DAILYMAIL.CO.UK – Feb 17 – SinglesAroundMe is assisting more face-to-face meetings, replacing chat-up lines in bars with messages from the GPS-enabled app. Launched in 2010, 550K messages were sent between singles all over the world last year alone. Most of SinglesAroundMe's users are between the ages of 25 and 50, with the USA home to nearly a quarter of a million downloaders. The potential of the gay market is not lost on the founder, and two months ago he launched GaysAroundMe – more squarely aligned to compete with the likes of Grindr.
Month: February 2012
Seeking Arrangement Link Young Men To Rich Men
8NEWS NOW – Feb 19 – Men simply say what they're net worth is and what monthly allowance they're willing to give. SeekingArrangement.com founder Brandon Wade started the website in 2006. A few months back, the Las Vegas-based business topped one million users. There are 10 women for every man on the site. The website says that 15% of their client base are gay and lesbian, and sugar mommy's are on the site too, looking for young men.
by Nathan Baca and Alex Brauer
See full article at 8News Now
Revenues Of eHarmony & PlentyofFish.com
OPW – Feb 17 – Privco is a source for financial data of major privately-held companies. They've estimated revenues for eHarmony, PlentyofFish (POF), Zoosk and OKCupid, to and other Internet dating companies. According to Privco, eHarmony's 2010 revenues were $255M with projected 2011 revenues of $265M. POF revenues were estimated at $19M with $14M operating income in 2010.
Download the full reports for $99 at Privco.com.
We also learned from the POF report that IAC offered $175M for POF in 2008.
See all posts on eHarmony See all posts on Zoosk
See all posts on POF.com See all posts on OkCupid
POF Takes Top Spot In Brazil
OPW – Feb 16 – The Plentyoffish.com team have been busy with their Portugese. Here’s the top ten dating site rankings in Brazil. POF is in the top spot now.
| Unique Visitors | |||
| 1. | POF Sites | 1,078 | |
| 2. | C-Date | 785 | |
| 3. | MSN Dating & Personals | 755 | |
| 4. | Meetic-Match | 607 | |
| 5. | be2 GmbH | 558 | |
| 6. | Chifrevirtual.com.br | 488 | |
| 7. | Twoo.com | 484 | |
| 8. | Baixocidade.com.br | 396 | |
| 9. | 1001 Cartas de Amor | 242 | |
| 10. | eHarmony.com.br | 147 |
(Source: Comscore)
WWL Radio Interview With POF’s Dating Coach
WWL RADIO – Feb 14 – WW Radio has interviewed POF's dating coach recently.
Short interview summary:
Q: What would you advise people when it comes to do’s and don’t’s.
A: I always recommend to put an hour aside and spend time thinking about why you’re on the site and what you’re really looking for. Images are really important. You want to show yourself in a way that represents you. Giving details/examples of what you like to do is a great way to get a conversation started online.
Q: If you were a couch potato? How would you clean that up?
A: Take a picture outside. Don’t ever take a picture of you in the bathroom mirror holding up your cell phone. Avoid any professional shots or upload 6 other images. It gives a better representation of what you look like.
Q: How do you make sure you don’t put a picture up that makes you seem a little loose?
A: If you are a woman, avoid too much cleavage. Men put a shirt on.
Q: What do you think a woman can do that will make a man not be interested in her profile?
A: If the woman is trying to be too sexy in images/profile description. Women have a bit more advantage on online dating sites and can get away with a little more than men.
Q: So women can sometimes be too sexy?
A: I think so. Remember that whatever you portray yourself as that what you’re going to get.
Q: Do you know how many successful unions your website has produced?
A: Millions. We have a page on our site where couples that met on POF can submit their stories. Every week we receive hundreds of submissions from people now married/engaged/have kids. So a lot of success stories.
POF.com – The Business Of Finding Love
SYMPATICO.CA – Feb 14 – Markus Frind is CEO of POF.com. He launched the business in 2003 and has grown, what he calls his dating empire, into a site that draws 7M logins a day.
So tell us about the business. How do you make money in this?
We make money through advertising and we also have optional online subscriptions. With a couple of million people visiting our site a day it’s pretty easy to make money.
So a couple of million people a day; is it principally ads?
Mostly ads for now and also a bunch of revenue from memberships and optional upgrades people can buy.
So are the margins as high as I’ve been reading; 50%.
They’re usually above 50%. I mean this is a business where you don’t have that many costs, your biggest costs are hosting your server and employees.
How much do you make a year?
It’s in the $10’s of millions.
So what made you get into this?
Back in 2003 when I started the site it was the hardest thing I could think of doing, making a website that was dynamic and people could use to interact with others in some way. What happened was I released the site, which I built in about 2 weeks, and then all these people stared finding out about it and it was blowing up and making money so I was kinda swept into it.
Swept into it? So was it something you had planned on?
I definitely had not planned on this.
So the fact that this is a free site makes some people wonder if that affects, if I can put it this way, the clientele on the site. In online dating does price matter?
Our users spend on average $700million per year on paid dating services so virtually all the users that are on a paid online dating site are also on POF, there’s a massive overlap.
So what differentiates you from the others?
A typical online dater will go online and they will sign up for 3 dating sites and then they will end up using 1. There’s about 12% that will use 2. What differentiates POF is the fact that it’s free and it’s the largest free site. So if you want to meet the most people, the most singles POF is the place you go especially in Canada.
And what’s the success ratio for every 10 people who use your site how many get a date or rather a sustainable date if I can put it that way?
We track the relationship numbers and they are usually over 30%. The problem is POF is a site for everyone so there’s a lot of people that sign up and say ‘I just want a date I don’t want a relationship’ so they only stay in that section. Whereas people that sign up for long-term they are in the long-term section and want to find people looking for long-term relationships.
So about 30% in that category?
Overall on average the people who are looking for really long-term relationships its usually closer to 40-45%.
Is it true that most people lie about their age in online dating?
We really don’t see that much. If people do lie it’s in the low percentage. What happens is when a lot of our users come back to the site multiple times over the years we’re noticing they’re not changing their birthdates when they sign up for the 2nd/3rd account.
You talked earlier about making $10’s millions with this. Have you had any thoughts about taking it public as a publically traded stock?
As a sole shareholder it doesn’t make too much sense for me to go public. I mean I make more money as a sole shareholder than I would as a public company paying myself a salary and I wouldn’t be able to sell my shares all that easily.
I have to ask you; what are some of the nicest stories that have come out of this that you’ve seen?
We’ve have people emailing us in their wedding videos. There’s like 3 or 4 weddings a night in one place. It’s the most inspiring thing seeing around 60-70 thousand people emailing you in their wedding photos from people they’ve met off the site and this is all around the world.
Have you got a date for Valentine’s Day?
I’m married now so I definitely have a date.
Aussies Lost $21 Million To Online Dating Scams In 2011
HERALD SUN – Feb 16 - The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is acting on online dating scams after receiving more than 2100 complaints in 2011. Australians were cheated out of $21M by online dating scams last year, up from $15M in 2010. The ACCC has released guidelines that call on dating websites to clearly issue warnings and information about fraudsters as well as publishing examples of scams.
See full article at Herald Sun
Mark Brooks: The ACCC is very active on the issue of scamming in Australia. The Aussie idating industry and the ACCC formed these guidelines for dating sites. Should dating sites in the USA and UK (and beyond) do similar?
Boston iDate Startup Meetup, Feb 22, 2012
OPW – Feb 16 – The next iDate startup is scheduled for February 22nd, 2012 in Boston, 6pm – 10pm at the Seaport Boston Hotel (Ballroom). The event is free. Don't miss the opportunity to network and build relationships with a diverse group of dating industry professionals in the dating market space.
Agenda:
6:00 – 7:00 PM
Reception
7:00 – 7:30 PM
Paul Falzone (CEO, eLove): The Offline Dating Market
7:30 – 8:00 PM
Adam Towvim (Senior Director, Biz Dev., Jumptap): Dating and Mobile: Ad-Networks for Downloads and Leveraging 3rd party Data
8:00 -10:00 PM
Networking
eLove, Optimal Payments, PaysafeCard, Courtland Brooks and iDate are sponsors of the event.
SNAP Interactive CEO Clifford Lerner Featured On CNBC
PR NEWSWIRE – Feb 14 - SNAP Interactive CEO Clifford Lerner was interviewed on CNBC's Worldwide Exchange. Cliff discussed trends in mobile and social dating. As of February 14, 2012, AreYouInterested.com has 6.6M Monthly Active Users on Facebook, per AppData.com, and 15% of AreYouInterested.com logins occur on a mobile device.
The full article was originally published at Sacramento Bee, but is no longer available.
Plentyoffish Fires Darts At eHarmony, Match.com On Valentine’s Day
IT BUSINESS – Feb 14 – Plentyoffish has released a white paper indicating that its social media dating formula may be more effective at hooking you up than the matchmaking algorithms employed by other dating sites. “Traditional online dating sites provide a very linear and singular experience,” said Mark Brooks, principal analyst of Courtland Brooks, a media relations and marketing company that does work with POF. Brooks released a whitepaper titled What is Social Dating? Courtland Brooks released a graph showing that feature-for-feature it outguns both Match.com and eHarmony. Brooks said the process of making users browse through numerous profiles based on specific criteria with the intent of finding a potential date or partner is too time consuming and requires “significant commitment.” With most online dating systems, he said, users have to create profiles to “sell” themselves to others. “This leads to misleading information or a frustrating experience.” On the other hand the social networking focus such as that employed by POF offers a “more relaxed environment,” Brooks said.” Social networking is very much centered around activities and interest, which give excellent representation of who a person really is.” Brooks also pointed to as study authored by Dr. Eli Finkel, associate professor of social psychology at Northwestern University, in New York, who pointed to several “pitfalls” of online dating. “To date, there is no compelling evidence that any online dating matching algorithm actually works,” Finkel said in statement. “Our report concludes that that it is unlikely that algorithms can work, even in principle, given the limitations of matching procedures that these sites use.”