Mark Brooks: Hitwise graciosuly provide OPW the monthly UK rankings. See left bar. You can get to OPW more easily using opw1.com btw.
Month: April 2006
Userplane Key Player in Web 2.0 Landscape
BUSINESS WIRE — Apr 3 — Positioned at the intersection of two major trends — online communities and Web 2.0 — Userplane, the leading provider of live community software, today announced that the company's apps have now been deployed on more than 100,000 websites, reaching in excess of 40 million users in 20 countries. The company is adding 5,000 new communities to its roster each week and has launched an ad network hosting 5 million banner ads and 2.5 million text ads daily. Userplane provides Internet applications enabling live communications, including full voice/video and text, within the web browser.
Multiply Changes Face of Social Networking
Dot-com Dating Game to put ‘IM’ in Matchmaking
THE JOURNAL OF NEW ENGLAND TECHNOLOGY — Apr 3 — Women question men during real-time games at Gottaflirt.com which will eventually charge male contestants $1 to play each game. Instead of requiring users to browse hundreds of profiles, Gottaflirt seeks to make the process a light-hearted exchange between potential matches. FULL ARTICLE @ BIZ JOURNALS
Mark Brooks: Gaming and online dating have not unified effectively as yet. I look forward to seeing a site that pairs the two nicely. It will be a powerful, entertaining and profitable pairing, done right. Lavalife recently teamed with Partypoker. In the past, casino advertisers haven’t done so well advertising on online dating sites.
Dating Web Sites now Trying to Prevent Divorce
WALL STREET JOURNAL — Apr 3 — More than a decade after the Internet revolutionized dating – about two million Americans met their spouses online according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project – that is about half the total number of people who married last year. Dating sites face a new challenge: keeping these couples together. A recent survey by Jupiter Research says daters seeking long-term commitments are 63% more likely to pay for online dating than other daters. Statistics would suggest that the first wave of divorces among online daters is just now beginning.
The full article was originally published at AZ Central, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: eHarmony launched eHarmony Marriage recently to help couples explore their relationship more.
eHarmony Names Gregory Waldorf Chief Executive Officer
The full article was originally published at PR Newswire, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Jaynie was named CEO of eHarmony in January.
Baby You Can Drive My Car
WASHINGTON POST — Apr 2 — Flirtingintraffic.com aims to unite you with the cutie in the car next to you. Look for their sticker (assuming they have one), then scribble down their ID number and send them a note on the site. So far, there are more than 3,000 users, mostly in Pennsylvania, where the site launched. Carless? Don’t fret; Flirtingatthebar.com is up and running, and Philips has planned the launch of Flirting on Campus, Flirting at the Beach and simply Flirting Around in the next year. FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST
Mark Brooks: If you have someone in front of you, why not just talk? I’ve seen this flirting card idea quite a few times now. It’s useful in the context of speed dating. Speed dating is like online dating in reverse. You can meet someone, THEN check their profile…and preferences for starting a family etc. Chemistry first.
Google April Fool’s Day ‘Romance’
AD RANTS — Apr 1 — For its April Fool’s Day joke, Google launched Google Romance. Google SVP Jonathon Rosenberg explains, "we thought we could use our search technology to help you find that special someone, then send you on a date and use contextual ads to help you, ya know – close the deal." The site goes on to talk about "contextual dating advice" and "contextual pre-date advertising." "When you do a Soulmate Search, your deeply personal and potentially life-altering search results are produced solely by computer algorithm, without human intervention of any kind." FULL ARTICLE @ AD RANTS
Mark Brooks: They’ve got a point with the last sentence. The real world matchmaking services have offer great service, but lack selection. Online dating services could use some of this service…but how to streamline and standardize the matchmakers touch? That’s the challenge.
DatingDirect.com Enjoys 10,000 Valentine’s Day Membership Boost
The full article was originally published at Revolution, but is no longer available.
Collaboradate Helps to Organize Online Dating with New eMail Service
PR WEB — Mar 31 — Collaboradate's CDinBox will organize users dating email to give online daters a one stop shop for all of their dating correspondence. Users get a free @collaboradate.com email address and then enter that address at all of their dating sites”. “Now all they need to do is sign into one site and read all personals mail from one screen". Also "My Dating Usernames" stores online dating and social networking handles. "DateMapping" plots members visually on a Google map. RELEASE @ PR WEB