THE INDEPENDENT – Jan 4 - According to extra-marital dating sites such as Illicit Encounters, Lovinglinks.com and MaritalAffair.com, the start of the year is the time most married men and women will sign up to commit adultery. IllicitEncounters .com, is expecting a 300% rise in new members this week having previously discovered January 4 to be "the most adulterous day of the year". "Christmas and New Year are times when couples spend an intensive period of time with each other and their families," explains extra-marital expert and spokeswoman for Illicit Encounters, Rosie Freeman-Jones. "This can be quite claustrophobic and sometimes leads to a 'cabin fever' situation where both parties feel irritated with each other and cracks in the relationship start to surface. Illicit Encounters alone has 43,000 Irish members.
OPW INTERVIEW – Jan 3 – Gary Kremen, started it all. He’s the original CEO and the founder of Match.com. Here’s his story. – Mark Brooks
You founded Match.com in 1993. What was your original vision? Our original vision was a dating service based on email. My genesis and idea was to find the right woman for myself. I had the idea that if I put all the women in the world in a database and sorted it on my criteria I’d find the right woman to marry.
How do you think the site has improved over the years? Clearly the web and mobile interface has reached consumers and what they are doing today. Deeper databases, different ways of reaching…it has been improvement.
Back in 1996 you had a disagreement with the VC’s that were funding Match.com regarding serving alternative markets. What were the alternative markets? I saw an opportunity. Match.com was about long-term relationships that were not considered casual dating. The long term relationships definitely could give online dating present value but I thought that short term relationships, gay/lesbian dating, different ethnic group targeting was the way to go. They were embarrassed by the whole thing.
Are you surprised by the level of innovations that has occurred since you started Match.com, one way or the other? Match.com was not the first into mobile, not the first in using new technology/new platforms like Facebook. I would say that the innovation is at the rest of the market, not ahead of the market.
Internet dating really seems to be be moving onto the mobile phone. What do you think is going to be the next big move? I think using GPS/location data to date more people around you and maybe social graph data.
If you were betting on a particular dating site which horse would you put your money on? Say we’re going to invest a couple of hundred thousand dollars. I’ve been looking at Skout who have an interest in mobile product and more short term dating than long term but I don’t want disparage with any public bets. It’s a tougher business today because customer acquisitions costs are so high.
Skout sounds like a great horse. Tell us more about it. They believed early on in using mobile location based data and using applications where the urban consumer would want to use it. I’ve been helping them out from time to time
So you do have an interest in getting back into the Internet dating arena? I wouldn’t say that. I think there’s a time for everything and I think the time is gone for being the first mover. There’s other businesses out there that excite me, other technologies, other things that add different types of value to society.
So let’s move onto Sociogramics because that sounds very timely and another great cause. How does Sociogramics help the underbanked and those with little credit? There’s a lot of borrowers out there, let’s call them fallen angels, underbanked that deserve credit that aren’t being given chances by traditional lending institutions. So we are trying to help traditional lending institutions by bringing back the importance of character to lending so people who want to pay back can. One of the things that we learned in this financial crisis is that there are a lot of people that didn’t. Can we go find people that really do want to pay back that aren’t given the chance? Character and community is the bottom line.
CRAIN'S NEW YORK – Jan 3 - Revenue at Lisa Clampitt's Manhattan matchmaking firm, VIP Life, which caters exclusively to men, has doubled over the past two years. She charges each client $12K a year and serves 30 men at a time. In New York City, there used to be three or four high-end players in the industry, according to Ms. Clampitt. “Now there are at least 12.” Lisa Ronis, founder of Lisa Ronis Personal Matchmaking in Manhattan, said her business, with three part-time employees, has grown ~10% a year. Her fees start at $15K for a year of service. “Last year was my best year,” said Ms. Ronis. “My clients are well aware of the recession, but they feel vulnerable now and want to connect in a meaningful way”, she said.
PR NEWSWIRE – Jan 3 - This Christmas, Mamboo.com noticed an average 40% increase in user activity. Mamboo is reporting some interesting statistics, including members sending 30% more online gifts, as well as a 38% increase in spending on the site. The number of messages sent and received by members also doubled. Mamboo also forecasts a rather romantic January, with 60% more traffic to their site expected during the first two weeks of the year.
The full article was originally published at PR Newswire, but is no longer available.
IDATE – Jan 2 – LovePlanet was founded in 2005. It grew fast and was acquired by RBK in 2006. Maksim Khramov joined the company in 2007. LovePlanet is currently a part of Mediamir. Mediamir specializes in promotion of internet sites and other entertainment products.
Q: What is LovePlanet? A: LovePlanet is a freemium dating site.
Q: How many offices are there at LovePlanet? A: LovePlanet has several offices. Our headquarters are in Moscow. The largest part is based in St. Petersburg, where LovePlanet was actually founded.
Q: How many employees are at LovePlanet? A: 20 people in total.
Q: What markets LovePlanet serves? A: We mainly target the Russian speaking audience. A significant portion of our users live in the Ukraine and Belorussia.
Q: How large do you see the Russian online dating market? A:Mamba and LovePlanet annual revenue is ~ 1 Billion rubles ($31M).
Q: What is LovePlanet advertising % of revenues? A: ~20% of our total revenue, and is constantly rising.
Q: How many members are at LovePlanet.ru? A: We have ~17M registered users.
Q: Are you mobile? A: At the moment ~5-10% of our audience use an HTML version adapted for a mobile screen. Together with html version, we are developing and building applications for iOS and Android.
Q: For the Russian speaking residents where are the market opportunities for growth? A: We see growth in the other cities of Russia.
Q: Are you planning on entering the EU market? A: We would be happy to work in other markets as well such as Europe or America. However, it's a challenge since business models differ greatly.
Q: Do you use Facebook connect for increasing conversions? A: We see the tendency of Internet users migrating to social networks. We are working in this direction at the moment and recently we have developed the application for “Vkontakte.ru” network.
Q: How many payment systems does LovePlanet accept? A: To pay for our services you can use practically any payment system working with Russian market: credit cards, “Qiwi” terminals. You can also pay with Sberbank or with a wire transfer. The major part of payments is done via SMS service now.
KOREA HERALD – Jan 3 - A revision to the Law on the Management of Marriage Agencies was among the scores of bills that passed the National Assembly on the last few days of 2011. The revised law contained provisions to punish marriage brokers introducing women under the age of 18 and introducing two or more women to an applicant at the same time with up to three years in jail and a maximum fine of 20M won. The law requires notarization of documents providing the personal data of Korean men seeking foreign brides and raised the punishment for running an unregistered marriage brokerage business to a maximum five years’ imprisonment and 50M won in fines from three years and 20M won. As of the end of 2010, 1,253 agencies were registered with the authorities for local and overseas business. Over 30,000 international marriages are reported each year.
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK – Jan 2 - Finding love online can be tough – especially if you’re called Kevin. Researchers say that people using dating sites are less likely to pursue a relationship with someone called Mandy, Justin, Chantal or Kevin, because the names are all associated with troublemaking. Psychologists at the Humboldt University in Berlin reached the conclusions after testing how often 47,000 dating site members would open messages from English-sounding suitors. ‘Mails sent from an Alexander were clicked on 102% more times than those from a Kevin,’ said the study’s leader, Jochen Gebauer.
MEDIA BISTRO – Jan 1 – Gay social network site Manhunt is about to drum up some publicity by placing the above billboard in Times Square. Located at the corner of Broadway and 47th Street, Manhunt's billboard, which will be up through Jan. 6, was described as "raising some eyebrows" and featuring "two sweaty guys in dog tags about to make out." It's already greatly offended one L.A. mom, despite the fact that a similar Michael Kors billboard (depicting a woman placing her hand inside a man's briefs) has been the subject of no such controversy.
OPW – Jan 1 – The internet dating industry has already had significant impact on society. (See what internet dating executives think in this Courtland Brooks white paper). People have more choice and knowledge about suitors than ever before. But does this make them more happy? Dan Gilbert (Harvard Psychology Professor and author of Stumbling On Happiness) is an expert on Happiness and was interviewed in the Jan-Feb 2012 Harvard Business Review. Here's some relevant points.
In general people who are in good romantic relationships are happier than those who aren't. As it turns out, people are not very good at predicting what will make them happier and how long that happiness will last. They expect positive events to make them happier than they do, and negative events to make them unhappier than they do. In both field and lab studies we've found that gaining or losing a romantic partner has less impact on happiness than people think. Very few experiences effect us for more than three months.
People hate being bored. People are happiest when they're appropriately challenged-when they're trying to achieve goals that are difficult but not out of reach.
If I had to summarize all the causes of human happiness in one word, that word would be 'social.' We are by far the most social species on earth. If I wanted to predict your happiness, and I could know only one thing about you, I'd want to know about your social network-about your friends and family and the strength of your bonds with them.
The psychologist Ed Diener shows that the frequency of your positive experiences is a better indicator of your happiness than the intensity of your positive experiences. How good your experiences are doesn't matter nearly as much as how many good experiences you have. So wear comfy shoes, give your wife a big kiss and sneak a French fry. The small stuff matters.
There are some lessons in here for designers of internet dating sites. You should aim to keep people more socially engaged and focused while on your site, through learning and social gamification. Which is why I'm headed to the Game Dynamics conference in March in NYC. – Mark Brooks
THE INDEPENDENT – Jan 4 - According to extra-marital dating sites such as Illicit Encounters, Lovinglinks.com and MaritalAffair.com, the start of the year is the time most married men and women will sign up to commit adultery. IllicitEncounters .com, is expecting a 300% rise in new members this week having previously discovered January 4 to be "the most adulterous day of the year". "Christmas and New Year are times when couples spend an intensive period of time with each other and their families," explains extra-marital expert and spokeswoman for Illicit Encounters, Rosie Freeman-Jones. "This can be quite claustrophobic and sometimes leads to a 'cabin fever' situation where both parties feel irritated with each other and cracks in the relationship start to surface. Illicit Encounters alone has 43,000 Irish members.
