Month: December 2011
eHarmony Launches First Ever UK-produced Campaign
MARKETING WEEK – Dec 22 – eHarmony is launching its first ever marketing campaign produced in the UK as it steps up efforts to take on its rivals. The £1M campaign, which launches on Boxing Day, is aimed at UK singles who are looking for life partners. TV creative will feature a single girl going about her day-to-day activities. At the end she is pictured with her eHarmony partner, while a voiceover says: “Being single can be amazing, so if you’re going to give it up, it has to be for someone who makes being a couple the best thing in the world”.
by Lara O'Reilly
See full article at Marketing Week
Poll Results: Is The On-line Dating Industry On Top Of Controlling Scammer Fraud?
OPW – Dec 22 – Scammers are a serious problem and dating sites put a lot of effort in fighting them – but is it a victorious fight? We asked our readers about this and here is what we found out. We got 53 answers to the question: Is the on-line dating industry on top of controlling scammer fraud? 74% of the respondents said no – that´s an alarming number, what do you think? Let us know in the comments.
Our next question: How important is Valentine’s (Dec-Feb) season for your online dating business (revenue rise)?
Spark Networks Donates $32,000 To Tuesday’s Children
MARKETWIRE – Dec 22 – Spark Networks, owner and operator of dozens of online communities including JDate.com and ChristianMingle.com, is sharing the love by donating ~$32K to Tuesday's Children, a non-profit family service organization committed to serving those impacted by the events of September 11, 2001 and terrorist incidents worldwide.
The full article was originally published at MarketWatch, but is no longer available.
Online Sites For Dating Prisoners On The Rise
THE GRIO – Dec 21 – Sites with names like inmatepassions.com act as bridges that transform long-distance friends into lovers. Arlen Bischke started a prisoner pen-pal site called meet-an-inmate.com in 1998 to help prisoners connect to the outside world. "Correspondence with a stranger can give prisoners something to look forward to and help their moral", said Bischke. The online prisoner dating industry has grown from humble beginnings 1996 into a robust market today. Leading sites boast "between 7K – 10K profiles featuring prisoners seeking to connect. ABC News reports that there are over a dozen major prison dating sites.
by Alexis Garrett Stodghill
The full article was originally published at The Grio, but is no longer available.
Seeking Love Is Top Resolution For Post 50+
HUFFINGTON POST – Dec 20 - For nearly ~60% of single people over 50, “finding love” is the top New Year’s resolution, according to a survey of members of OurTime.com, the dating site for singles over 50. At 56% of respondents, "Find a Companion" ranked higher than exercising more (34%), reducing stress (29%), saving money/spending less (28%), dieting (20%) and quitting smoking (12%). This is not entirely surprising, since the respondents were members of an online dating site.
by Laura Rowley
See full article at Huffington Post
Airline Offers “Meet & Seat” Dating Service
THE GLOBE AND MAIL – Dec 16 - KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is introducing “Meet & Seat,” a service that lets passengers pick their seatmates in advance based on shared interests stated on their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. Malaysia Airlines has already launched a similar service on Facebook, letting passengers find out which friends might be taking the same flight. Virgin Atlantic has also shown interest in the scheme.
by Zosia Bielski
The full article was originally published at Globe and Mail, but is no longer available.
How Match.com’s Founder Created The World’s Biggest Dating Site And Walked Away With Just $50,000
BUSINESS INDISDER – Dec 16 – In 1994, when only 5% of Americans had Internet access, Kremen took a $2,500 advance on his credit card to buy the domain name Match.com. Today, Match is the undisputed leader of online dating. Incredibly, however, Kremen has no ties to the Match brand today. Kremen walked away with $50K when he departed Match, a site that is on track to earn $450M in revenue in 2011. Late in 1994, Kremen secured $1.5M in funding from angel investors and a few venture-capital firms. Match went live in April 1995. Kremen was spending every waking hour working on the site, but a rift began to form in the board room. The first point of contention was the business model. The board also disliked the personals category. And the V.C.’s had serious doubts about Kremen’s management skills.
After butting heads once too often, the V.C.’s removed Kremen from the CEO post in mid-1995, although he remained on the ECI board. The board’s next step was to find a new CEO. Richard Neustadt, the first candidate, was “a great, salt-of- the-earth guy,” according to Kremen. On the weekend before Neustadt’s first day at ECI, he died in a rafting accident. Then the board made a billion-dollar mistake. Frustrated with the difficulty of finding the right CEO, and eager to pursue the newspaper-partnership business model for ECI, the V.C.’s spun off Match in 1997, selling it for $7M to Cendant. In June 1999, Cendant sold Match to Ticketmaster Citysearch Services for $50M. Kremen received only $50K cash from the Match sale.
Special Online Dating Pre-Conference At iDate Miami
WEBWIRE – Dec 19 – Courtland Brooks will provide a special pre-session for the Internet Dating Industry Super Conference (iDate). The iDate takes place on January 23 – 30, 2012 at the Miami
Beach Convention Center. The session will cover an overview of the online dating industry, business models, financials, software choices, marketing strategies, latest business trends, new technologies including mobile, customer service issues and pitfalls other sites faced. This session is ideal for business executives and entrepreneurs looking to enter the online dating business.
Ian Bell, CEO Of Tingle, An iPhone Dating App
THE MORNING SHOW – Dec 18 – Ian Bell is the founder and CEO of Tingle, an iPhone only dating app. "We use location as a way for people to run into each other electronically”, Ian Bell explains in the Morning Show in Canada. “We have an engine that works on the back end of our system and is constantly looking for people who are in similar places." Tingle launched in Vancouver earlier this year and Ian Bell claims his app is the most popular mobile dating app in Canada. "The future of social is mobile," said Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch. "Mobile dating apps like Tingle will begin to disrupt and will eventually usurp traditional web-based dating sites."
The full article was originally published at Global News Toronto, but is no longer available.