Month: November 2005

The Right One and Together Dating Strong Team

Posted on November 15, 2005

TogetherdatingI-NEWSWIRE — Nov 13 — The Right One and Together Dating are bricks and mortar matching services that have joined forces.  For more than 30 years, The Right One and Together have catered to over 125,000 members.  With more than 500 employees, The Right One and Together gross more than $45 million a year in Revenue and 60 locations throughout North America. 

Mark Brooks: elove is their online service.  Not much in the way of traffic. Real world matchmaking services offer good service, are pricey and offer limited choice.  Online dating services offer limited service, are cheap and offer insane amounts of choice.  When will these two worlds meet?  Who will get it right?  I run http://www.ace-club.com which is the 'Bay Area's premier social club' and a long term experiment I started in 1998.  I had hoped to pair an events site/concept up with Friendster when I worked there in 2003, alas, the project was slated.  I made an attempt in 2004 by bringing the world's largest speed dating service under Cupid's wing.  Real world matchmaking and events services and online dating services have to find a way to get along.

Alt.com Personal Ads for Wide Range of Sexual Fetishes

Posted on November 15, 2005

AltWALL STREET NEWS CAST — Nov 13 — The alternative sites narrow their focus to create like-minded “communities” devoted to an individual sexual practice or a certain demographics and fetishes.   Nothing seems to be to taboo at ALT.com.  You will find someone wild and ready to play in an adult way here, such as an article on 75 ways to please your lover and more.  Alt.com has 250,000+ members world-wide. 

Mark Brooks: I used to work for FriendFinder.  There are actually some taboo's that their abuse team grooms the site for, but Alt is indeed the most extreme of their communities. Their 'adult' communities(AdultFriendFinder, Alt, OutPersonals) do a good job of helping people match on their not so mainstream sexual preferences.  Sexsearch is a newer entrant that is stealing some of AdultFriendFinder's thunder and is approaching 5 million members.  This important segment demands not to be ignored. However, I've yet to see these sites mentioned/recognised in the mainstream press.  Everyone likes sex, right?  Some people have more specific preferences.  Generally these more explicit, sexually oriented sites are regarded as 'casual,' but many couples have married after meeting their match on these sites.  They are the antithesis of the more altruistic relationship sites.  Except for TRUE which recently launched their 'Sexploration' which is a very nice adaptive 'lite' sexual preferences test. I'm a maverick apparently.  'Are you mild or wild?'  

An Innovative Way to Network Online

Posted on November 15, 2005

ImeemFINANCIAL EXPRESS — Nov 12 — Imeem is a free software tool/web service.  "Meems" are virtual meeting places or groups within imeem that users can design and others can join. A form of P2P (peer-to-peer) technology blends the social networking with instant messaging, blogging (creating an online diary), online file sharing and desktop search into a single package.  Members seek out others with similar interests and build meems which remain on a user's hard drive rather than being uploaded to a third-party server.  Users create their own imeem identity, building their imeem network by sending friends and colleagues Invitations.  Contacts appear in a "buddy list." Users can also see their friends "buddy lists."  Corporate users could use the software to create secure collaborative networks. 

The full article was originally published at Financial Express, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Founded by a Stanford Computer Science PhD.  Anyone tried it yet? 

Megafriends.com Allows Users to See Common Interests

Posted on November 15, 2005

MegafriendsPRWEB — Nov 11 — Megafriends added ‘mySpots’ to allow members to stop searching through wide databases and instead place their search for people with things they have in common as the main search criteria so people can meet around common activities. Member interests are posted on that member’s profile, and common interests with another member are highlighted to easily show things members have in common.  RELEASE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: Megafriends has also implemented the anonymous phone calling service from Phone Matrix.

Google Ponders Online Classifieds

Posted on November 14, 2005

Google_2INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY — Nov 10 — Google has revealed it will move into the billion-dollar market for online classified ads. That revelation comes at a time when its chief rival, Yahoo is losing ground – at least in terms of visitor traffic – in its classifieds business.  In September, Yahoo’s classified pages attracted 573,000 unique visitors, down 42% from September 2004 per comScore.  Yahoo is the No. 1 site on the Web, with 169 million unique visitors in September. Google ranks No. 4, at 87 million.  U.S. online classified revenue is expected to jump to $3.6 billion in 2010 from $1.8 billion last year, says Jupiter.  Craigslist is tiptoeing ever so slowly into the for-fee arena. The company charges a fee only for job listings in the San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York markets. Craigslist has considered charging for real estate listings.

The full article was originally published at Investors Weekly, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Craigslist is one of the thorns in Google and Yahoo‘s side. See Craigslist growth over the last 2 years …  Alexa Rank

Man Accused of Raping Woman He Met Through Dating Service

Posted on November 14, 2005

YAHOO NEWS — Nov 10 — A 28-year-old Milwaukee man is accused of raping a Dodge County woman he met through a telephone dating service. The 19-year-old woman agreed to meet the man at a Fox Lake convenience store last month, but then decided she didn’t want to date him. Police said after she returned home, the man, Elisha Ford, and his friend entered her home and raped her at knifepoint. Ford was arrested last weekend in Milwaukee. Police said he used a fake name in his phone conversations leading up to the assault. Police are still seeking the second suspect. The Dodge County sheriff told 12 News the two were caught in a similar crime five years ago near Medford. "I find it highly unlikely that these two involved in 2000 would have spanned five years and escalated to such a violent nature of an attack as they did on this young woman, that they have not been involved in something similar to this over the course of these past five years," Dodge County Sheriff Todd Nehls said he fears there could be more victims and encourages them to come forward. "Technology has really forced those in law enforcement to change the way we look at things, and I’m a very strong advocate of educating adults and children alike. Something like this shouldn’t have happened," Nehls said.

Out-of-Court Settlement Reached in Personals Lawsuit

Posted on November 14, 2005

Telepublishing_internationalAAN — Nov 9 — Tele-Publishing International and Sutcliffe Associates have reached an out-of-court settlement, putting an end to TPI's patent infringement lawsuit against Sutcliffe who will license TPI's patents and other intellectual property.  The TPI patents pertain to various aspects of matching users based on the characteristics and criteria they provide and the integration of interactive voice and online technologies. 

The full article was originally published at AAN, but is no longer available.

Friendster Emailing Overture Not Endearing to All

Posted on November 14, 2005

FriendsterCNET — Nov 10 — Friendster dug deep into its network to pull out the e-mail addresses of people who didn't initially respond to friends' invites to join the online social network a year or more ago.  The e-mails implied they were coming from a friend when, in fact, they were being sent by the company. The e-mails went out during the last two weeks.  "I could think of about 10 different ways for Friendster to improve itself, but spamming those who didn't care to join in the first place isn't one of them," said Adam Finley, who publishes the blog AdJab. Friendster spokesman Jeff Roberto called this a misconception. "We're not in the business of spamming," he said. The campaign, he added, was a one-time mailing to people who were once invited but never joined the network.  The e-mail was designed to communicate with people who may have missed invites because of technical difficulties on the site, or may not know about new features, such as blogs, video and file sharing.

The full article was originally published at CNet, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Friendster is pulling out the stops to regain lost ground.

Adult Personals Focus on Casual Encounters and Big Bucks

Posted on November 9, 2005

FriendfindercomWALL STREET NEWS CAST — Nov 7 — The “naughty niches” has become a major matchmaking market. And like its straight-arrow sibling, it is a very profitable one.  The reason for the success is simple: The sites are more important to them because their tastes are harder to match.  “When we started Friendfinder early in 1996, we found a lot of guys were posting profiles that were more risqué than we wanted on the site,” recalls Andrew Conru, Founder of Friendfinder. “We started out deleting them, but then we recognized the opportunity and started Adultfriendfinder.”  ComScore Media Metrix said the site drew 2,321,000 unique visitors in July 2002. That dwarfs the 788,000 that the generalized Friendfinder attracted that month.

Mark Brooks: According to Alexa, for adult a.k.a. casual dating sites, Adultfriendfinder.com is #1, Alt.com is #2 and Sexsearch.com is #3

Dating Turns Cerebral with ‘Intellidating’

Posted on November 9, 2005

Independent_onlineINDEPENDENT ONLINE — Nov 8 — Debating societies, art classes and poetry readings, all are thriving in the British capital as dating turns cerebral.  Debates and poetry readings are fast becoming London's most romantic nights out.  One entrepreneur acting on the trend is Ginny Greenwood, whose Futures Squared club aims at cash-rich, time-poor singles.  Intelligence Squared was set up to make debating sexy. So far every debate they have organised, at the Royal Geographical Society, has sold out in advance.  So cerebral daters out for rarefied seduction are treated to mind-stretching debates like "Better rough justice than another 9/11" and "The rise of China spells the decline of the West." 

The full article was originally published at IOL, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: PlanetOut, Nerve, Community Connect's Blackplanet/AsianAvenue/Migente all include content which helps to fire up neurons and cerebral connections.