19ACTION NEWS – Nov 30 – More middle aged women are opening their options to include a little action with men sometimes a lot younger. And the cougar dating websites are endless. A spokesman for DateACougar.com says business is booming up more than 80% in the last year.
Month: November 2009
Daters Without Borders
NY POST – Nov 29 - More and more New Yorkers are searching for love on European dating sites. Lillian, a 42-year-old Manhattan copy editor signed up for Meetic.com. She Skypes with a Parisian man from the site for an hour each day. Susan, a 22-year-old grad student, also struggled with dating locally, so she widened her eHarmony parameters. Even “Real Housewives of New York City” reality star Alex McCord and Simon van Kempen met through Matchmaker.com while living on different continents. Mark Brooks, editor of OnlinePersonalsWatch.com, says international romance is a growing trend, due to singles’ increasing pickiness about potential life partners. “The longer the shopping list, the further afield you should cast your net,” he advises. A single New Yorker four years ago, he flew to Prague for a European online dating conference where he met and fell for a Czech woman. They married last April and now live in Malta with two daughters.
Here are some of the most popular dating sites from around the world:
Europeans: Meetic.com
Brits and Canadians: PlentyOfFish.com
Asians: AsiaFriendFinder.com
Australians: RSVP.com.au
Indians: Shaadi.com
Russians: Mamba.ru
See all posts on Meetic See all posts on FriendFinder
See all posts on eHarmony See all posts on RSVP
See all posts on Matchmaker.com See all posts on Shaadi
See all posts on PlentyofFish See all posts on Mamba.ru
Dinner Dates Celebrated Its 20th Anniversary
RICHMOND TIMES – Nov 29 - Hillie Marshall, the fonder of London based
dating agency Dinner Dates, has played cupid for more than 20 years. Ms
Marshall first came up with the concept in 1989 after her own divorce,
and has since hosted ~25,000 events, and helped to set up ~150
weddings. Over the past 20 years Dinner Dates has held matchmaking
meals at swanky venues including the Ritz, the Dorchester, Royal Ascot
and the Royal Regatta. Other activities have included golf, tennis and
pigeon shooting excursions, trips to art galleries, museums and the
theatre and holidays to China, Cologne and Portugal. Now after 20
years, Ms Marshall would be willing to sell the company to the right
buyer. FULL ARTICLE @ RICHMOND TIMES
Internet Dating Industry Weekly News Nov 26th, 2009 – 3 mins
This is the news for the week of November 20th through November 26th, 2009. Here is the news we covered for this week:
- PlentyofFish.com Growing Strong, Takes Aim at Science of Dating
- Match.com Partners With Ebay Australia
- Peoplefinders Network Launches Two New Apps
- Final Voting Open for iDate Awards
Yenta911.com Merges Online Dating With Social Networking
JWEEKLY – Nov 25 – Yenta911.com is a new Jewish dating site that gives members flexibility in their profiles by allowing them to keep a blog, post videos and connect with their friends who are also using Yenta911.com. “You can learn a lot about a person by seeing who their friends are,” said Yenta911.com's founder and CEO Alexandra Weiss. FULL ARTICLE@JWEEKLY
Mark Brooks: You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. This site will do well with youngsters, but not so well with people 35+ who tend to be more concerned about revealing their singleness. The older set tend to like the anonymity that traditional dating sites offer.
iDate Awards: Vote For Your Favorite Site
OPW – Nov 25 – As part of the iDate Awards, you can now vote for your favorite site in these categories:
Best Dating Site
Best Dating Site Design
Best Software Provider
Best Mobile Dating Site
Best Matchmaker
Most Innovative Company
Best New Technology
Best Payment System
Best Affiliate Program
Best Marketing Campaign
Best Up and Coming Dating Site
You can see and vote for the nominees here.
You will be able to vote up until January 7th, 2010. The first iDate
Awards ceremony will be held the night of January 28, 2010 in Miami.
The awards are organized by the Internet Dating Conference and Online
Personals Watch.
Match.com Partners With eBay Dating
DIGITAL MEDIA – Nov 24 – match.com becomes the exclusive dating partner for eBay, and mirrors similar agreement with ninemsn and News.com.au. Much like the ninemsn deal, this is not so much an integration as a traffic building exercise for Match.com. The match.com portal is effectively bolted on underneath eBay's sites menu and header with revenue generated for eBay via referrals to the dating service.
The full article was originally published at Digital Media, but is no longer available.
Why The Dating Industry Doesn’t Like Events
OPW – Nov 25 – Several dating services have experimented with events in the past. Most notably, Match ran Matchlive for some years, but folded it. Lavalife ran events at cinemas and mixers. Spark Networks ran Joes Club, and more recently bought Hurrydate. Cupid bought Predating in 2004, and last month sold it back to the original founder. Does the internet dating industry love events. Nope. Why? The consensus is, they're a pain in the ass to do well, and generally not profitable. They keep you awake at night, and can be sources of major customer dissatisfaction. Also, I hear, the people who come to events are NOT the kind of people who use internet dating. Large events make money. Small events are merely cost centers, unless they're run by volunteers. And its very tough to find good volunteers that don't burn out quickly. And then there's the whole aspect of liability. Ugh! Good luck finding decent insurance.
If you want to attend some events, or would like some role models to be inspired by, here's some options I recommend looking at:
England
Spice UK – started in 1980, has 8 branches and is a very good deal.
CitySocialising – new kids on the block, just got 250k GBP funding and are breaking out all over the UK.
OutdoorLads.com – Gay outdoor events group with lots of inexpensive camping options.
USA-Wide
Events and Adventures – Singles focused events and adventures.
Its Just Lunch – Lunch dates based matchmaker
FastLife
Los Angeles
LAPC – L.A. People Connection has been around for years, is free and is volunteer run. (Co-founded by my ex-wife)
San Francisco
OAC – Outdoor Adventure Club, the standard for outdoor adventures.
The Meeting Game – Inexpensive dating events.
Urban Diversion – Adventure and social club based in San Francisco with some evemts in Silicon Valley.
Texas
DFW Outdoors – Dallas/Fort Worth. Powered by Memberize. A popular social and outdoors club.
Hill Country Outdoors – Austin. The original club started by the Memberize founders.
Speed dating in the USA
Predating, Hurrydate, 8 Minute Dating
Speed dating in the UK
Speeddater.co.uk – acquired by EasyDate in 2008, runs events all over the UK
If you know of more great events and adventure clubs, please add them to the comments on this post. We'll review them and perhaps create a page on OPW for people to refer to in the future. Personally, Irena and I LOVE events. We're party people and would rather be running a party or adventure hike, than sitting behind a keyboard.
Zoosk Hooks Up With $30M
SF BUSINESS JOURNAL – Oct 23 - Zoosk, a so-called online “social” dating service, is now on a $30M annual run rate, and in 2009 it expects to generate $20M in revenue. Zoosk gets 2.3M U.S. visitors monthly, and 8.5M globally, according to Quantcast. Mark Brooks, a well-known online dating site consultant, said Zoosk’s integration with social networks means people don’t have to fill out profiles and they can more casually make connections than on traditional dating sites. Having visibility into a prospective date’s friend network also provides a sense of safety, he said. FULL ARTICLE @ SF BUSINESS JOURNAL