OPW — May 5 — MixandMeet.com offers instant group meet-ups with a dating slant – where people with similar interests get together the same day they want to go out. Mix finds a group of men and women (up to 10 people) with similar interests (e.g. wine, travel) and age, who want to go out that same day. Using its geo-clustering engine, Mix searches its venue database and finds a place convenient for all. Finally, Mix allows the participants to text each other (without revealing cell numbers) to meet up at the venue. Mix is looking to offer the service to online dating/social network sites as a way to enable offline meet-ups for their current members without the physical overhead and hassle associated with organizing events. Dating sites will make money by rev sharing on mixers’ subscription fees and affiliate fees from participating venues. Would this idea work? Why and why not?
Month: May 2009
Mark & Irena Back From Honeymoon
OPW — May 4 — Irena and I (Mark Brooks) are back from our honeymoon now. We're now
one of the officially married couples working in the internet dating
business. We head Courtland Brooks and run Online Personals Watch
together. Plentyoffish.com, ChristianCafe.com, OmniDate.com, Boonex
and FastLife.com are headed by married or engaged couples. We took 10
days off and almost managed to stay entirely off email. We've NEVER
one this before. So at least we know it can be done. Thanks to Katie
and Petra for keeping OPW rolling. Wedding pics are at
SeasonalParadise.com.
eBay’s Fight Over Counterfeit Jewelry And What It Means For Online Dating
OPW — May 4 — Tiffany & Co. is in the process of appealing a
judge’s ruling that does not hold eBay responsible for the sale of
counterfeit
merchandise, and if they succeed, it could mean bad news for online
dating. Buyers
take risks everyday when purchasing items listed on eBay. ~6,000 fake
items are for sale on the site at any given time, usually famous luxury
products. In June 2004, Tiffany & Co. decided eBay should take
responsibility for the counterfeit Tiffany
jewelry being sold on the site, and sued. The argument was over whose
job it
was to police the site to help prevent counterfeit merchandise from
being
passed off as authentic. Four years later, on July 14, 2008, the ruling
came down from U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan: “eBay cannot be
forced to
police its listings to identify counterfeit products. It is the
trademark
owner's burden to police its mark.” Tiffany was devastated by
the ruling, which contradicted several international rulings from the
previous
year. The previous month, a French court awarded LVMH, the parent
company of
Louis Vuitton, nearly $61m in compensation for fraudulent items sold on
eBay.
eBay was also ordered to stop all sales of LVMH perfumes on its French
site. In
2007, Germany’s
highest court said eBay needed to better police online sales to help
stop fake
Rolex watches from being sold. If eBay is going to be responsible to
police
their site for counterfeit products, will online dating websites then become
fully responsible for seeking out and eliminating scammers and spammers? Both
eBay and online dating sites essentially deal with the publication of
classified ads, and making the service provider responsible for policing one
type of classified could easily be translated into the responsibility of all
providers of that type. A lawsuit was recently filed against eHarmony.com
claiming that the site does not actually have a scientific matching system in place,
and one woman was matched with a scam artist. If a ruling is made in favor of
Tiffany & Co., could dating sites then be sued for the simple fact that a scam
artist was in their system to be matched with women looking for love? Only time
will tell, but none of the implications are positive for the online dating
industry.
Userplane Ist Kaput
OPW — May 4 — Heads up! Rumors have come in from multiple sources that Userplane is folding. Its too small for AOL to consider selling, and apparently not worthwhile them continuing to run. Its a shame really. Companies like Toksta and Ekko.tv stand to benefit from the void Userplane will leave. Markus Frind says that IM was his biggest mistake. He's getting far more pageviews now he's pulled it. But paid sites are less interested in page views, so perhaps its still worthwhile paid sites using IM. There are a number of IM alternatives we're reviewing. We'll be presenting our findings at the upcoming Internet Dating Conference, and on the Courtland Brooks blog. (Full Disclosure: Plentyoffish.com is a current, long term client of Courtland Brooks. Userplane is a former client of Courtland Brooks)
Dating Website For Entrepreneurs
PR WEB — May 3 — MatchMakingInc.com has launched an online dating website for matching single Entrepreneurs and Business Owners with like-minded people. Additional services offered by the site include informational dating newsletters and in person 'Speed Dating' events hosted in various locations around the country.
The full article was originally published at eMedia Wire, but is no longer available.
Seeking A PC Affair?
MIAMI HERALD — May 2 — In March, Ashley Madison claimed annual revenue in the tens of millions of dollars and 3.3m users worldwide. South Florida was its sixth-largest market (177k users), behind New York and Los Angeles. The Gender breakdown is 70-30 men-women; 60-40 in South Florida. Americans spent $957m on dating sites in 2008; in 2013, Forrester projects $1.5 billion. February data from Compete show that Adultfriendfinder and Fling logged 37.9m unique visitors, more than the next 12 dating sites combined. Sites like these and Ashley Madison have one big advantage over the competition: ''Their target audience is going to be on the site forever,'' says Mark Brooks, an Internet dating industry consultant. "The typical dating services are victims of their own success. After three months, people bail — they sign off because they've met someone, or they skip over to another dating site. The people at Ashley Madison have already demonstrated they're not going to be committing any time soon, and they keep on cycling back around. It's a wonderful cash machine.'' ''Sneaky or deceptive is not my cup of tea,'' said Paul Falzone, founder of TheRightOne, and a professional matchmaker for 30 years. "These guys are totally the opposite of what we're about . . . Do you want to spend your life with someone you're compatible with, that you enjoy, or do you want to live a lie?''
The full article was originally published at Miami Herald, but is no longer available.
See all posts on AshleyMadison See all posts on Fling
See all posts on FriendFinder See all posts on TheRightOne
fish4 Launches On The WhiteLabelDating.com
WLD BLOG — May 1 — fish4 is, one of the UK’s leading websites, launches a dating site on WLD.com platform called fish4love.co.uk. The fish4love.co.uk has been developed by two regional newspaper groups – Newsquest Media Group, Trinity Mirror plc who publish around 500 daily and weekly regional newspapers between them.
Internet Dating Industry Weekly News – 5 Mins
Online Personals Watch News Summary, May 1st, 2009
Meetic tops in UK. Public health professionals turn to social networks to help combat HIV/AIDS. White Label Dating moves up. Viximo introduces modular virtual goods platform for the web and iPhone. iovation introduces risk assessment module. Diller eyes Yahoo Personals. IAC Q1 results out, subscription base up 6%, but revenue down due to exchange rates.
Reality TV Stars Look For Love On WealthyMen.com
NEW YORK POST — Apr 30 — On the premiere episode of "Real Housewives of New Jersey", divorced housewife Danielle Staub is seen planning to meet a man with whom she's had anonymous phone sex. Danielle met her potential boyfriend on Wealthymen.com, where her hook-up goes by the name "Guccilove." Wealthymen.com is for single gals who are looking to find men who make "over $100K a year," according to the site. FULL ARTICLE @ NEW YORK POST
Markus Frind, Plentyoffish Interview
Vancouver View: There are a ton of dating Web sites on the net. How did you become confident that yours would prove successful?
Markus Frind: I created Plentyoffish to teach myself asp.net; there was no plan to create a major business – I just kind of stumbled on it. In other words this was never meant to be a business and there were no expectations to run it as a business. When I started Plentyoffish, there wasn't even any way to make money from the site.
VV: How did you spread the word about Plentyoffish?
MF: I told friends in Vancover and Toronto and then it spread like wildfire. Because the only other major dating site at that time was Lavalife, it was easy to get the word out. I didn't really need to spread the word about Plentyoffish when it first started because it wasn't meant to be business and I had no way of making money off it and the entire site was being run out of my apartment off my home computer.
VV: Membership to the Web site is free. What are your sources of revenue?
MF: I make money from various forms of advertising. With billions of monthly page views, it's pretty easy to make money.
VV: Do you have any suggestions for entrepreneurs who are experiencing challenging times?
MF: Try everything and anything! Nothing is very successful at the first try. Once you get something that works, you just keep refining it till it's perfect!