CNBC – Oct 4 – Grouper was founded in 2011 by Michael Waxman. Users go on a blind date with a group of friends. The cost to attend an arranged meeting is $20 per person. The cost covers the first round of drinks and some light snacks.
by Deborah Findling & Paul Toscano
See full article at CNBC
TODAY – Oct 4 – OKCupid lets users filter out people by body type for a fee (5 – $10). The site has offered this tool for several months but only recently began to make it more prominent, said Sam Yagan. "The body-type filter is an extension of what happens in the real world," said Yagan. eHarmony has no plans to offer a similar screening tool. Physical attraction does play a role in dating, but so does education level, religion, and their “outlook on happiness,” said Arvind Mishra, the site’s VP of product management.
by Eun Kyung Kim
See full article at Today
NPR – Oct 1 – Ashkan Soltani, a digital privacy specialist, set up a fake account at OkCupid.com to demonstrate how private companies are tracking what people are doing online. OKCupid's questionnaire asks him for a wide range of information, including drug use. While at OKCupid, he launches two softwares — Collusion and MITM Proxy. The Collusion program reveals that ~50 companies are tracking Soltani's computer as he visits OKCupid. Some are advertising firms, while others collect information and then sell it to ad firms or industry research companies. MITM Proxy shows information that those companies are receiving from OKCupid. Nothing unusual. Websites commonly allow other companies to monitor what users are doing on their sites but at least one company, Lotame, learned that Soltani uses drugs "often."
CTV NEWS – Oct 3 – Instant Chemistry offers its clients genetic analysis to assigns the client a compatibility score. This score is then used to assess the person's compatibility with other clients. These scores can help determine if two individuals will experience physical attraction when they meet for the first time.
BUSINESS WIRE – Oct 2 – Meetic is going to acquire the assets of e-Kontakt, one of the leading Nordic dating site owned by Intodate International AB. The site launched in 2005. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The full article was originally published at WSJ, but is no longer available.
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK – Oct 2 – OkCupid.com lets online daters pay $4.95 to hide anyone who classes themselves 'curvy', 'skinny', 'thin', 'jacked' or 'used up' among other body types. The site also allows its 'A-list members' ($4.49 and $9.95 monthly fee) to filter people by both looks and figure.
by Bianca London
See full article at DailyMail.co.uk
THE JERUSALEM POST – Oct 2 – The Palestinian council acknowledges Internet dating has become "unavoidable and impossible to prohibit completely." Men and women are allowed to date online, but only for the purpose of marriage. A woman is prohibited to provide excessive detail about herself, showing her photo or even meeting with men without the presence of her family. Daters can't also chat in a soft or submissive tone. All conversation online must be done with the full knowledge of the family and not in a closed room.
by Khaled Abu Toameh
See full article at The Jerusalem Post
OPW INTERVIEW – Oct 1 – Cherry Blossoms is a hallmark international dating brand. They’ve been around for years. Its time we captured their story. – Mark Brooks
What is Cherry Blossoms founding story?
The company started in 1973/4. There was a gentleman who wanted to find a wife from another country, and then another guy said: "Hey I can help you do that." They placed personal ads in countries such as Philippines and Japan. They got very good responses from those ads, and started thinking that this could be turned into a business. This is how Cherry Blossoms started.
I was living in Houston back in the 90s. One of my neighbors met his Philippine wife through Cherry Blossoms. The company got me very interested so I got their magazine and started to write to some ladies.
I've always been interested in computers and communication. I thought that this would be a perfect thing to have online. I contacted the company about that and they were very interested. So I put together a little plan and decided to move to Hawaii and see what I could do.
How quickly did Cherry Blossoms move online?
Because they had a good revenue stream coming from the magazine, I didn't want to cut that off. So we created an online magazine. There wasn't a lot of communication. It was in 1995 and there were maybe just two companies that had an Internet personals presence at that time. Then people started to register, and we started to develop communication devices, such as sending emails. It grew quite quickly.
Andrew Conru started Web Personals back in '94. What were the sites which you admired back then?
There was, like you mentioned, Web Personals which Andrew sold to some company and started FriendFinder. Another friend of mine, Lee Zehrer, had a company called Foreign Relations for Russians. He later moved on and started Kiss.com. But I stayed focused on the international business.
How would you define Cherry Blossoms fit in the market?
There are a lot of companies out there doing good stuff. The business is growing because the Internet is making the world smaller. We have been in the business of love for over 38 years. We are responsible for over 5,000 marriages every year, so it's very exciting.
What does the future hold?
We continue to enhance and improve our website. One of the improvements is a better communication software.
What's your thoughts on video?
It is probably one of the best improvements that we have on the Internet, and it will continue to be of great value for people.
What's your mobile offering at this stage?
We are in the middle of our work for RWD (Responsive Web Design). We have another 2-3 months before we're ready to release this. When you log onto Cherry Blossoms, our software recognizes that you're on a mobile and you are going to use different pages than if you're on a laptop.
What do you offer in the way of on-the-ground services?
I would say we are strictly idating. We did tours back in 70s/80s and even 90s. Then IMBRA was introduced to regulate international matchmakers. We're really not a matchmaking company. We never felt like that was our place. We got away from the tours because the companies that are doing that in Philippines are walking a fine line. The Philippine government is not that keen on international matchmaking companies because of the problems they had way back in the 70s.
What countries are you in now?
We are in well over a hundred countries. We still have our greatest presence in the Philippines, followed by China and South America. We also have a presence in Russia and Ukraine.
AFAQS – Oct 1 – Murugavel Janakiraman, who started the business of online matrimony as a section of his website in 1997. His company, Matrimony.com claims it has 60% of the estimated Rs 30Billion ($480M) online matchmaking market. The company runs 15 matrimonial websites under Bharat Matrimony and ~300 websites under Community Matrimony. The company now has 4K employees. Janakiraman says the company broke even and made a profit in 2009 and the compounded annual growth rate, in the last three years was ~30%. ~90% of its revenue comes from user subscription fee, which ranges from Rs 3,290 to Rs 50,000 ($52 – $800) for three months. It has 2.5M active members. The next big step would be an IPO. Sources say Canaan Partners, which invested $10M in tranches, would get around 10 times of its investment in its exit.
by Gireesh Babu
The full article was originally published at AFAQS, but is no longer available.
WALL ST. CHEAT SHEET – Sep 30 – Facebook shares have climbed ~80% since July, and reported 53% increase in revenue quarter-over-quarter. During the last quarter, Facebook had 819M monthly active users which represented a 51% increase YOY. One area that can still benefit from Facebook’s surge is online dating. IAC’s online dating division generated ~$713M in 2012. A few other popular companies in the online dating scene include MeetMe, Spark Networks and Snap Interactive. Snap's AYI app is currently integrated with ~25M Facebook connected profiles and has been downloaded ~70M times. AYI users can view friends, their information, and learn about them. Someone will be more willing to trust what they see if that person has a friend in common. Currently, the AYI app has 2M monthly average users and 76K active subscribers. Snap Interactive appears well positioned to begin gaining momentum once investors take notice. Although online dating hasn’t been one of the exciting areas for investors over the past couple of years, Snap could change that with its innovative and fresh look at online dating.
by Tom Meyer
The full article was originally published at Wall St. Cheat Sheet, but is no longer available.
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