PRESS RELEASE — Apr 10 — Men's lifestyle magazine Maxim partners with WhiteLabelDating.com to launch of its own branded online dating website for men. In other news, WhiteLabelDating.com also launched an online dating platform for traditional speed dating company Slow Dating.
The full article was originally published at Netimperative, but is no longer available.
ADVERTISING AGE MOBILE — Apr 9 — Word-of-mouth, especially from family and friends, may be one of the greatest influences on brand choice according to ZenithOptimedia's Touchpoints ROI Tracker, comprising over 300,000 interviews across 34 countries and covering more than 4,000 brands in 126 product and service categories. Consumer touchpoints were each given a "contact clout factor," a number on a scale of 1 to 100 that indicates the relative influence of the touchpoint on purchasing. Recommendations from family and friends led the pack with an average score of 84. TV ads and Internet search were next, with an average score of 69 and 67, followed by magazine ads at 60, newspaper ads at 55, outdoor ads at 45, radio ads at 42, and Internet banner ads at 41.
The full article was originally published at Advertising Age Mobile, but is no longer available.
PR WEB — Apr 10 — AllTheDates.com's allows users to search and view potential partners' profiles from multiple dating sites simultaneously, before choosing to join any of them. AllTheDates now scans the databases of its five partner dating sites (Canoodle, Loveandfriends, Matchpoints, Singlescrowd and specialist gay site, Gayters), and more are set to follow. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
PR WEB — Apr 10 — BuyUCoffee.com is a new dating site where members
have price tags. Singles submit their profiles to BuyUCoffee. Then they
set a
price for potential suitors to pay for meeting for coffee. If someone
is willing to pay the nominal fee ($10 to $50), then the people meet
for coffee. Company VP Marketing Steve Casper points out: "Our approach
filters out people who are not serious or who are just
flirting." FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
A blast from the past. Operation Match was a punch card based dating system! – Mark Brooks
NY TIMES — Mar 29 ’06 — Operation Match might have been this
country’s first computer dating service. Jeff Tarr and Vaughan Morrill
came up with the idea for Operation Match in the mid-1960’s. They had
some help from a Cornell dropout named Douglas Ginsburg. Operational
Match sent questionnaires to college campuses around the country.
Students rated their own looks, intelligence and interests on a scale
from one to five and described their ideal date using the same
measures. They then returned the survey, along with a $3 fee, to the
Operation Match offices in Cambridge, Mass. Students responses were
transferred to punch cards and fed into an enormous Avco 1790 computer.
Six weeks later, it spat out lists of mates for everyone. By the
time Operation Match was sold in 1968, it had solicited more than a
million respondents, a number of whom actually got married. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
BUSINESS WIRE — Apr 9 — Obopay, the pioneering service provider
for payments via mobile phones, is implementing iovation
ReputationManager™. Obopay will use iovation’s device-based fraud
management service to reduce online fraud, improve
operational efficiencies, and increase revenue through more precise
risk management. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WIRE
PRWEB — Apr 7 — A recent Harvard Business School study showed that virtual dating created favorable impressions of the other person and easier first meetings in the real world. "Virtual dating is a terrific icebreaker and a fun way to get to know each other," explained Igor Kotlyar, co-founder of OmniDate. Those interested in virtual dating can join the free OmniDate site, post a picture and profile, choose an avatar to represent them, peruse the other profiles and invite someone interesting on a "date." When the invitation is accepted, the two can meet in a variety of virtual settings.
The full article was originally published at PR Web, but is no longer available.
VENTURE
BEAT — Apr 7 — Engage (262,000 unique
visitors in March) is the first "second generation social dating site",
said Trish McDermott, the company's vice president. It provides a place
for mingling, mixing,
matching and flirting. To be a matchmaker on the site, users cast their
votes to suggest couples, or use the Play Matchmaker
feature, which lets them introduce their friends to dating candidates.
Users earn social points by being active. Engage took over
$5m from Advanced Technology Ventures, the Founders Fund, and
Revolution Ventures, with its second round closing two years ago. FULL ARTICLE @ VENTURE BEAT
NEWS
TIPS — Apr 7 — Frumster.com, the Jewish Dating-for-Marriage service
(5 wedding each week), has just announced that the company is for sale.
Frumster recently reached its 1000th Matched milestone and has grown
steadily since its inception in 2001.
EDGE BOSTON — Apr 7 — Online venues, from IRC to AOL to Gay.com to MySpace and video chats, all seem to have replaced the function of the gay bar as a way for gay men to connect with other gay men. "Gay daters were some of the earliest, if not the first, to utilize the web for meeting potential partners. In the initial days of on online dating, users searched for profiles that looked interesting and eligible to them, whether that be for a relationship of a short-term encounter", said Patrick H. Perrine, MA, CEO and Founder of myPartner.com, who has worked in the field of human sexuality since 1997. FULL ARTICLE @ EDGE BOSTON