PRESS RELEASE – May 24 – WhiteLabelDating.com announces that 7-day
conversion on its general network increased by 36% in the UK over the
last quarter and by 33% across international platforms. The company
attributes this strong performance to the introduction of tools such as
Recommended Member, which highlights relevant matches to users;
Icebreakers, which allows new members to send out an introductory
message to hundreds of potential matches and Inbox Filters, which
enables members to manage communication settings according to
preferences to avoid being inundated with incoming messages. Member
satisfaction has also increased by 47% over the quarter, largely due to
members being able to filter their communication settings by age or
location.
Month: May 2010
Irish People Show No Sexual Shame
ANOTHER FRIEND – May 24 – According to a poll conducted by Ireland’s leading online dating website, AnotherFriend.com, over 60% of Irish singles would be happy to spill the beans about their sexual history to a new partner. The poll posed the question, “If asked by a new partner how many past sexual relationships you have had, what answer would you give?” The majority of respondents said they’d have no problem telling the truth, while fewer than 20% of voters answered “I’d say I’ve had fewer sexual relationships” or “I’d say I’ve had more sexual relationships.
BeautifulPeople.com Launches German Site
PR NEWSWIRE – May 24 - BeautifulPeople.com, the elite dating site for
beautiful people only, launches a new German language version of the
site specifically for the German market. A recent survey by the
controversial website found German women and men to be among the least
attractive members of BeautifulPeople.com. German women have an
acceptance rate to BeautifulPeople.com of just 13%. This is
considerably low compared to other countries around the world like
Russia, United Kingdom and Italy. 15% of German male applicants have
been accepted by BeautifulPeople members so far. BeautifulPeople.com is
free to use. Potential members apply with a photo and a brief
profile. Over 48 hours, existing members of the opposite sex vote
whether or not to admit them in to their exclusive community. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWS
eHarmony Seeks Scientific Edge In Uncertain Game Of Love
ABC NEWS – May 21 - eHarmony claims it is responsible for 236 marriages
a day — marriages that have already produced 100,000 babies in this
country, the company says. All of the relationships were born of a
secret computer algorithm that matches people. "I think of our
algorithm as a starting point," said eHarmony CEO Greg Waldorf. "It's a
way to say to the user, 'Here are a whole bunch of matches that you're
compatible with.' I wouldn't presume to tell anybody that I know
exactly which user they're going to be interested in. We're giving them
a really good set of users to start with, and then it flips to that
very personal approach of, 'Wow, I think I have something in common
with this person.'" Waldorf said his goal is to reach America's 90
million eligible single people. FULL ARTICLE @ ABC NEWS
Instant Messengers Providers
OPW – May 24 – Many dating sites and social networks offer free IM and there are many more IM service providers and most view the online dating industry as a key vertical market. Here is the list of some of them.
Internet Dating Conference, PerfectMatch And Endemol
OPW – May 22 – PerfectMatch has been featured in reality TV shows and mentioned in the movies 'Must Love Dogs', 'Failure to Launch', 'Superman Returns', and 'The Break-Up.' How does PerfectMatch do it? Duane Dahl, the CEO of PerfectMatch is speaking at iDate about Product Placements.
Endemol has created shows such as Dating in The Dark, Big Brother and Extreme Makeover. How can your dating site work with Endemol. You'll get an insight on how you can work with Endemol if you attend Jerry Kowal's session at iDate on Friday 18th June. Jerry is the head of Digital Media at Endemol.
The conference agenda includes speakers from Match.com's, Club Med, Cinemark, Harvard, Gelato, Quantcast and Zoosk to name a few. See the full agenda line-up here.
Plentyoffish Can Now Predict Who You Will Marry
THE PARADIGM SHIFT – May 21 – PlentyOfFish.com now has a fairly accurate model for predicting who an average user will end up with. This new model completely replaces their old chemistry test. PlentyOfFish.com will give you a set of 30 matches that you are most likely going to end up dating.
The full article was originally published at The Paradigm Shift, but is no longer available.
Online Dating Without The Creepy Strangers
CNN MONEY – May 20 - Thread.com is a new site that lets singles view profiles of their friends' pals on Facebook and request introductions. Facebook already has all the raw ingredients of the largest dating site in the world. More than 400M people worldwide have profiles. And since Thread relies on users' pre-existing profiles, rather than asking them to create new ones, it takes less effort to get started than most online dating outlets. Last year, Thread landed $1M in venture funding from First Round Capital and Sequoia Capital. Angel investors, including RottenTomatoes.com CEO Joe Greenstein and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, also put in additional $200,000. Thread's close ties to Facebook bring a few risks. "If Facebook decides to do something, Thread must follow along, and in one fell swoop it could take their bottom line with it," says Mark Brooks, an Internet dating industry consultant. Facebook is already at the center of a firestorm over privacy issues. Thread still has to figure out how to monetize its matchmaking, whether through advertising, subscriptions or virtual gift-giving. Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia Capital, had already tried his hand at Facebook matchmaking — cutting and pasting his friends' profiles and sending awkward e-mails back and forth — when the Thread business plan hit his desk. "A lot of people were doing this manually, so I thought, 'What a wonderful idea,'" he says. Brooks, the Internet dating industry consultant, agrees: "They're bottling what we already do in the real world." FULL ARTICLE @ CNN MONEY
EasyDate Seeks To Woo Investors
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH – May 20 – EasyDate is looking to expand internationally, raise funds and launch a new site that will allow singles to browse all the available online dating toos. "It'll be a bit like a comparison site", said Bill Dobbie, chairman and founder of EasyDate. "Canoodle is one of our R&D experiments. Users would key in their requirements and all dating sites would be searched to help find that ideal companion. EasyDate was formed in 2005 when Dobbie teamed up with software writer Max Plyakov and has been growing steadily ever since. "Unlike our competition such as Match.com and DatingDirect, we operate a portfolio of sites and we are a niche operator", says Dobbie. "EasyDate can launch both new niche sites itself or, as a white-label site provider, with a partner." Alongside the niche and comparison site approach comes global growth. EasyDate's international expansion began last year. "We are now in all the English-speaking countries and beginning to look at Spanish-speaking and others such as Sweden, Netherlands and Thailand". He plans to launch in Brazil this year. EasyDate sees 155,000 a month income from its Australian site. FULL ARTICLE @ TELEGRAPH.CO.UK
Omnidate Launches Corporate Site And Kills Mock Dating Site
OPW – May 20 – Omnidate will be rolling its 15,000 Omnidate.com dating site members over to Smingle.com and switching its home page out to a pure corporate/product site, on May 25th. They're live on an increasing number of partners in North America and Europe and their virtual dating product is now accessible through hundreds of URLs, including TangoWire which alone has 3,700 URLs. As part of their product development and testing process, they had set up a dating site to gather member feedback. They improved the user experience and added several new features, including a library of over a hundred customizable characters.
Update: Ravit Abelman, co-Founder of Omnidate interviews Shaun Wolfe, CEO of TangoWire (June 8th, 2010):