NY BLUEPRINT – Sep 23 – The third annual Matchmaking Pro Conference will take place at the Sheraton Suites on the Hudson in New York on October 23 and 24. The event will bring together personal matchmakers, introduction services, and dating/relationship coaches. The conference suits prospective matchmakers, current professional matchmakers and those interested in learning more about the matchmaking business.
The full article was originally published at NY Blueprint, but is no longer available.
MASHABLE – Sep 22 – DateCheck (by Intelius) is a new iPhone app that conducts a comprehensive background check using a name, a phone number, or an email address. The search application filters social web and public record results for the following factors: Sleaze Detector, Compatibility, Net Worth, Living Situation, and Interests. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
FLORIDA TODAY – Sep 22 – Mark Brooks, editor of Onlinepersonalswatch and an industry consultant, said that online dating is growing in popularity because it is a cheaper alternative to filtering your way through the real world to the match of your dreams. PlentyofFish.com, a free dating site averaging ~3M unique visitors per month, has seen a jump in growth since the economic downturn. The site saw a 94% increase in traffic from June 2008 to June 2009. eHarmony.com has seen a 48% gain in traffic since last year and Match.com saw its strongest fourth quarter in about seven years in 2008. Two Indialantic entrepreneurs have capitalized on the trend, creating a new site called vacancylove.com. It is in beta-testing until Oct. 1, when it will officially launch. Until then, users who sign up will get a free 90-day membership.
The full article was originally published at Florida Today, but is no longer available.
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PRESS RELEASE – Sep 22 - WhiteLabelDating.com (WLD), the provider of software and services that enable brands to create their own online dating sites, announces that annualised partner revenues for this year are set to exceed £20M. 90% of this revenue will be earned by individuals who have set up their own online dating sites. A further 10% will be earned by existing brands that have unlocked revenue from online communities by launching online dating services. FULL ARTICLE @ REAL WIRE
PRESS RELEASE – Sep 22 – Neverblue, a global lead generation network, has signed an agreement with Perfectmatch. The agreement names Neverblue the exclusive agency for Perfectmatch in the UK.
The full article was originally published at PR Newswire, but is no longer available.
PRESS RELEASE – Sep 22 - According to the People Media poll 52% of respondents would opt to have a partner over having the freedom to date, live independently or spend their time or money as they choose. More than 27,000 single Americans answered the question, “What do you like best about being single?” with the following responses:
– “Nothing; I’d rather have a partner” (52%)
– “The freedom to spend my time as I choose” (33%)
- “Living alone” (7%)
– “Being able to date” (4%)
– “The freedom to spend my money as I choose” (4%)
The full article was originally published at PR Inside, but is no longer available.
IOVATION – Sep 21 – According to Forrester Research online dating is the third largest producer of revenue out of all paid content sites, generating $957M in 2008, a figure that the firm predicts will grow 10% by 2013. The increased popularity of online dating is also good news for scammers. According to trends revealed by Google, search terms like “online dating” and “free dating” are getting the most hits from fraudsters in African countries. One of the important ways Iovation helps companies in the dating industry is by raising the bar for re-identifying scammers, by focusing on the computer they use. With device reputation, it is much easier to identify scammers trying to return to a site and repeat their scam or con.
The full article was originally published at iovation blog, but is no longer available.
PRESS RELEASE – Sep 21 - Caerus Ag announced today the appointment of
Tanya Fathers as the CEO of DatingFactory, Caerus’s white labeling
division. In 2002 Tanya relocated to the UK to take up the position of
Financial director for WDP. In this position she re-organised and
improved all aspects of financial control within the company and in
2007 was promoted to the position of CEO and Managing Director of the
Datech (World Dating Partners) group. FULL ARTICLE @ PR.COM
OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 21 – Sam Yagan is CEO/Founder of OkCupid.com. Here’s the story of how he started OkCupid, and CrazyBlindDate.com. – Mark Brooks
Sam, you have a history of starting renegade companies. What services that you’ve created in the past are you most proud of?
I started 3 companies in the last 10 years. In each case, I was passionate about bringing a community of people around free products or online services and in particular, products and services which had traditionally been paid for by consumers.
My first company was called SparkNotes and we took the idea of Cliff’s Notes as a line of study guides which have been around for 50 years. My partners and I started SparkNotes back in 1999. We grew it to be the largest brand of study guides on the web. We ended up selling the company to Barnes & Noble and they built it into the largest offline series of study guides as well.
After SparkNotes I teamed up with another friend of mine who had started a company called eDonkey, which was a peer to peer file sharing application, which we grew into the largest file sharing network in the world.
We ran this company until 2006 and while it was winding down I got back together with my co-founders from SparkNotes and we decided to start OkCupid. We believed that the Match.com business model was not right. They did not really think about modeling online dating to offline dating.
First, we looked at how people go and date in the real world. In the real world dating is social. One girl will call up her girlfriend and say, “Hey, let’s all go out tonight.” They all get dressed up and they never explicitly say, “Hey, we’re looking to get picked up by a guy.” They just tell themselves that they’re going out to have a good time. No one had ever invited me to join Match.com. No one ever said “go to Match.com, you’ll have a great time”. Match.com was a very lonely experience. So our vision from the very beginning was to build an online bar, a place where you go with a bunch of friends, you observe other people and decide which ones seem the most appealing to you. Then you gradually and slowly begin to strike up a conversation with them.
We also take matching very seriously. If your friend tells you he knows a great girl, no matter how much you trust your friend, you’re going to ask him a series of questions before you meet her. We were able to model that process online by having users upload their own questions and then select their own desirability and weight those on a 5 point scale. So each person was customizing their own algorithm based on their preferences.
You have started another site recently called Crazy Blind Date. Can you tell us about how that came around?
The Crazy Blind Date story actually has its roots comingled in the founding of OkCupid itself. In 2002 my partner Chris came up with an idea to create a dating website where there was a blind date button. If you push the button, you are guaranteed to go on a date that night. Of course, the problem with the blind date button is, in order for that to work, you have to have a huge database. We always had this idea of the blind date button in our back pocket. A couple of years ago we started getting serious about it. We had a big enough site that we could make a blind date button work. A blind date button on OkCupid would be great but we thought that launching it as a standalone site would be really flashy and get a lot of press.
What would you say surprised you the most about the way internet daters behave? Have there been any shocking aberrations in human behavior that you really wouldn’t have predicted?
A lot of people look at a profile and they’re immediately looking for negatives. They’re looking for reasons to reject the potential date. In the offline world people tend to be looking for reasons to make it work.
How does OkCupid help people find somebody who is a match that they also have chemistry with?
There are two elements how we handle the chemistry issue. The first is the expectation. We’re not promising that our algorithms are going to look through all the profiles on our site and find the one who is the best for you. We’re trying to facilitate you going on first dates that don’t suck. The second one is the analogy of a bar I was talking about. On OkCupid there is a big opportunity to see someone over a course of time. We allow a lot of ways for you to express yourself.
So there seems to be a bit of a trend recently with free dating sites starting to charge. Isn’t advertising revenue enough?
It’s not about enough. It turns out that there are opportunities to make money off subscription fees and also off advertisement. We’re going to see a convergence of free and paid dating sites. If you’re on a site that allows you to just post a profile and then if you want to communicate you have to pay, you’re on a paid site. And if you can communicate for free, you’re on a free site. We want to be known as a free site, but there are a bunch of things that we can offer our users who are most serious to pay for a better experience and there are things that we can offer them that are premium.
I would love to know what your vision is for the internet dating industry. What is it going to look like in 2015?
We’re going to have one big free site, maybe two, and we’re going to have a solar system of subscription sites all around them. People will still go to e-Harmony for marital, people are still going to go to places for one night stands but there is always going to be this big free site in the middle that everybody feels they have to be on.
NEWSWIRE TODAY – Sep 21 - Mark Brooks, publisher of Online Personals
Watch, will provide a 4 hour intense session as an introduction to the
European online dating business on September 23, 2009 during the
Internet Dating Conference at the Novotel London West Hotel. The
pre-conference session will cover:
– Overview of the Online Dating Industry;
– Successful Business Models for Online Dating;
– Financial Examples of Online Dating Businesses;
– Software Choices, Selection and/or Programming;
– Marketing Strategies;
– Latest Business Trends;
– New Technologies including Mobile;
– Customer Service Issues;
– Pitfalls Other Sites Have Faced;
– Buyout Opportunities.
FULL ARTICLE @ NEWSWIRE TODAY