PRESS RELEASE — July 31 — Sex starved Brits looking to celebrate National Orgasm Day, are advised to go the South West, where it costs just £136 to find a date, making it the cheapest region to hook up, according to the National Dating Index, published by MatingDirect.com. The Orgasm Index also reveals that Northern Ireland is the easiest region to pull, as it takes an average of 5.72 nights out on the town in order to find someone. London takes 7.03 nights. Ross Williams, Chairman and founder of MatingDirect.com, a WhiteLabelDating.com site, said of the results: "Hitting the town to find a date is an expensive and time consuming business that doesn't always mean you'll hit the jackpot. Online dating lets you search, flirt and meet other like minded adults, stacking the odds in your favour."
Month: July 2008
Players Making Matches
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC — July 31 — Sports MatchMaker is new website that connects sports-minded people. The Web site allows members to schedule anything from acting, adventure travel or aviation to Xbox Live or yoga. Members can book the activity with either a private network of their friends or through postings open to all Sports MatchMaker members. The site is a social network, co-founders Ken Zrike and Christopher Zrike said, but the goal is to get users away from their computer screens and into sports and other activities. FULL ARTICLE @ THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
Free Weekend From Chemistry.com
PR NEWSWIRE — July 31 — From August 1 to August 3, all Denver residents will have the opportunity to log-on to Chemistry.com and search for love, without reaching for their wallets. As part of the free communication weekend, Denver singles are encouraged to go to Chemistry.com, take the personality test for themselves, and begin communicating with their matches.
The full article was originally published at CNN Money, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: I guess that means Chemistry.com has been having a hard time getting mile highers into the match.com club.
On Plutolife’s Acquisition
VENTURE BEAT — July 31 — Jumbuck, a mobile social network, bought rival Plutolife at the beginning of this month for $3.7m. I was interested to hear why. Here's Jumbuck's CEO Adrian Risch on the Plutolife acquisition.
Q: Jumbuck's business has been on-deck. Please explain what Jumbuck hopes to learn with the acquisition.
A: Plutolife generally uses Premium SMS to monetize their services and they are experts in off-deck mobile communities. We were keen to boost our exposure to the 'off-deck' market and Plutolife was a perfect fit.
Q: What's your business model?
A: Our business model revolves around the provision of chatrooms and real-time dating service over mobile and web.
Q: How will you be able to make money out of off-deck mobile social networks?
A: Plutolife already are making money using Premium SMS.
Q: Where do you see the value in an off-deck mobile social network?
A: We are still believers that you need to partner with the mobile operators in order to actually make money on-deck or off-deck. Plutolife really excel because they use a 'freemium' model. The apps are free to use but monetize with Premium SMS features.
Q: What did you like about Plutolife?
A: We really liked the look and feel of their services, plus the apps were already attracting strong usage on a few US mobile operators such as Alltel and T-mobile.
Q: How do you see the take-off of the mobile web?
A: The mobile web has been growing for years but Apple fired a rocket under it with the iPhone launch. I look forward to vastly quicker mobile web browsing across all devices, so we can offer video, larger images, nicer GUIs and more effective advertising in our products without degrading the user's browsing experience.
Q: What's your view on the emergence of Myspace and Facebook in mobile?
A: Myspace and Facebook are more 'friend-management' social networks. Jumbuck is a 'friend-finder' social network, where you can meet new friends for a casual chit-chat, flirt or date. So we have co-existed nicely for years. FULL ARTICLE @ VENTURE BEAT
Mark Brooks: Plutolife built the Lavalife and Date.com dating applications.
More Than 1,000 Sites In UAE To Be Unblocked
THE NATIONAL — July 30 — The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) will instruct internet service providers to unblock more than 1,000 websites that have removed whatever content UAE censors had deemed offensive, according to TRA officials. While TRA officials were unable to specify which of the millions of restricted websites would be unblocked, they include internet forums and social networking sites whose administrators have decided to remove the material that TRA officials had considered questionable or offensive.
The full article was originally published at The National, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Many dating and SNS are blocked in UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc). I considered traveling there recently (my dad has lived and worked in Abu Dhabi for 25+ years) until I realised I'd be blocked from doing my work effectively. Dubai is impressive in many ways, but seriously UNIMPRESSIVE with its overzealous blocking of mainstream SNS and dating sites. C'mon, Dubai, modernize. The Dubai Internet City runs off its own ISP which is far more open for people who work in the area.
MySpace Classifieds Now Powered By Oodle
READ WRITE WEB — July 28 — MySpace's classifieds section has been re-launched and is now powered by Oodle. This partnership with MySpace gives Oodle access to a large new group of users. According to MySpace, its classifieds see about 1m visits a month and with Oodle, its inventory is going to go up to 500,000 new listings a day.
The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.
Plentyoffish.com #1 Dating Site In North America And U.K.
PR NEWSWIRE — July 28 — The latest comScore Media Metrix numbers now rank the free dating site Plentyoffish.com as the leading dating site in both North America (U.S.A. + Canada) and the U.K.
Top 10 North American Dating Sites by Total Visits (000's)
PlentyofFish 36,825
Singlesnet 29,896
eHarmony 19,269
Match.com 18,329
Yahoo!Personals 16,365
People Media Sites 12,340
TRUE.com 10,716
SparkNetworks 9,124
Mate1.com 4,847
Humor Rainbow, Inc 3,714
comScore Media Metrix. June, 2008, age 2+ universe
Top 10 U.K. Dating Sites by Total Visits (000's)
PlentyofFish 8,052
Meetic 4,024
Match.com 2,724
Gaydar.co.uk 2,617
GirlsDateForFree 1,392
WhiteLabelDating.com 1,120
EasyDate 1,110
Smooch.com 1,102
QuickFlirt 1,054
LoopyLove 853
comScore Media Metrix. June, 2008, age 15+ universe
On Monday 14th July, the CEO and Founder Markus Frind opened up his 26th floor office in downtown Vancouver. Plentyoffish.com has hired its first six employees, the first six of a planned thirty person team that is being assembled to help roll out new advertising programs.
The full article was originally published at PR Inside, but is no longer available.
Internet Dating Scams Can Get Expensive
CONSUMER AFFAIRS — July 28 — Annette was lonely. eHarmony.com matched her with a building engineer who was working in Nigeria. Everything was fine until the customs agents in Nigeria confiscated his luggage with $45,000 in travelers' checks. His situation worsened and Annette had wiped out her life savings by wiring $36,300 to Nigeria to help him. Mark Brooks, editor of OnlinePersonalsWatch.com and a consultant for the industry, said every dating Web site has problems with scammers. "This is organized crime. They are targeting lots of different industries, but idating is one of them," Brooks said. "Many of these scammers work together to create enormous fraud rings and share data on how best to scam people", said Scott Olson, VP marketing for iovation, a company that tracks computers so that Web sites can block devices that have a history of being connected with fraud. eHarmony.com clearly states on its Web site that it does not perform background checks. Some Web sites do offer background checks, but Brooks agreed with Posell (eHarmony.com) that most background checks would be costly with little increase in safety. FULL ARTICLE @ CONSUMER AFFAIRS
Mark Brooks: Good background checks cost $100+. Background checks pulling data from online sources can cost as little as $3. iovation offers a solution which allows dating sites to work together to combat scammers, and works in the background. If you'd like to kick some scammer ass, look to iovation. I've helped them sign up numerous dating sites into their 'anti-scammer dating ring' including a top 3 dating site! Disclosure: iovation is an Online Personals Watch sponsor and a client of Courtland Brooks.
Sanctuary For Overweight People
CLICK PRESS — July 28 — A new website Fatisbeautiful.com, dedicated to overweight people, has launched. The website is giving obese and overweight a secure atmosphere in which they can meet each other without harsh judgments or societal pressure to be thin. According to Obesityinamerica.org, there are 60m obese Americans and 65% of American adults are overweight. FULL ARTICLE @ CLICK PRESS
Mark Brooks: You can find a link to rankings of top niche dating sites on the right bar of OPW Niche Internet Dating Rankings. Oops, looks like we're missing a BBW ranking. We'll get that fixed when the new Hitwise rankings come through.
Speed Dating In Las Vegas
SEND2PRESS — July 25 — Finding a date in Las Vegas just got easier thanks to a new dating service, Las Vegas Speed Date. With an estimated single population of almost 250,000 one might think that finding a date in Las Vegas would be easy. But, as Bob Litt, founder and CEO of Las Vegas Speed Date recognizes, "Let's face it, even though you live in Las Vegas you may not want to date someone you meet at a casino or local bar." The cost to attend a Las Vegas Speed Date party is $35 for women and $45 for men.
The full article was originally published at Send2Press, but is no longer available.