Month: September 2009

Radar Love

Posted on September 18, 2009
Location dating THE GLOBE AND MAIL – Sep 18 - Mobile dating apps such as Skout and Are You Interested let users download software onto their phones that alerts them when a potential match is within a few hundred metres. The pioneer of GPS dating was Lovegety, which originated in Japan in 1998 and notified users if a match was nearby by vibrating their cellphones. Lovegety inspired Bluedating, spontaneous matchmaking via Bluetooth. Soon after came “geosocial” networking services such as Loopt and Brightkite.com, which allow people to keep track of friends and explore social communities around their favourite venues. Even though the apps are all explicitly opt-in, they've raised safety concerns. With stalker risks in mind, most will only reveal the distance between users, not their exact location. They also let users block others if they become pesky.

The full article was originally published at Globe and Mail, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: It will take a major iDating site to integrate LBS before Location Based Dating will really take off.

See all posts on Skout
See all posts on AreYouInterested

London Internet Dating Conference Parties

Posted on September 18, 2009

Idate london 09 logo OPW – Sep 18 – The Pre-Event and Day 1 parties are now posted on the Internet Dating Conference website.  The pre-event cocktail reception is open to all delegates and is at Dove from 7:30pm to 10pm.  The Thursday evening parties are sponsored by White Label Dating and are from 5pm to 8:30pm at Planet Bar, inside the hotel, and then there's a Pub Crawl from 9pm to 11:30pm starting at Distillers.

Match.com’s Mandy Ginsberg A 2009 Marketer Of The Year

Posted on September 18, 2009

Mandy Ginsberg PR NEWSWIRE – Sep 17 – SVP and North American General Manager, Mandy Ginsberg, has been named as one of Brandweek's 2009 "Marketers of the Year." Ginsberg was honored for her work on Match.com's "It's Okay to Look" campaign, as well as the "Rejected by eHarmony" campaign for Match.com sister site, Chemistry.com.

The full article was originally published at PR Newswire, but is no longer available.

See all posts on Match.com
See all posts on Chemistry.com

iCougarDating.com Co-Sponsors Cougar Convention

Posted on September 18, 2009

Icougardating logo PRESS RELEASE – Sep 17 – iCougarDating.com,
a cougar dating site, is co-sponsoring California’s first-ever Cougar Convention, Nov 6, 2009, at the Crowne
Plaza Beverly Hills. Cougars from  California are invited to compete for the title of Miss
Cougar California. Cubs (younger men) in attendance will decide who
wins the contest. Adults of all ages are welcome. FULL ARTICLE @ WIRED PR NEWS

Internet Dating Industry June News – 12 Mins

Posted on September 17, 2009

June 2009 OPW News Summary from Mark Brooks.

This is actually the news for June. We're playing catch up. July and August are in process.  Here's the news we covered for June.

-  eHarmony survey finds 51% of single parents believe that they and their children are better off emotionally when the parent is in a committed relationship
– Match and eHarmony success rates.
– Spark Networks revenue down
– DatingTrail.co.uk launches
– Virtual goods startups raise $69 million funding in Q1
– Great Expectations complaints
– PlentyOfFish.com and rapper Flo Rida team up
– McGinn vs Match.com lawsuit
- ChristianCafe.com and Single Christian Network combines
– IAC completes transaction with Meetic
– Meetic signs partnership with MSN for distribution in 12 European countries
-meetMoi location based mobile dating partners with ClearSky
– Virtual Greats and Viximo partner
– Attivio’s Active Intelligence Engine selected to power Deutsche Telekom’s FriendScout24

The Tech Behind eHarmony

Posted on September 17, 2009

Eharmony-logo COMPUTER WORLD – Sep 16 – To match people, eHarmony relies on four database and data warehousing products which include Oracle Database, the open-source MySQL database, open-source data-crunching app, Hadoop, and data warehousing appliances from Netezza. Assigning matches is a complex mathematical problem called "graph partitioning," said Joseph Essas, VP of engineering and operations. Hadoop is speedy, says Essas. "What used to take hours now with Hadoop takes just 30 minutes," he said. eHarmony also uses Hadoop to do real-time analysis of the effectiveness of its TV ads.

The full article was originally published at Computerworld, but is no longer available.

See all posts on eHarmony

White Label Network For Sale

Posted on September 17, 2009

Personalicaforsale OPW — Sep 17 — Contact Andrew Ahachinsky directly if you're interested in the white label network Personalica.com. The asking prices is $125k for:

– A user base of 150K+
– White label technology -5,000 man hours of dev
– Affiliate network technology
– Active affiliate partners
– Domain 
– Content
– Related creative

All due diligence information including all log files and executive summary available upon request from Andrew.

Got a domain or site to sell?  Email me at mark@courtlandbrooks.com and we'll list it for free.

Atheists Have More Success At Online Dating

Posted on September 16, 2009

Okcupid logo aktualni TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Sep 16 - Atheists have more success at online dating, according to an
analysis of 500,000+ "first contacts" sent by users of OkCupid. ~42% of
messages which included the word "atheist" achieved replies,
significantly higher than the average response rate of 32%. Mentioning
"god" in a first approach discouraged people from replying. FULL ARTICLE @ TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

See all posts on OkCupid

6th Annual European Internet Dating Conference

Posted on September 15, 2009

Idate london 09 logo PRESS RELEASE – Sep 15 – iDate, the Internet dating conference, will be
held in September 24-25, at the Novotel London West Hotel. The London
iDate2009 Event will focus on management and technology for the online
dating, matchmaking and personals industry in Europe. Senior executives
in the online personals and matchmaking space compromise over 60% of
the attendance. In addition, the agenda contains a separate pre-event
session on September 23; an Introduction to the Online Dating Industry,
provided by Mark Brooks, publisher of Online Personals Watch. FULL ARTICLE @ THE EARTH TIMES    

Women Celebrate Being Single More Than Men

Posted on September 15, 2009

Zoosk logo new PR NEWSWIRE – Sep 15 - Zoosk, a social dating community surveyed 1,005 of its users in the U.S. to better understand their thoughts about their single status. ~70% of women cite the freedom to "do my own thing" and the ability to "flirt with anyone, anytime" as the best aspects of being single. Nearly half of men, however, responded that none of the benefits of being single outweigh their wish to find someone special. The number of Zooskers has climbed from 15M in January 2009 to 40M in August 2009.

The full article was originally published at Reuters, but is no longer available.

See all posts on Zoosk