HOUSTONIAN ONLINE – Apr 4 – The Crime Victims Institute at Sam Houston State University published a study comparing the dating safety and victimization rates between traditional relationships and online relationships. Online daters tended to have a slightly lower victimization rate than traditional daters. People are paying higher amounts of attention when dating on the internet.
by Sophie Nelson
The full article was originally published at Houstonian Online, but is no longer available.
BUSINESS INSIDER – Apr 2 – Bang With Friends, a three-month-old Facebook app that helps users find friends who want to hook up is gaining a lot traction. BWF has amassed ~820K users and has 200K pairs, which is what happens when two people agree to meet in person. 70% of BWF's users are between the ages of 18 and 34.
BUSINESS INSIDER – Apr 2 – Martini App lets a group of friends to go out with another group of friends. Users pick up to three Facebook friends, and are matched with a similar group each night at midnight. They then have 24 hours to decided if they would like to go out with that group.
BUSINESS INSIDER – Apr 2 – When Facebook
announced Graph Search, industry experts said it could kill online
dating. That was before anyone had actually used graph search. Sam
Yagan, CEO of both OkCupid & Match.com
said, "I used graph search and it showed me people who meet my criteria
but that didn't mean I wanted to date those people." Neil Strauss,
author of "The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists,"
said "Facebook is doing a lot of strange things lately to appeal to
shareholders. Allowing guys or marketers to just reach into user's
inboxes is a threat to user loyalty. Sean Suhl, cofounder of Let's Date
agrees, "I would feel awkward about contacting a stranger or friend of a
friend on Facebook for romantic reasons because not everyone on
Facebook is there to meet people. Markus Frind, CEO of POF,
agrees, "Facebook isn't going to kill dating sites. Its all about
intent. If you signup to POF there are millions of people who made the
decision to signup because they want to be a in relationship." Facebook
is already one of the top places people meet and hook up. Dan Slater,
author of "Love in the Time of Algorithms"
points out, "We all know that people have already been using Facebook
for dating, and that Facebook is the biggest online dating site in the
world, even though it doesn't think of itself as an online dating site."
by Elissa Shevinsky
See full article at Business Insider
See all posts on Match.com See all posts on POF.com
See all posts on OkCupid See all posts on Let'sDate
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
TECH2 – Apr 2 – It looks like it is time for Facebook to immerse itself into the world of dating. Rumours have emerged that Facebook might be mulling over buying controversial app Bang With Friends. The purchase of Bang With Friends will officially mark Facebook’s foray into the world of online dating. Using the app, users can figure out people in your friend list who could potentially be up for sexual encounters. Facebook also apparently tried to clone the product before approaching the founders of Bang With Friends. Yahoo too seems to have Bang with Friends on its radar as a possible acquisition.
by Nishtha Kanal
The full article was originally published at Tech2, but is no longer available.
HUFFINGTON POST – Apr 3 – Creator Noel Biderman
has been happily married for 10 years. His wife Amanda was featured on
the company's new billboard campaign.
Q: Amanda, how did you react when Noel first told you about his plan to create an infidelity dating site?
Amanda: Originally, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t an emotional or personal issue.
Noel: She saw the passion in which I wanted to pursue this and she wanted to match that passion. I knew I had a true partner.
Q: Has running a site like AshleyMadison informed how you behave in your own marriage in any way?
Noel: Ironically, I talk about infidelity more than any man on the planet.
Amanda: This business has just made us stronger and more communicative.
THE BULLETIN – Mar 31 – Research shows that money is the No. 1 reason couples fight and a main reason marriages split up. In spite of that, most couples do not talk about money before they marry, says Terri Orbuch of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. People often seemed ashamed to bring up financial concerns. Part of the reason for that disconnect may be that we are hard-wired to ignore practical concerns in the throes of romance, said Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at Stony Brook University. Romantically induced financial trauma, though, tends to stick. Dating site Creditscoredating.com includes credit scores in members’ profiles. The owner, Niem Green, said most of his members, a majority of them male, had been hurt financially in previous relationships.
MIXERGY – Mar 4 – Sam Yagan, the CEO of Match and CEO/Founder of OKCupid.com interviewed
with Andrew Warner on Mixergy, which helps people 'learn from proven
entrepreneurs.'
Sam thought one of his biggest failures was in
2007 when the OKCupid team spent a year trying to
internationalize OKCupid. They thought it
would be possible to take the OKCupid recipe and extend it but did a bad
job with the technology and business and tried to do it on the cheap
and didn't hire the right talent.
Sam talks about the importance of being straight and critical in the startup environment. Some love
it, some don’t.
The OKCupid blog worked because it really put OKCupid in the center of conversations
happening around the country. "You could
talk about an online dating site at work, and with family." The blog proved that online dating could be cool.
He focused on high risk, high return bets when adding new features
to OKupid. They would try
something new every couple of months. If they had a couple of winners a
year that would be great, and would result in 'step-function growth.'
e.g. OKCupid Journals/blogs. was a fail.
Only a very small portion of users used them, and they tended to be
inhabited by trolls.
Sam states that his personal aim is to have “…learned and experienced a lot.
I’ll probably be an entrepreneur again.”