OPW – July 8 – ChristianCafe.com, the successful dating site for Christians, hosted a singles event called “Bash for the Unattached”. Part of the event was also speed dating.
Month: July 2012
Urban Rush Show: Interview With Sarah Gooding From POF
SHAW.CA – July 4 – Sarah Gooding, POF (PlentyofFish.com) Online Dating Coach, was interviewed by Fiona Forbes and Michael Eckford from Shaw TV Canada for their Urban Rush show. Sarah talked about do’s and don’ts to help people get a positive reaction when using a dating site. POF has 45M users worldwide and is the #1 dating site in Canada, US, UK, Brazil and Australia.
Cofounderly Is A Couples App For Founders
TECH CRUNCH – July 4 – TheIceBreak previously launched an app where couples can answer icebreaker questions. When TheIceBreak co-founder Christina Brodbeck was looking at the app’s user data, she saw that there were co-founders actually using the app to communicate. So TheIceBreak team took the functionality of the couples app and created new content tailored for startup co-founders. Cofounderly is supposed to encourage real-world conversations, rather than replace them. Ultimately, she says the app should be “leading to more in-depth, in-person conversations.”
DoingSomething.co.uk: Action Packed Dating
FEMALEFIRST.CO.UK – July 4 – Doing Something is a new dating site which takes first dates away from the restaurants and cinema into an action packed date. Twentieth Century Fox commissioned a survey that found 84%of 16-24 year olds find awkward silences the most challenging on a first date. An action packed date would help them lose their inhibitions.
Brenan McGarrigle: Professional Matchmaker Interview
BOSTON.COM – July 3 - As a professional matchmaker for eLove, Brenan McGarrigle claims to have helped facilitate over 600 marriages in her 29 years on the job. eLove, formerly named The Right One and Together Dating, has an online registration process, followed up by a detailed questionnaire and one-on-one consulting. eLove members pay a fee of $3K and up to join.
Q: How have online services changed the dating landscape?
A: It’s more about quantity than quality.
Q: How do you tactfully give advice when needed if someone has some big turnoff?
A: When leaving the office, I give them a little sticky note and tell them to put it on their mirror. I might write, “Get a haircut that makes you look like you live in this century".
Q: How did you meet your husband?
A: It might sound a little contradictory, but we met at a bar during homecoming.
by Cindy Atoji Keene
See full article at Boston.com
January iDate To Be Held In Las Vegas
WEBWIRE – July 3 – The 10th annual Online Dating Industry conference will take place on January 23-25, 2013. Traditionally, iDate conferences were held in Miami in January. There has been a recent renaissance of interest among dating affiliates, The Las Vegas Affiliate Summit will precede iDate on January 20-22, 2013. Multiple large internet and advanced technology conventions also take place in Las Vegas during that time. As a result, having iDate in Las Vegas should result in a larger event with more networking and more business contacts.
Problems Dating Sites Are Facing & Their Solutions
FAST COMPANY – June 28 – Online dating has ballooned to a $4 billion business. Now the industry faces new players and challenges.
oneGoodLove
Problem: Dominated by hookup sites like Grindr and Manhunt, the gay online-dating space underserves relationship-minded folks.
Solution: OneGoodLove, a sort of eHarmony for the gay and lesbian community, is evolving its matching system.
OkCupid
Problem: To improve matching algorithms, sites need to know who goes on dates with whom and how those dates turn out.
Solution: OkCupid Labs wants to advance its mobile platform to gather new kinds of data on real-world dating behavior. Via the app, users will be encouraged to give instant feedback about their dates with other OkCupiders.
Badoo
Problem: As online daters become conditioned to screening potential mates via in-depth profiles, the process of meeting new people online grows further from how offline attraction really works.
Solution: A social discovery app, Badoo facilitates meetings on the fly by encouraging users to find people right around them based on nothing more than a photo, an age, and an interest or two.
HowAboutWe
Problem: A happy customer is a lost user.
Solution: HowAboutWe, a site that connects people based on user-suggested activities, is launching a service for couples.
by Dan Slater
See full article at Fast Company
See all posts on oneGoodLove See all posts on Badoo
See all posts on OkCupid See all posts on HowAboutWe
Interview With Tanya Fathers, CEO Of Dating Factory, White Label Dating Provider
OPW INTERVIEW – July 3 – Dating Factory has done well white labelling in Continental Europe, and is now setting its sights on the USA and UK markets. Tanya Fathers has some considerable heritage in the idating industry now, after co-founding World Dating Partners in 2001. She moved onwards and upwards to co-found Dating Factory in 2009. (Full Disclosure: Dating Factory is a client of Courtland Brooks)
This interview was conducted by Brian Bowman, CEO of theComplete.me. Formerly the VP Product at Match.com.
What makes your company unique?
First we don't have our own dating websites, so we don't compete against our customers. We only provide technology. Secondly, we allow people to own databases.
Can you give us two examples of URLs running on your business?
We have about 8000 URLs all together. eDateability, for example, which was on CNN News or DatingBuddies.com.
A question around identity. Why do you think that dating sites require consumers to be anonymous? Is it to protect the business model of paying to communicate or is it something that consumers want?
Both reasons. People are paying to be able to talk to each other. But also a lot of them want to stay anonymous.
So do you think that anonymous as an option is OK, or do you think every user should be required to be anonymous? So if I'm a consumer and I don't want to be anonymous, do you think a website should allow a user to do that?
I think on freemium websites, maybe. On subscription websites, it just defeats the object.
Do you think that criminal background checks are important?
They are very misleading at the moment. To conduct a proper background check, it takes a lot of a person's time. I would be against this particular approach.
Misleading because you think that the information you get back is less than accurate?
Yes, it's not possible to do it 100% accurately with this particular approach. It creates a false feeling of security. They think that this guy is properly checked but he is not.
So you think that jDate, Match, and eHarmony went far enough or did not go far enough in terms of the background checks? And should they have offered them to everyone including non-subscribers? What's your take on that?
I think it can be a service on demand. It needs to be connected to proper background check agencies. Consumers have to realize that they have to pay more for a proper background check.
What matching do you provide for your clients? Is it scientific matching, or is it just based on the parameters in the profile?
We run two platforms at the moment. Partners can decide which one they want to use. We offer a standard and advanced matching where people can choose different criteria and narrow down the searches by interest, age group, and so on. Then there is a proper psychology matching based on 60 different criteria and social metrics; sexuality matching that was designed particularly for the dating purposes by a proper psychologist; there's a combination of sexuality, psychology and interests which we call “a perfect match”.
Eli Finkel has come out pretty strongly showing that the science of personality testing doesn't produce compatible long term relationships. What do you think is the future of sites that use that as the foundation of their matching algorithm? Do you think they have to change? Do you think they should stop making scientific claims, or just let it be a marketing message?
Just let it be a marketing message. There are plenty of audiences that want to be matched.
Where do you think the responsibility of a dating site ends? What should be the promise? Is it a good first date? Should it be that we have more marriages than anyone else? What is the actual deliverable promise of a dating site?
Connecting people. You can not promise marriages. You can connect them and hope for the best.
Is matching around interests important?
It is. In our system, we have quite a few dating sites created around different interest groups.
Where are you pulling the interests from? Is it just asking the person or are you pulling it out of the social interest graph?
We are asking people at the moment. We do offer automatic registration using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ but not so many people are using it because of the privacy.
What do you think is the impact of asking them to register using Facebook? Is it negative?
Our conversions dropped when we asked them to.
Dropped by how much?
It was about a 20% drop, which is why we removed it very quickly as a mandatory entity and left it to our partners to decide.
How do you define social dating? What does it mean to you?
I think social dating is creating an environment where people can communicate slightly wider than only looking for other single people. It's creating a sense of belonging to some sort of community as well as adding some gadgets people can use on mobile. Creating more modern technology.
Is the integration of social networking features like friends and interests and social profiles important into a dating experience? Should it be required or do you think it's just an optional benefit?
I think it's optional. Possible interests can be more enforced on people because it creates all of their profile. People don't want to tell their friends that they are on a site looking for somebody.
What demographic would be most interested in social dating?
Probably younger people at this stage.
Why do you think the major dating sites such as Zoosk, Match and eHarmony, haven't integrated friends, or the interest graph into their dating experience?
I just don't think they are flexible enough to try and experiment. Maybe Match.com's demographic is not ready for social dating.
Social discovery, if we were to define it broad as meeting new people, sometime for friendship, sometimes for dating. Do you think the social discovery market is broader than online dating?
I think online dating is part of social discovery.
Do you think social discovery consumes online dating or do you think they continue to be separate markets?
I think it actually consumes it from what I can see.
In what period of time?
It's hard to tell. Social discovery is definitely much broader and there's lots of single people that go for this sort of situation in hopes to find somebody around social events. The dating entity will always be there. I don't think it will be completely consumed.
When do you think it starts to really impact the dating industry then? Do you think it's already started or it hasn't started yet?
Since 2002, every year there is this question. Free dating will kill paid dating, social networks will kill dating. Dating is a basic human need. I can't see anything killing it.
How important is mobile to your business? What percentage of people use mobile on your platform?
It is very important. We’ve launched our mobile version recently, and we used HTML5. But we are also producing apps on demand. Before we had a mobile version, about 10% of our users were browsing the dating sites on mobile devices. We expect it to be higher now, of course because the interface is more user friendly.
Do you think HTML5 is hurting that, because it is not interactive enough, or no?
We'll see. We've done HTML5 as a basic version for the whole platform. And we do applications customized for partners because we don't want to jeopardize marketing initiatives. It has to be different.
So what are the important features for mobile?
Register. Login. Browse. View profile. Pay.
Do you think a different business model will be embraced because of mobile? Is it micro-transactions or mobile check ins?
Micro-transactions are imperative if you want to cover world wide. In some countries there are restrictions on how much you can charge.
With Groupon-like dating, do you think that can extend the lifetime value of consumers? Do you think mobile enables that more? Or not important?
Mobile is more interactive. I think everyone keeps it in their pocket and if a nice lady pops up they will look at it. So I would say that mobile is essential for longer term interaction.
In terms of profiles, do you see profiles changing from this sort of heavy text-based profile to something different, whether it's on social or mobile?
It becomes more visual. People hate doing lots of typing these days, especially if they register on mobile.
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To learn more about Social Discovery, check out the Social Discovery conference, August 6-7th in San Francisco.
Learning Chinese: Maidens For Millionaires
GLOBAL TIMES – July 2 – On the fourth floor of a shopping mall in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, a live Chinese version of The Bachelor is taking place. 7,200 women from all across the country are battling for the heart of the 25 mystery mega-rich men. Such matchmaking events for the rich have been very popular since 2003 when a billionaire posted a newspaper ad looking for a wife. 100 women will be selected from these candidates and their profiles would be viewed by the billionaires. Then 28 of them will participate in a final two-day party held in a luxury hotel this month. Women should be aged between 20-35, 160-175 centimeters tall, well-educated, beautiful, smart and have a positive view of marriage. And it would be better if she had a "pure body," meaning no sexual experience. More than 90% of Chinese men surveyed said women should marry before 27 to avoid becoming 'unwanted.'
39% Women Would Give Up Sex Than Their Favorite Food
BUSINESS WIRE – July 3 – TODAY.com and Match.com have teamed up on a "Love Bites" survey that reveals turn-ons and turn-offs of dining etiquette and food choices that will keep dates coming back for seconds. "Food is an integral part of our culture, and so many of us fall in love over a good meal," said Vidya Rao, TODAY.com Food Editor. "Food, sex and courtship go hand in hand in nature," says Dr. Helen Fisher, Chief Scientific Advisor to Match.com.70% of women said it was a big turn-off if their date had more to drink than they did, while 23% of single men and women said it was a turn-off if their date had nothing at all to drink. 30% of meat-eaters would not date a vegetarian. 19% of singles would stop dating someone who couldn't cook or refused to cook. 62% are turned off if their date asks to split the check; and 56% are turned off by a date who is picky when ordering. 39% of single women would rather give up sex than their favorite food for a year.
The full article was originally published at Market Watch, but is no longer available.