MARKETING MAGAZINE – July 20 – Match.com is deploying a fresh strategy to drive up membership among 25- to 34-year-olds. It is rolling out a multimillion-pound campaign with a focus on the 'Match moment', when a couple meets for the first time, as the central theme. The campaign, by Mother, features 10-, 30- and 60-second TV spots, featuring a man trying to impress a woman at a railway station by singing about where she might be travelling, while playing a ukulele.
Month: July 2011
Married, Middle-Aged Mums Seeking Extra-Marital Encounters
PR WEB – July 20 - UndercoverLovers.com, is a dating site for married people seeking illicit affairs. The site has reported a surge in British ladies over 50 joining the site. The site claims ~75K women aged 50+ had joined the site since its launch in 2010. Women 50+ represented ~20% of their female members, but now the number is in excess of 30% and rising.
Domains4Sale: PictureSingles.com, wPersonals.com
OPW – July 18 – PictureSingles.com and wPersonals.com domains are for sale. The starting bid is $5k for each and you can bid here: wPersonals.com and PictureSingles.com.
If you are interested in Singlesfinder.com, you can bid here or contact Tammy. The bidding starts at $8k.
Update (May 1st, 2012): wPersonals.com & PictureSingles.com are no longer available for sale.
FriendFinder Acquired PerfectMatch.com
PR NEWSWIRE – July 18 – Adding to FriendFinder Networks' vast portfolio of social networks, PerfectMatch.com is a welcome addition to the platform of FFN's general audience sites. Unique to PerfectMatch.com is the Duet Total Compatibility System, which analyzes the "whole person" to find friends, taking into account each member's personality, values and ideals, life and love-style preferences to identify and find the person right for them. PerfectMatch.com founder Duane Dahl will join FriendFinder Networks as GM of the Company's general audience dating websites group, including Amigos.com, AsiaFriendFinder.com, BigChurch.com and SeniorFriendFinder.com.
JiaYuan CEO Interview, Rose Gong’s Founding Story of JiaYuan, and the Secret to Her Success
What’s your founding story?
I founded Jiayuan in October 2003, when I was in the second year of my Master’s program at Fudan University. Since I was already an “older” single woman at the time, I registered for several dating sites and I was frustrated with the whole process. I was receiving correspondence from both single and married men.
Additionally, I signed up for a dating site that was hosted by a match-making agency. The site featured images and profiles for lots of male members, many of whom were attractive and appealing to me as a girl who was “looking for love.” I paid RMB500 for join this site so I could contact them. I sent out 12 emails to different men but nobody responded to me. One of the men had a mobile phone number on his profile, so I was brave enough to call him to ask whether he had received my emails. The man was shocked, and said he had never registered on the dating site. That is how I discovered that most of the profiles on this site were fake.
I saw there was a real need for a serious, quality marriage/dating site, and this gave me the confidence I needed to create that site, for me, and people like me, to find their life partner.
At the time, there were already several hundred dating sites in China. There were no big funds (private equity or venture capital) paying attention to this field. Many people set up dating sites simply because they had a little extra money, and were interested in the Internet. Most people in this arena didn’t really understand online dating or social networking. Many of these sites were just imitating and copying each other, with little or no creativity or innovation.
Although I had been an Internet user for several years, I didn’t know anything about the technology. So I began to work with some friends who had studied computers. I applied for a domain name, and spent RMB300 to rent a server with 100MG space. Then I used Frontpage to learn to design web pages. After three weeks, on March 8, 2003, the first version of Jiayuan was officially live. Two months later, I ran out of money after spending RMB17600 to purchase a new server. So I borrowed RMB100,000 from an internet friend in Yiwu, Zhejiang, in return for quite a few stocks. Today, my friend has earned over 1000 times return on his investment.
The first 1000+ members were primarily family and friends. It was very difficult. Fortunately, after several months, the site began to draw attention from the mainstream media in China. At the same time, I also met my husband on the site. Soon, we received investment from Qian Yongqiang, the founder of New Oriental Education (NYSE: EDU). And we received VC investment in 2007.
In 2006 we partnered with the MSN China, and in 2007 with SINA. Then, in 2008 we partnered with TV dating programs. We had 1 Million users in the first 3 years and now we just grew ~1 Million users in 20 days. We now have over 40 Million registered users.
Congratulations on your successful IPO. You raised $74 Million in the IPO. How will you invest it?
We will invest the IPO proceeds in new business, such as mobile dating and new markets . New markets such as the second, third and fourth tier cities in China. China has 253 cities with populations over 500,000, and our current coverage is not enough.
Do you have any plan for acquiring or working with other websites?
My attitude is to go with the flow. If we have good acquisition targets, we will consider them.
Do you think other Chinese dating sites may seek IPOs in the next year? How is the financing environment (both public and private) in China for the online dating industry?
I believe the no. 2 and no. 3 dating sites [Zhenai and Baihe (then 51Taonan)] in China also want to go public. Whether they will be successful or not depends on their operating results, their sustainability and the overall market environment. At present, we account for 76% of the market share in terms of time spent, and 44% of the market share in terms of revenue according to iResearch, far ahead of our other competitors.
How do you see the competitive landscape changing in the next 1-2 years? What do you think will be the most important changes for the industry in general in the next 2 years?
I think because Jiayuan successfully went public, there will be more capital entering into this field, and the competition will become more fierce. In the future, many small sites will have to exit the market, while the large ones will become even larger and stronger, and form a benign circle. The current competitive advantages of Jiayuan are: more users, more effective, less expensive (or free). During this time we have also built certain barriers to entry, including brand, reputation, user network, user experience, capital, and many years of experience in studying the psychology and experiences of Internet dating users. All these barriers to entry will take time for newcomers or other competitors to break through.
Your revenue model is focused on microtransactions — charging for messaging or "poking" other profiles — rather than on subscriptions. How do you expect the revenue model to evolve in the next 2-3 years?
Our pricing model is a result-based model. It is fair and reasonable, and very successful. It also has plenty of room for growth. The shortfall of this model is that people who don’t have good (or any) results, will not pay and don’t have to pay. We are designing new models to complement or improve the current model.
Your online services accounted for 83% of the net revenue in the first quarter, and events and VIP services accounted for 15% of revenue. Do you expect the breakdown to change in the next year?
I think the ratio will remain the same. Although our VIP services business grows very fast. Dating events are restricted by such factors as time (only holidays or weekends) and weather (fewer people will attend if it is raining). Therefore this ratio won’t change too much in the future.
Any successful experiences to share with aspiring entrepreneurs?
I think that the most important thing to remember when you host a website, is to truly create value for users, rather than focusing on making money at the beginning. When the users really need your products and services, making money becomes easy.
Cheek’d: Dating Service with “Business Cards”
THE NEXT WEB – July 19 – Cheek'd, a NYC based dating network, bridges the gap between online dating and real-world by providing members with physical cards that they can use to entice people from the real world to flirt with them in the virtual world. The company was founded last year. Each member receives a deck of calling cards including short, ‘cheeky’ statements such as: “act natural, we can get awkward later” “don’t overthink this” and “emotionally available”, as well as a link and code id. The recipient of the card logs onto the Cheek’d website, enters the code, reviews the card-giver’s profile and then can send the card-giver a message for free.
Full Speed Ahead for Facial Recognition Technology
BLOGS – July 18 - Face.com has been used to tag over 25 billion faces in 7 billion photos since launching in 2007. Facebook users had been using the Face.com facial recognition app to tag friends in photos for two years before Facebook made facial recognition a default feature for photo tagging this year. CEO Gil Hirsch, 37, says he isn’t worried about Facebook making his app irrelevant. “Our technology is better,” he says. Plus the social networking site is not the company’s only outlet. They offer a facial recognition technology API that 20K developers are using for their own projects, such as FindYourFaceMate.com, a dating site with the narcissistic premise that we get along best with people who resemble us.
Adults 50+ Are Happier Now than when They Were Younger
PR NEWSWIRE – July 18 – According to a survey by OurTime, a dating site catering to singles over 50, 82% of people 50+ are happier with their lives now than they were when they were younger. 72% are more optimistic about their future happiness. 85% agree that companionship is more important now. The 50+ demographic is the fastest growing demographic in the country. The 78M Baby Boomers now represent 28% of the U.S. population. According to 2010 U.S. Census data, ~30% of Boomers are single.
iDate Interview: Ross Williams, CEO White Label Dating & Max McGuire, CEO RedHotPie
OPW – July 18 – I caught Ross and Max for a few minutes at iDate after we saw a presentation on background checks legislation. Here's what they had to say on the topic of background checks. – Mark Brooks
Mark: We have Ross Williams here from White Label Dating and Max who runs Red Hot Pie out of Australia. Gentlemen, we just saw a session on background checks. What is your opinion on how the industry should proceed with background checks?
Ross: The thing that absolutely spooks me is that there is no international body for online dating. The people who make the legislation have no one to talk to. There is no lobbying group. These people will make the legislation regardless.
So if we want to make sure the legislation works with the industry rather than against the industry there needs to be an association that can help lobby in the best interests of the industry and the best long-term interests of consumers.
Max: Even though the background checks are trying to be protective they lead people into a false sense of security. I think that's the real danger. I’m a big believer that people need to take responsibility of their own actions and their own safety and security.
Mark: In April, Match.com said within 90 days they were going to launch sex offender checks. So they are going to check against the National Sex Offender Registry. What do you think will be the effect on the industry when they do that?
Ross: There is no guarantee to the consumer of the safety of their database. It is a positive step, in certain ways. But actually I think [background checks] even give a false sense of security, as Max says, because people lie. If I was in the Sex Offender Registry and I knew that Match checked that, would I use my details? Probably not. Would I use fake details with a prepaid MasterCard? Probably yes.
So all it does is put people into hiding. I think the route we must all take within this industry is the education of consumers and providing a safe environment and good customer care and support. In the UK we offer a free phone support for our customers and so if they have questions they can speak to someone.
Mark: If Match is offering sex offender checks do you think sex offenders are going to drift to other dating sites?
Ross: They will go; anyone will go where there is the greatest opportunity. So it is far better to give people the education and teach them how to date in a safe way.
Mark: Max, you specialize in the sexy side of internet dating. What would your members in Australia feel about this?
Max: We haven’t had a criminal offense or an assault or sexual related charge. It's not an issue on our site.
See all posts on WhiteLabelDating.com
See all posts on RedHotPie
Us Dating Market Stats
POF BLOG – July 16 - According to IAC…- 54M singles in US
- 2.6M paid at any time
- 5.5 free and non paying
- 8.8M singles have used online dating.
Only 5% of the population is using a paid dating site at any given point in time and another 5% a free dating site. The real focus of most of the top dating sites is how to get the other 90% of the population to start using dating sites.
The full article was originally published at POF blog, but is no longer available.