PR WEB – Feb 24 – HerWay.com, a dating site that enables women to lead the matchmaking process, partners with Honesty Online. Honesty Online allows members of HerWay to share authenticated identity information with other members, making it safer to meet each other in person. HerWay’s innovative approach to dating, ensures women control the action by restricting men from searching, while allowing women to browse for men anonymously. When she's ready to connect, her profile is revealed only to the man of her choosing by initiating contact with him. This new concept provides women unprecedented privacy, discretion, and safety as they search for Mr. Right. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
Month: February 2010
Online Dating In Germany Is Booming
HORIZONT.NET –
Feb 24 – According to Nielsen 7,5 Million German Internet users visited
at least one dating site in January 2010. Parship, Elitepartner,
Friendscout24 overall counted for 16,4% of active Internet users in
Germany. In the last year, dating sites spent 107M Eur for advertising.
FriendScount24 which spent 39.8M Eur had 1.1M unique visitors in
January 2010 followed by ElitePartner with 893 unique visitors and
FlirtCafe with 809 unique visitors. FULL ARTICLE @ HORIZONT.NET
Getting Dumped In The 21st century
DAILY RECORD – Feb 25 – Texts, Facebook, cyber dating, sex sites, chat
rooms and email are
the way many of us are now wooed, romanced, betrayed and
dumped. Unlikely
as it seems, the phenomenon was first made famous by 1980s singer Phil
Collins, who finished his marriage to Jill Tavelman by fax – so last
century. Real
Madrid footballer Cristiano Ronaldo told Spanish model Nereida Gallardo
that their seven-month relationship was over with a text message. But
relationship expert Hillie Marshall believes it's a harsh way to end a
romance. FULL ARTICLE @ DAILY RECORD
Harvard Professor Michael Norton To Speak At iDate L.A. In June
OPW – Feb 24 – Asst. Professor Michael Norton from the
Harvard Business School will be speaking at the Los Angeles Internet Dating Conference
in June. He holds a
B.A. in Psychology and English from Williams College, and a Ph.D in
Psychology from Princeton. Some of Norton's featured work
include The Counterfeit Self and The IKEA Effect. His work has been
published in a number of leading academic journals, including
Science, The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
Psychological Science, and the Annual Review of Psychology. Norton's
work has also been covered in several media outlets such as the New
York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
Norton's presentation will provide insight on the advantages of
virtual dating in the world of online dating, which is currently
plagued by the "less is more" effect, leading people to
believe that learning more about others leads to greater 'liking.'
Norton shows that acquiring more information about others actually
leads, on average, to less liking. An introductory test on
virtual dates shows that virtual dates cause expectations for
potential dates to be better calibrated, and thus leads to greater
liking after those dates have occurred.
Norton will also be speaking
at the Social Networking Conference also. His topic will discuss the well
being of social capitalists. You can check out photos and videos from
prior conferences by clicking the link here
and scrolling down to Photos from Previous events. See you there!
Lavalife Is Being Shopped
THEDEAL.COM – Feb 12 - Lavalife is being shopped by its owner, online marketer Vertrue. Vertrue paid C$152.5M ($113.9M) to acquire Lavalife in 2004. Vertrue was itself bought out by management, private equity firms One Equity Partners and Brencourt Investors and venture capital firm Rho Ventures for $855M in 2007. Lavalife's Web properties have been on the block for about four months. Lavalife Voice, a phone-based dating service, is not being shopped. Some say the auction has been going on for longer than that. "They've wanted to sell for a while," Noel Biederman, CEO of Avid Life Media, said of Lavalife. "Lavalife is not of great strategic value, and its business is in decline," said Mark Brooks, an industry consultant with Courtland Brooks. The company has not disclosed revenues since it was taken private in 2007. That year it brought in ~$90M. Although online dating giants Avid Life and FriendFinder Networks canceled initial public offerings this month, the space is still ripe for M&A deals, according to Brooks.
Ashley Madison Offers $10 million For Sky Harbor Name Change
ABC15 – Feb 22 – AshleyMadison.com has offered Phoenix $10M to change the name of the airport from Sky Harbor International Airport to "The Ashley Madison International Airport" for a period of five years. Stephanie Riobodal, a representative with the City of Phoenix, confirmed they received an offer to rename the airport. The offer was rejected, though officials have not specified the reason.
The full article was originally published at ABC15, but is no longer available.
Internet Dating Industry Weekly News Feb 22nd, 2010
This is the news for February 16th through February 22nd, 2010. Here is the news we covered:
- PlentyofFish, Match.com and eHarmony target growing UK dating market
- eHarmony announces 2009 revenues
- Match.com acquisition rumors: is SinglesNet next?
- MeetMoi partners with Time Out New York
- Hubspot’s social media survey
- OKCupid – ultimate blog success story
- iDate2010 Miami: video and pictures
Married Women Seek Romance Online After Valentine’s Day Dissapointment
PR WEB – Feb 22 – The UK's largest extra-marital dating site, IllicitEncounters.com received an unexpected influx of nearly 1,000 new female profiles since February 14th. The number of dormant profiles that were reactivated had also risen. What is fueling this sudden activity? The root cause seems to be forgetful and inattentive husbands neglecting their wives on one of the most romantic days of the year. These women take to the internet to find romance and compassion to fulfill their needs. IllicitEncounters.com beganin 2003, and now has over 420,000 members across the UK.FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
The Trouble With Web-Traffic Numbers
WSJ – Feb 19 – "comScore says OKCupid had 735,000 unique visitors in Jan, up from 538,000 a year ago,” the Times reported. OKCupid CEO Sam Yagan “said comScore was significantly undercounting the site’s traffic.” He also supplied Google Analytics numbers that show a much higher monthly count – ~4.3M last month. ComScore and Nielsen have long said that sites’ own numbers overstate matters, because what look like unique U.S. visitors could be automated programs known as bots, or the same person using a different computer, or the same computer after cookies have been deleted, or logging in from overseas. "This is a longstanding dispute", said Matt Belkin, VP of emerging business for Omniture, which helps sites manage their traffic numbers. Other traffic monitors take different approaches. Compete uses a panel, like comScore and Nielsen, but also Internet service providers’ logs. Quantcast taps into its wide network of cookies embedded on partner sites to create a mathematical model to correct for all the factors that make cookies overstate traffic. FULL ARTICLE @ WSJ
The Art Of Flirting, In 140 Characters Or Less
CTV.CA – Feb 13 – Typing or texting to Twitter is becoming a go-to way to flirt and find love as people become more comfortable in the Web 2.0 world. "Flitter," a flirting game that was hosted by speed dating company FastLife, gave singles the chance to tweet flirty messages to others at the event. FastLife founders Justin and Annabelle Parfitt said flirting through Twitter allows people to come out of their shells and begin to interact.
The full article was originally published at CTV.ca, but is no longer available.