The full article was originally published at ZDNet News, but is no longer available.
Month: December 2005
Online Dating Experiences Major Surge
Mark Brooks: Europe is experiencing a similar online dating to the USA boom three years ago.
Man Dates Gal on Internet — Turns out She’s his Mother
YAHOO ENTERTAINMENT — Dec 9 — Skirt-chasing playboy Daniel Anceneaux spent weeks talking with a sensual woman on the Internet before arranging a romantic rendezvous at a remote beach — and discovering that his on-line sweetie of six months was his own mother! "I walked out on that dark beach thinking I was going to hook up with the girl of my dreams," the rattled bachelor later admitted. "And there she was, wearing white shorts and a pink tank top, just like she’d said she would. "But when I got close, she turned around — and we both got the shock of our lives. Mom called herself Sweet Juliette and I called myself The Prince of Pleasure, and unfortunately, neither one of us had any idea who the other was," said flabbergasted Daniel.
What’s Old is New Again: Matchmakers
PR NEWSWIRE — Dec 19 — Great Date Now is a professional matchmaking service in New York and Connecticut. Personalized introductions from a matchmaker who cares is the preferred method of dating for today's busy professional. Services include interviewing and screening all prospective clients, selecting appropriate potential partners, arranging dates, gathering client feedback, and then refining the search.
Mark Brooks: I'd love to see more service unisons between real world matchmakers and online dating companies. There's a natural affinity here. Who will figure it out first?
Think Partnership to Acquire Litmus Media
YAHOO FINANCE — Dec 19 — Litmus Media marketing platform detects and protects against click fraud, increasing click-to-transaction conversion ratios and maximizing search marketing return on investment. Litmus has also developed and implemented a highly effective patent-pending abandoned shopping cart recovery technology called Second Bite, which increases sales for online retailers. The Company expects Litmus to add more than $4 million of pre-tax income to the Company during 2006. Purchase price is $6.5 million in cash and $6.5 million stock and earnout payments for shareholders up to a maximum aggregate of $21 million.
Mark Brooks: Think Partnership bought Vintacom/Relationship Exchange recently and also owns Cherish.com and other online dating properties.
Is it Love or a Lie?
MIAMI HERALD — Dec 18 — Beth, a leggy brunette and successful lawyer who lives in Dallas, says she enjoys clubbing and rollerblading. But some of these women don't even exist according to a Coral Springs businessman who alleges that Yahoo Personals posts fictitious profiles, date bait. Lawmakers in Texas, Virginia, Michigan, California and Florida are weighing legislation that could make it a crime to misrepresent oneself on a dating site, or fail to inform consumers that they offer background screening for their customers. Analysts say matchmaking sites believe that they can patrol themselves. Most of them use 'report this profile' options to report problem subscribers to a team of 'abuse' monitors who look for risqué photographs, insincere profiles, and users looking for a place to advertise their own business. Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch, concedes that there is endless potential for abusing the rules. But, he said, that doesn't mean the site owners should be subject to government monitoring. He calls the suits against Match and Yahoo 'ridiculous.' 'If you were sitting in a product development meeting [at Match or Yahoo] and said, 'Hey, let's just have someone do that,' (send bogus emails), that person would be fired,' Brooks said.
Del.icio.us Users Debate Yahoo’s Buy
IDG NEWS SERVICE — Dec 14 — Users have posted hundreds of comments to the blog entry on which Del.icio.us founder and CEO Joshua Schachter announced the Yahoo acquisition last Friday. Reactions range from users who are absolutely elated to those who are irreparably distraught. The service lets its over 200,000 registered users save links to their favorite Web pages on a personal page hosted by Del.icio.us, label the links with descriptive tags and share their lists with other users. Del.icio.us, founded in September 2003, is considered part of a wave of Internet companies called Web 2.0.; they make their end users a central element to their services, giving them the liberty and the tools to create, share and manage content, often through the use of descriptive tags. Flickr, which Yahoo bought earlier this year, is considered part of the Web 2.0 generation, as are blog search provider Technorati; Odeo, a startup that lets users create and share audio files known as podcasts; and Padilla's Musicmobs.
Mark Brooks: Jonathan Abrams, founder of Friendster, also created hotlinks.com which helped users manage links. He also had designs on turning it into a search enginer. A fantastic concept. Alas, CMGI hotlinks mother company) nixed it after the bust. Blink had a similar favorites hosting service which survived a little longer but was also nixed.
Looking for Love in all the Right Places
ASSOCIATED PRESS — Dec 18 — Older Americans looking for love have taken a cue from young urban singles and are flocking to speed-dating events and online personals sites. Match.com says registrations among people over 50 have soared 340% since 2000. Some dating Web sites now have special seniors-only areas. Spark Networks, started SilverSingles.com last year, and the site now has about 600,000 members. FULL ARTICLE @ INSIDE BAY AREA
Dating Site Fights Scamming Proactively
The full article was originally published at I-Newswire, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Many sites block users from certain countries. I was in Prague recently and signed up for the 10 online US dating sites. I was blocked from signing up for three of them, presumably because of my Czech IP address.
Move Over MySpace
