering value? Is it facilitating the right kinds of relationships? Are our customers ending up in enduring relationships? For our products, we have a lot of proprietary data and patented technology that our customers tell us is working for them. This information isn't something we would feel comfortable turning over to a third party given the competitive nature of our industry.
What will be Match.com's position on singles events in 2006? You learned a lot from matchlive I'm sure – is there some potential to bring it back to life?
We're very interested in events. We still do events in the UK and as part of broader marketing partnerships. Events have been a terrific learning experience. I know for certain at Match, we're a company that really knows how to get people together, and we are terrific at building software! When it comes to a live events, we need to find the right partner. We would love to pursue singles events in 2006 and beyond! We're all about connecting people, and events are just one more way to do that. Events can also introduce people to online dating that may not otherwise consider it. As the category leader, we have a vested interest in growing the category, because we grow when our category grows.
When a man meets a woman he's interested in for the first time, he has to communicate two things to her, 1. he's interested, 2. he's safe. What is match's position on safety going to be in 2006?
The privacy and security of our members is our #1 priority at Match, and safety has been built into the site from day one. Since 1995, Match.com has used a patented, double-blind email system to help members communicate without revealing their personal contact information until they're ready. We have dating safety tips and advice right on our home page. The online dating category is becoming a part of how America operates — how they meet. People also meet at the office, through family and friends, at restaurants, bars, and so on. No matter how you meet someone or how you were introduced, there are risks. And we believe that a bit of caution and skepticism is appropriate until someone proves themselves trustworthy. The most important thing is common sense and trusting your instincts. The same caution should be used wherever people meet. They should do that online just like any other environment.
Match.com is 10 years old, what would you like to achieve in 2006; or, what does the future hold for match.com?
This is a growth category. Jupiter predicted the online dating category would grow by 9% this year…and yet Match.com grew by 26% in the second quarter (year over year). We're the category leader. We have to continue to innovate. If you stall or trip as the leader of the band, you end up back in the tuba section. We will continue to grow this category by doing 3 things: 1. We will be the #1 player in the online dating category by continuing to innovate; and help build the category to more than $1 billion globally. 2. We believe the customer has all the answers, so we'll keep listening to them. Something that I do and every employee at Match.com does is stay close to the customer. Every person is trained on the customer service system. We're all involved in reviewing profiles, approving photos, and providing customer service. It's a requirement for everyone here at Match, from our receptionist all the way to me, as the CEO. We're all listening to our customers. 3. Continue providing a superior customer experience; we want to open up new possibilities for people and give them the tools they need to connect and build loving, lasting relationships. I get emails from literally hundreds of Match customers every month sharing their success stories; I even get invited to their weddings! We also stay in touch with Match couples that met years ago and are now sharing their baby stories with us. At the end of the day, that's what it's really all about, helping people find someone that they can build a life with.
— Oct 14 — Markus Frind, of Plentyoffish, estimates that scammers operating on Internet dating sites steal at least $100 million a year. Those performing a ruse could be women in Russia asking for money to leave their country; or a Nigerian sending "business proposition" emails. Crooks often use stolen credit cards to join a site, send out messages to other members, wait for responses then sometimes chat for four or five months before asking for money. "It's bad for someone like Yahoo because it reduces the value of their service, it tarnishes their service," says Dave Evans, a consultant to the online dating and social networking industry who also writes a blog. Nelson Rodriguez, CEO of LoveAccess.com, explained that two and a half years ago Nigerian scammers used stolen credit cards to join the site causing so many charge backs (about 1% of all transactions) that it threatened his merchant account with his bank. But he's since blocked Russian and Nigerian IP addresses and cut that rate down by three-quarters. LoveAccess.com, with 3.5 million members, also reviews profiles manually, like its bigger competitors. TRUE created a stir in the industry last summer when it announced a nationwide campaign for legislation to require dating sites to conduct criminal checks of their members. Not everyone agrees with Evans, who estimates that on the majority of dating sites, nearly 10% of all profiles are fake. Mark Brooks, a former executive with Cupid.com, FriendFinder and Friendster, disputes that figure and says the actual dating sites, not their members, are even bigger targets. Fraudsters will set up an affiliate Web site to send traffic and fake members, which earn them a commission that can exceed the price of the monthly membership, says Brooks, who also writes a blog, Online Personals Watch.
Mark Brooks: Of 120 employees onsite at Friendfinder in Palo Alto, CA, over half are dedicated to customer service and the 'abuse team'…which grooms for scammers amongst other things. Smaller sites rely on automated methods for spotting scammers. Larger sites usually apply people resources for checking profiles and dealing with scammers more proactively.
The full article was originally published at NY Daily News, but is no longer available.
YAHOO NEWS — Oct 13 — Helen Fisher, an anthropologist and research professor at Rutgers University's Center for Human Evolutionary Studies, specializes in love, marriage, and gender differences. She's the author of four books, including her most recent, titled Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. She believes that the type of person we are attracted to is hardwired into our neurons, etched by a combination of hormones, brain chemicals, and childhood experiences. As an adviser to new spinoff, Chemistry.com (backed by Match.com), Fisher is trying to quantify that certain something we're all looking for in a mate. "Most people fall in love because they have shared values, but they stay in love because their personalities mesh. Childhood also plays an enormous role in shaping likes and dislikes. I want to know not only what your brain chemistry is, but what was successful for you in the past. What really astonishes me is that I came up with four basic personality types in my research, and these same four types have been described by Plato, Aristotle, Carl Jung, Myers-Briggs." One of the questions on Chemistry.com asks how long your index finger is compared to your ring finger. A person with an index finger shorter than the ring finger will have been exposed to more testosterone while in the womb, and a person with an index finger longer than the ring finger will have had more estrogen. In women, the two fingers are usually equal in length, as measured from the crease nearest the palm to the fingertip. In men, the ring finger tends to be much longer than the index finger.
Mark Brooks: My interview with Jim Safka, Match.com CEO, goes live on OPW on Tuesday.
TODAY ONLINE — Oct 13 — Meetic (13 countries, 14 million users) made a confident debut on the Paris stock exchange. Shares in Meetic showed a 11.21% gain at 1200 GMT. Meetic made a net profit in the first half of 2005 of 2.3 million euros ($2.8 million) and 2.7-million-euro net profit for the whole of 2004. 18,000 new users register daily. Launched only three years ago, Meetic intends to launch a dating service for single young people, as well as a tailored product for the older generation. Meetic posted sales of 18.6 million euros, more than double the figure from the same period of 2004. The rise in the price of shares to 24.50 euros values the whole of the company at about 380 million euros. Meetic is controlled by founder and chief executive Marc Simoncini, who controls 43% of the company and 55% percent of the voting rights.
Mark Brooks: 43%!!! Nice. I’m thinking the drinks are on Marc at the next Euro internet dating convention 😉
ODE MAGAZINE — Oct — There are countless studies looking into traumas, neuroses and disorders. Much less research has been done on joy, pleasure and happiness. Time (February 7, 2005) tries to restore the balance by interviewing experts about the latest studies on what makes people happy. Is it money? Not really. A good education? No. Nor is it a high IQ. Youthfulness? Nope. Marriage? Yes, this is often the case. Friends? Absolutely!
Mark Brooks: Why are you working in the online personals industry? The best/top sites are run by people who have a true, insatiable passion for helping move society towards happiness, one successful relationship at a time. Herb, Abe, Nelson, Eric, Lorna, Duane, Ben, Taek, Meir, Ruben, Jim, Warren, Andrew…
EMARKETER — Oct 13 — The UK online ad sector topped radio last year and is overtaking the outdoor market this year. According to the bi-annual advertising spend study issued by the UK Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Internet advertising expenditures in the UK for the first half of 2005 reached £490.8 million and will go over the £1 billion mark by the end of the year.
The full article was originally published at eMarketer, but is no longer available.
SENIOR JOURNAL — Oct 12 — "Each potential member posts their picture on the web site and they will only be allowed in if the public votes them in. We feel the number one complaint with dating online is the quality of users." It is free to join, if the members accept you. SnubClub.com
The full article was originally published at Senior Journal, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: An interesting spin on Hotornot