The full article was originally published at WSJ, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: The honeymoon is over. Users will become more sophisticated and will seek higher integrity social networking sites that help them organize their networks of friends in a more meaningful manner, for more meaningful relationships. They'll still stay on MySpace, but will use 2nd and 3rd social networking sites in tandem.
My Recommended Safety Tips were displayed on the 40 minute segment 5 times as follows:
Mark Brooks: I knew I was in for a grilling. My first live TV interview. Do you agree with the safety tips? What's missing?
PR NEWSWIRE — Oct 25 — The Online Dating Conference and Social Networking Convention will cover issues of business management, marketing and new technologies for the industry and will be the largest business event for online personals and internet communities. Speakers will address issues on increasing revenue and improving customer retention. The event will be held on January 15-16, 2007 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Speakers include:
FULL ARTICLE @ PRWEB
Mark Brooks: This convention will be all about serving users better, and making more money! Everybody will be there. The venue has been upgraded to the Miami Convention Center. Niiice. iDate comes of age.
MASHABLE BLOG — Oct 24 — Beijing-based social network for college students, Xiaonei.com (~1million users), was acquired by Oak Pacific Interactive (OPI), a Chinese Internet consortium. The plan is to merge Xiaonei with 5Q, OPI's own college social network. The two sites now serve 90% of the active online student population. Xiaonei is a one-year old startup founded by Tsinghua university graduate Wang Xing. Even the strategy was a clone of Facebook – Xiaonei focused on the top schools first, realizing that widespread adoption would follow. They received angel funding from investors that included an ex-CTO of Amazon.com. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE BLOG
CHICAGO TRIBUNE's RED EYE — Oct 24 — Valerie signed up for Yahoo! Personals and found Prince Charming. But the promising online suitor who showered her with tender e-mails and bouquets of flowers turned out to be a scammer trying to bilk Benning out of tens of thousands of dollars. Barb Sluppick, co-founder of the 5,000-member Yahoo! Romance Scams group, conducted a survey that revealed a total of $2.6 million lost in romance scams among the 331 people who responded—about $7,800 per person. Most online dating scams originate from Africa, Russia and Eastern Europe, though Nigeria is the biggest offender, according to Mark Brooks who runs onlinepersonalswatch.com. Increasingly, Web administrators are trapping scammers before they strike, but the tricksters are unrelenting, Brooks said. "It's a bad situation because these guys have gotten increasingly sophisticated," said Nelson Rodriguez, head of loveaccess.com, where employees remove 20 to 30 suspicious profiles a day. "It's horrible for business because it's a loss of credibility.
PR WEB — Oct 24 — LoveandFriends (100,000 UK members) has integrated Thomas Technologies Web-Dating Suite 1.0 onto its site including a personality assessment consisting of 24 DISC-based questions. Thomas tools have been used to assess over 4.5 million people worldwide.
PR WEB — Oct 23 — PlentyofFish is the second fastest growing Internet site overall in Canada, according to AlexaRadar, and the top Internet dating site in Canada, according to Alexa. Founder, Markus Frind built PlentyofFish.com in 2003 to practice his ASP.net. The growth since then has been massively viral, and exponential. Markus now makes over $10,000 a day from the ad listings on the site, and has six hundred million page views a month. What's unusual is, he still operates it from his Vancouver
apartment, and refuses to take venture capital funding. Beyond Canada, PlentyofFish currently holds top ten internet dating rankings in the U.S.A. and, more recently, in the U.K. Markus also writes a popular blog on web 2.0 startups entitled The Paradigm Shift. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
Mark Brooks: PRESS: To schedule interviews with Markus Frind, CEO of PlentyofFish, or other internet dating spokespeople and executives, please call 212-444-1636.
TECH CRUNCH BLOG — Oct 20 — We’ve covered the best new dating sites, and even the most popular gay male dating sites, here on TechCrunch. But none of these sites capture the speed and simplicity of speed dating. South Africa-based dating site YesNoMayB nailed it. YesNoMayB shows you a bunch of pictures of potential matches. You vote each picture with yes/no/maybe. If you say yes to a picture, your picture will be placed in their queue the next time they review pictures. It’s very similar to HotOrNot’s MeetMe service (although less public). YesNoMayB uses collaborative filtering to try and show you people who you will find attractive. If someone votes the same way as you, they are more likely to be shown to you as well. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH BLOG
Mark Brooks: If only you could do the same thing and include video or layer in 30 second voice profile.
PARADIGM SHIFT — Oct 20 — From my point of view the paid industry is screwed. The only way you can stay in business is if you keep members around and paying for a long time. If your company is successful then you lose that paying member. For free dating sites its the exact opposite. Give people exactly what they want, and hope it generates word of mouth so you can grow!
The full article was originally published at The Paradigm Shift, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Your comments please…
DIGITAL BULLETIN — Oct 20 — One male and one female Match (UK) member had the chance to find love through Match.com, and appear live on peaktime TV. Ads were shot immediately before transmission, in front of a live studio audience, and then transmitted as live ads. The first saw the host introduce the lucky winners, the second gave the winning man the opportunity to sell himself, and the third saw the winning woman's turn. Before the TV activity, contestants uploaded videos to a special "Live Love" Match.com microsite, comprising a 30-second pitch describing why they shouldn't be single. Other Match.com users then judged the entries, with two winners going forward to the final TV stage. More TV activity surrounded the event itself, including ten-second promo TV ads. After the "climax" live ads, the winners were interviewed on regional ITV, and their dating progress tracked on the live ad website. RESULTS: PR coverage featured in The Sun, the Daily Star and The Express. The day after the live ads aired was the highest month forsubscriptions in Match.com's (UK) history, 3.5% higher than the best-performing month for the year. The success was due to the combination of PR, search and the MSN partnership.
The full article was originally published at Digital Bulletin, but is no longer available.