OPW INTERVIEW – Aug 6 – I really like ThreeDayRule. They’re discerning about their membership, and offer events and reasonably priced matchmaking. Here’s my interview with the CEO, former VH1 TV show producer Talia Goldstein. – Mark Brooks
ThreeDayRule.com has been around for a couple of years, right? It has. It started as a city search for girls. We would tell girls where to go based on their guy type. That became really popular among girls but also among the guys. From there we started hosting singles events. We had about 500-600 people at each event. At that point I quit my job as a TV producer, and started Three Day Rule, the matchmaking service. In September 2012, we built the online version.
What are the pitfalls of events, and what do you do differently?
We have singles events for men and women, and the ratio has to be even. We find really cool locations, offer them free drinks or appetizers, and we let them mingle among themselves. Those make for the best events. We also do events just for men or just for women. For example we had an event called The Night of Beauty, where our single girls get their hair, makeup and nails done.
How do you monetize, and what do you do for members? We have the online division, which is a curated dating site so not everyone is accepted. You have to apply or be invited to get online. Then we have our matchmaking service as well. We curate these events so we can go in with our matchmakers and meet the most quality people.
I know you turn people away. How do you cover that with them when they come back and say, “I really want to be a member”?
It is a little bit difficult, and just because somebody is denied from the site, it doesn’t mean that they’re not a great dater. They’re just not right for our dating site. We are really looking for busy professionals that are ambitious and have a great career.
What would be an example of somebody who wouldn’t be a good fit for Three Day Rule? I can’t tell you the exact secret sauce.
How would you say your services differ from a traditional matchmaker? We are in between mass market dating sites and matchmaking. On the online version, you are sent one match a day. Everybody is assigned a matchmaker. You can reach out to a dating coach, a stylist or you can do a photography session.
The typical matchmaker is 5K and the higher end are at $60K. What do you charge roughly? It depends on what you’re looking for, but it’s about $3K in average,.
Do people come in for an interview, or is it done online? We have matchmakers in the cities we are open in, and we will continue to do that. So, they meet with our matchmaker in person.
Where would you like to be at the end of 2014? We are in Los Angeles and New York, and this month we will be launching San Francisco. So, we are really hoping to launch a different city every couple months; Chicago, Dallas, Boston.
Are there any business development type folks you’d like to reach out to that can help? We are doing a lot of partnerships with brands. So, any partners who would be interested in working with our members we’d like to reach out to.
OPW INTERVIEW – July 30 – In the future India will be one of the top three revenue-producing iDating markets. myZamana was started by a Meetmoi alumni and is doing well there now. Here’s our introduction to the founder Ashish Kundra and myZamana. – Mark Brooks
myZamana.com is a primarily Indian Dating site. I see that about 70% of your traffic on Alexa is in India. Yes, that is correct.
What’s your background? You worked at MeetMoi? I did, I interned at MeetMoi during college. It was my first exposure to the dating space. When I graduated I moved to Boston, and started programming various sites. My sister was single and looking for a date. I thought, “Why don’t I build her a service?” That’s how it all got started.
What did you learn from MeetMoi? That seems really relevant to the Indian Market. 49% of all Internet usage is on mobile in India. Yeah, MeetMoi was definitely very early on in the mobile dating space. It was an unfamiliar concept to people at that time. Now the mantra is “Mobile First.”
How did you start of? How many users do you have now?
Initially, it started like JDate for Indians. The focus was primarily on the US market, which in retrospect was the completely wrong way. My goal is to build a very large, long-term, mainstream site, and it turns out the Indian market is much larger than the Indians in the US market. There are four million South Asians in the US and a billion in India.
First we signed up 10K users from large metropolitan areas in US. Then I started seeing an influx of users from India until I really just couldn’t ignore it. Within a few months most of our users were in India, and I started doubling down in that market.
You mentioned that half of the population of India is under 25 at this stage. What are their thoughts on the likes of Shaadi and Bharat Matrimony? It depends on the person’s background. If you are from a rural area and don’t have Internet connection then obviously all of this is irrelevant to you. If you are from a more traditional household, then Bharat Matrimony and Shaadi might be good options for you. If you are living in a city, you might want to choose your own date and not want to be subjected to the kind of patriarchal system of arranged marriages, which I see Shaadi and Bharat Matrimony as synonymous to.
What is myZamana’s fit in the market? We are basically a mainstream service that helps people meet new people.
Who would you class as your competitors in India? There are a couple of startups going after the dating/meet new people market, but there isn’t one competitor we really look at.
You are at 1.2 million users so far. We want to be one of the leaders in this market. It’s really early days, only 11% of the market is online, so we are patient.
How is the infrastructure though? Are you finding most of your users in mobile as well? Surprisingly, most of our users have mobile devices, but we still get a lot of traffic from the web. Android is definitely the biggest app platform there.
The payment infrastructure is very recent, so it’s really hard to accept payments. We don’t, we are a free site. We are ad supported, and we really like that model. It works well for us.
3 or 4 years ago we did some work with a group dating app called Ignighter. They started in USA and got popular in India. Now they are bases out of India and changed their name to StepOut. What is your take on that? India is very interesting market given how rapidly it’s changing and how large it’s eventually going to be. It was a wise decision for them, and they are a pretty significant player in the market.
What’s your end goal? Where will you be in 2 years time? In 2 years time, if we grow maybe the order of magnitude or two, we’ll be definitely a pretty big player in the meeting new people/dating space. It really depends on the Internet penetration in India which is now 11%.
In terms of monetization, what are the options that are becoming available now? What do you think it’s going to look like in a couple years time for means of payment? Currently there are four options. Mobile payments where carriers take 75% fee and the transactions are capped at around $2, so it’s really not worth it. Your second option is brick and mortar payment collections, which is what Shaadi and Bharat Matrimony do. The third option is credit card payments online. But the credit card penetration is around 4%. Fourth option is advertising, that’s what we’re really big fans of. In the future the credit card penetration will pick up.
Have you thought about monetizing the diaspora? We don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about that. It’s probably a pretty good short-term business opportunity, but in the long run I don’t see it as a viable option. We want to invest things where we see a presence in 10 years. The US market is shrinking. ,South Asians here will not forever want to marry only South Asians.
Would you describe myZamana as a social discovery site? Is that a good title for this section of the industry? Yea, I think that could work.
OPW INTERVIEW – Apr 30 – This is a very unusual interview. The CEO wanted to be anonymous. Bang With Friends is growing fast. Here’s their story… – Mark Brooks
When will Facebook be buying Bang With Friends? I'm not sure they can afford us.
How much is it? The rumors may or may not be true, but you'll have to ask them for more comments.
Well there was a post I saw and the price was $30 million. Let's just say we’re in private talks.
Why anonymous? We're anonymous because we started as a side project. It was a little joke and it's taken off on its own. We were working on other startups at the time and we didn't want to compromise those.
How many are on the founding team? Three.
Who came up with the idea initially? It was a team effort between all three of us. We started asking why is online dating so dishonest and so frustrating? Especially for Generation Y. We wanted to make something simple that allows you to straightforwardly say what you were into and what your intentions were. The most obvious case is finding friends with benefits.
So it sounds like you weren’t a fan of internet dating. What sites would you say are your least and most favorite? Are there any which have inspired you? Or inspired you to improve on? The big guys don't really fit well with what we're doing as a younger generation. Even the new upstarts that we've seen haven't really gotten straight to the point like we have, and taken such an unabashed and simple approach.
How well has Bang With Friends been received by Facebook corporate? We have a good relationship with Facebook. Of course they are careful with their brand, and we're working with them to make sure that everybody is happy.
You've got 820,000 users and 200,000 couples matched, which seems very high. How do you get so many couples? A lot of it comes from the safety we provide. Since everybody that you're seeing is a friend of yours, you're much more likely to be interested in them and meet up with them. Also everybody has at least a few friends that they've always had an eye on.
Can you tell us your latest numbers? We are definitely north of that 200,000 matches. I believe we are at around 880,000 signups now.
How successful is your app? And take that as you will. We're happy just enabling more people to bang.
You have to have a sense of humor to use the app. You need a sense of humor and it definitely plays toward the younger generation and the recognition of how important sex is.
How do you make money? We don't. We're not worried about making money right now. We're all about the customer.
But you have some aspirations to make money, surely? I'm sure we'll have some stuff coming out that helps us keep things going, but for the most part our goals here are staying focused on creating success for our users. We know that will drive our business forward.
Where will you be in 12 month's time with Bang With Friends? You will see us move beyond just banging and beyond your friend group.
So Hang With Friends to go with Bang With Friends? I can say it will be more generalized. More ways to meet up rather than strictly hook-ups.
OPW INTERVIEW – Apr 4 – Brian
Donegan is the Business Development Manager for IT with the Isle of
Man. He works for the IOM government. The Isle of Man is taking an
interest in the internet dating industry. – Mark Brooks
What do you do? 6-7
years ago the Isle of Man became involved in igaming and very quickly
turned that into a successful sub-sector of our IT industry. It’s
currently responsible for 10% of our GDP and employs 700 people with an
average income of £55,000. There are a number of things that made the
Isle of Man attractive for the igaming industry to locate here – no
corporate tax and a very strong IT infrastructure. We have a strong
interest in finding other verticals that can complement what we’ve been
doing . Internet dating is transactional based, there is no product to
ship, and it doesn’t seem to have a great deal of regulation. As a
government, we offer 40% grant assistance to companies that relocate to
the Isle of Man across a basket of headings like hardware, software and
setup costs.
Tell me about the infrastructure regarding the Internet.
We do very well. We only use 10% of our total Internet capacity.
To
enjoy the benefits of having a corporation in the Isle of Man you need
to have a couple of executives based in The Isle of Man. Is that
correct? If
you’re going to have a business established in the Isle of Man, the
idea of having a brass plate is unacceptable. You need to have some real
substance, and so those two people should actually be middle management
caliber.
In general, what can you tell us about the Isle of Man?
The
Isle of Man sits in the Irish Sea, just off the northwest coast of
England. There are 85K people in the island. The island is a Crown
Dependency of the UK, but we are independent in terms of our economy.
How about VAT?
VAT
is at the standard rate of the UK, so it’s at 20%. VAT is not an issue,
largely because the lower cost associated with doing business in The
Isle of Man offsets the cost of VAT.
What are the personal taxes?
They start
at 10% rising into 20% at the highest for all employees. For high net
worth individuals we have a tax cap. If it exceeds £600,000 they pay no
more than £120,000 tax per annum. Whether you earn £600,000 or
£600,000,000, once you hit that benchmark you pay no more than £120,000.
How much does it cost for business-oriented property and personal, roughly? You
can buy a very attractive four-bedroom detached executive home in and
around the capital Douglas for £500,000- £600,000. It equates very well
with the UK market.
There
is a selection of modern steell and smoked glass buildings in our
business parks, and they reflect very well in relation to
competitiveness compared to the UK, probably 30-40% lower than mainland
UK prices.
How
would that work for an American born company that relocated to the Isle
of Man that continue to do a majority of its business in the USA?
The VAT issue is really only an issue for European area, so out with the European it’ not an issue.
What should people do if they want to find out more?
Contact
me in the first instance, and I would be more than happy to help them
and give them additional information and advice. My e-mail is Brian.Donegan@gov.im.
I
would also encourage readers to ask questions, and Brian if you’d like
to keep an eye on the posts when we run it for 2 or 3 days and that is
another way people can contact you I’m sure.
OPW INTERVIEW – Mar 6 – Teligence knows voice chat, and mobile dating (white label), and has a customer service outsourcing offering as well (On Q). They’ve been busy. Here’s a quick spotlight interview with the GM, Jeff Prete. (Full Disclosure: Teligence is a client of Courtland Brooks)
Tell us about Teligence, what do you do? We’ve been in the voice-chat industry for 22 years. We’ve branched out into the web and to white label mobile apps.
How big is the business? We’re $50 Million+ a year in revenues with a high degree of profitability.
If a dating company comes to you and says we want voice chat, can you help? Yeah, absolutely. Voice chat is the easiest one to set up right now. It's a 22 year old platform that monetizes at a very high rate. You can be up and ready in 2 weeks.
What's the revenue split? It's 50/50. The more you market it, the less our share is.
You can also help with customer service outsourcing, I understand? We've got a voice customer service team, 24/7/365 email support as well as content moderation.
Are you multi-language? English, Spanish, and Portuguese are our strengths. We can staff up and get any other language that we need to.
And I think you have an announcement for us about your white label mobile dating platform? Yes, Here Media liked our white label dating infrastructure, so we worked with them to launch the new Gay.com website. It looks great – you should check it out. The next step is to launch their dating service on iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, and mobile web. They have a very active community and it’s been great to deliver them the next generation of services in the dating industry.
OPW INTERVIEW – Feb 26 – AForeignAffair is an International dating service that connects women from Russia, Latin America and Asia with guys around the world. John Adams is the CEO and Founder. I asked him about the genesis and nature of his company. – Mark Brooks
What is the founding story of AForeignAffair? AForeignAffair started in 1995 by myself, Ken Agee, and Ron Redburn. Back then newspapers had personal ads where women were seeking men, men seeking women, but you never really knew what the people looked like. We thought it would be great to put photos out there so people could actually see a photo before they meet.
We launched on the BBS system thinking we would do it locally in Phoenix. Then we discovered the Internet, and we thought: “Wow we can do this on a global basis.” We sent Ken to Russia to see if there was going to be any interest from the women to meet Americans. He was very pleased with the reception that he got there. That was kind of the beginning and we started first in St. Petersburg, Russia and Ukraine and then Colombia and all over.
This seems like a very different industry than the Internet dating industry. How would you define it? I would call it the International introduction industry. For people to be successful they're going to have to travel outside the county. I think there is a lot of ignorance in that. Once you start looking at the men and the women who use this, a lot of that ignorance melts away and you understand that these are just normal people trying to find that special someone.
What countries are you in? We are in Russia, Ukraine, Peru, Cost Rica, Columbia, China, Dominican Republic, and others.
It really seems like the opposite of Internet dating, because most Internet daters don't want to travel more than 20 miles. According to studies, these relationships tend to last longer than domestic relationships. One of the reasons for that is the fact that it does take more effort, it does take more commitment to make something like this work.
So how's your National Geographic promotion happening? We've always been open to the media. National Geographic is just another step in that progression of opening access and trying to illuminate this industry.
They did a wonderful job. I was there… Nothing was scripted, everything was as you see it. They had three separate crews, they were following the guys as they were going on the different dates, they were filming the dates, the socials, the reactions after the dates. Some were good and some were bad. It's not all fairy dust and blue birds singing around your head. It's about going over there and having options. You still have to make something happen.
What do you think this industry is going to look like in 5 years time? What's your vision of the future for AForeignAffair? I think it is going to become more mainstream. Our world is becoming smaller every day; we can communicate so much easier and it's instant and transparent. In order to be successful, you have to provide more customer service to both the men and the women, and more functionality. Not just introducing them, but helping them through the whole dating process, and helping them to be successful in marrying.
How do you think the idating industry can work with this industry? There must be a way for the two to work together. I think there is. We've talked to some of the local matchmaking companies, some of the more traditional ones, and we are still in talks with some. Partnering with us will allow them to offer more options to their clients.
OPW INTERVIEW – February 20, 2013 – AnastasiaDate is a premium international dating portal with four separate sites that serve members from throughout the world. I interviewed Lawrence Cervantes, Anastasia’s Chief Communications Officer, to understand more about Anastasia and what they’re about.
Who are the founders of Anastasia, and what's their story? Anastasia was founded in 1993 by a Russian woman who immigrated to the U.S. and married an American. They named the company after Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia who was reportedly quite a young lady and a role model for young Russian women. The company actually began as a specialized tour operator once the Wall collapsed. The owners originally took groups of American men to Moscow and St. Petersburg on organized excursions to meet single Russian women. The company soon became a success and expanded operations to include more and more cities throughout Russia and Ukraine. Then in 2003 Anastasia went online and has achieved amazing growth year on year. Since then we’ve gone worldwide with 4 main sites: AnastasiaDate.com, AmoLatina.com, AsianBeauties.com, and AfricaBeauties.com.
What business is AnastasiaDate in? Anastasia is in the business of international dating. We mix the concepts of international romance and modern love, and I’m happy to say that we have the lion’s share of the market. More and more it’s not just about domestic dating. As the net and travel break down barriers to business and society, more people are aware of the possibilities and ease of finding romance throughout the world. We enable that.
How many members does AnastasiaDate have now? Our family of sites connects over 4,000,000 members in over 110 countries, and we have regularly organized social activities throughout the year on 3 continents.
Where is AnastasiaDate based? We have principle offices in New York and Moscow, with regional offices in Odessa, Ukraine, in Chongqing and Foshan, China, in Cebu the Philippines, and in Medellin, Colombia.
Do you have a mobile app? Any day now…we’ll have more on a mobile application for Apple and Android within a few weeks and we’re very excited about that.
How is AnastasiaDate different from other Internet dating services? I like to say that we’re the next generation of dating. While the vast majority of dating sites have forever focused on domestic connections primarily with sometimes a smattering of foreign members, we concern ourselves with international relationships almost exclusively. As expanding facets of travel and tech enables the average person to discover and learn more about the world outside their own country, they discover new cultures, people, and realize the possibility for romance on another level. We help them connect. This concept is growing in scope and awareness, and is the reason we exist. It’s night and day a different direction and focus than most dating sites.
How do you make money? Like everyone we’re always looking for ways to create new revenue streams through technology, new services, improving what we have, better customer service which we’re very proud of by the way. I think like anyone will tell you, bringing home bacon is a cumulative effect, so we need to keep our finger on a lot of pulses. Whereas Chat hasn’t gone as far as we think it can in the U.S., internationally it’s done very well by us.
Who are the users typically? Our demo is the 30 to 60 age group who are interested in romance and finding a mate from a number of countries. The U.S. contains the usual suspects, followed by UK, Germany, France and Italy. We’re big in Latin America especially Colombia, and China.
What is AnastasiaDate focused on for 2013-2014? Mobile is a big directional push as it’s growing on all internet user fronts. We’ve recently added considerable muscle to our senior management team, so there should be strong acceleration in growth. We’re looking afresh at acquisitions and ventures, and we’re growing more charity participation. I’m publishing a book, so stay tuned.
OPW INTERVIEW – Jan 2 – Geoff Cook is the COO and co-founder of MeetMe, a leading publicly traded ‘people discovery’ company. (Full Disclosure: MeetMe is a prior client of Courtland Brooks)
You have one of the most fascinating founding stories in the industry. Tell us about it. It all started in April 2005. My brother and sister (15 and 16 at the time), had an idea for a social network to replace the yearbook for high school with online profiles. I liked the idea and invested some of the early money into it, and it was off to the races.
In the first week 400 people joined. 9 months later we had 1 million registrations. By 2006, we opened up an office and hired about 15 people, scored $4.1 Million Series A funding with US Venture Partners and First Round Capital. Then in 2008, we did a Series B round with Norwest Venture Partners.
We merged with Quepasa, which was a Latin American based social discovery network in November of 2011. MyYearbook had been considering changing its name, because we thought of MyYearbook as essentially connoting Classmates.com. We wanted a name that really showed what we wanted to be perceived as…the best place to meet people. That’s where MeetMe came from.
Quepasa’s audience transitioned over to MeetMe in October of this year. In order to complete that step, we needed to internationalize MeetMe in Spanish and Portuguese. Now we are going beyond Latin America with a European launch in French, Italian, and German.
Are you really competing with Facebook, or not? What we call ourselves is a social network for meeting new people and we play broadly in the social discovery space. We are very different from Facebook. We think of Facebook as the place you go to connect with friends and family. Social discovery is the area we focus on.
There are sites that try to make casual relationships and there are sites that try to focus on the intimate relationships, and I think we are clearly in the casual space. When you ask people why they join MeetMe and why they continue to log in, 90% say to make new friends; 37-38% say that they found someone they consider a best friend on the site.
You are a public company now. Has that really helped you or hindered you? Mostly helped. The reason is that it really does focus the team on the things that are going to drive growth and continued value.
How do you make money? It’s a combination of advertising and virtual currency. Traditionally, it was very skewed towards advertising. That has changed quite a bit since our focus on mobile. Our mobile revenue is roughly 50/50; it’s about 45% virtual currency, which is very different than how it works on the web, where it is a much heavier advertising skew.
60% of our daily active users are mobile. We have found that for the same virtual currency products that we also sell on the web, our mobile user are far more likely to buy them.
On Android, it’s roughly 3 times more likely than on the web; on iPhone, 5-6 times more likely than the web. Monetization on mobile is really a function of two things; one is virtual currency, and one is advertising.
We think the virtual currency side is the most promising, because that’s where you have this big benefit of users being more likely to pay you. On the advertising side you also have this pretty picture, because today only 1% of the global ad spend is in mobile, despite more than 10% of the total time spent in media being in mobile. Most people think that 10% number will go to 20-25% of all time spent. So there’s going to be an explosion in mobile advertising, because there has to be, because that’s where people are.
Facebook just announced in Q3, $3 Million a day just in mobile feed advertising. It think it’s just a very exciting time for mobile advertising as well.
We can agree that mobile was the big trend for 2012. What do you think is going to be the big trend for the people discovery category in 2013? You are going to see continued focus on mobile. The other thing you are going to see is interests being brought much more to the front of the application. We now have over a million active users every single day logging in from the U.S., and a growing number logging in overseas.
In September we said about 29% of our MAU was international, up from 17% in June. Once you start getting to that level of scale, you start getting a million plus people logging in every day, you start to enable some of the connections and allow some of the interests to enter the equation. We are starting to think through what that means for MeetMe.
What are you focused on for 2013? I would say mobile monetization is the number one. On the web the average revenue per daily active user is 14 cents. On mobile, the average revenue per daily active user is 3c. A dramatic chasm. Yet on a percentage basis that 3c is up dramatically from where we were just a year ago. In fact, in Q4 of last year, only about 5% of our MeetMe platform revenue came from mobile. That number has actually expanded to 20% in Q3 of this year. You can say that’s great progress, but I think that there is a lot of room to grow. Every one penny increase in mobile monetization, and closing of that gap from 3c to 4c, is more than $2 million in annualized revenue. So I don’t know that the 3c will close to 14c, although certainly we are committed to closing that gap.
OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 25 – Cupid has done well in Europe and is now setting its sites on the USA. That should bode well for its stock. I think Cupid is the best brand in the industry. Noone else has 2,000 years of branding to back them up! I sought out someone to talk about the baby and mobile dating. Sean Wood and Art Seredyuk took my interview. – Mark Brooks
How is Cupid mobile doing for you? Very well. We started working with mobile as early as 2007. We were able to react quickly as trends emerge. In February 2011 we saw 200,000 registration on BeNaughty coming through the web and 30,000 via mobile. In March 2012, we saw half a million registrations on mobile and half a million on web.
So is this 50/50 across the board or is it particular locations? Are you seeing more mobile users in the UK versus the USA? No, in USA, the mobile usage is now overtaking web. Not so in the UK, yet.
Interesting. What's the profile of a mobile user versus an online user? Is there any difference? Not really. It's worth pointing out that we have a multi-platform approach.
And how are they monetizing? We know Facebook isn't making too much money from mobile. How about Cupid? We are. For our registration, we have only one simple subscription to get access to all our products. We make money from communication only.
What platforms are you on at this stage? We've got native applications for the two major mobile platforms. We've got an application for iPhone, Android and iPad. Also an application for mobile in HTML5 for smart phones. So a customer can decide, depending on their preference, what application or site to use. The market now is about a 50/50 split. We even have websites for older phones because they are still on the market.
Why did you decide to go with native applications rather than just use HTML5? Market researchers say that there's no elimination of a single platform at the moment. So we're not trying to gamble and put all of our eggs in one basket. We have the development teams to support both platforms.
Have you chosen to use location-based services in the applications? Yes, absolutely. Location-based services are a likable part of a dating service. No matter what you're using, application or an HTML5 site, you can do a 1 click search and an automatic system will get your geographical location and will match you with singles. It filters out based on your search criteria and it will show your results on your map of which singles are accessible around you.
How would you say your mobile app is differentiated from your competitors? It's not only about mobile apps. It's more about strategy. For example, we provide our customers with a truly multi-platform solution.
What features are you most proud of? So from internal features, I can highlight our tracking and reporting system. Which is a system that allows us to track almost everything, see conversions for every device. It helps us understand which works best for us, helps us with real time optimization. Speaking about customers features, it's obviously location-based search.
Did you build the mobile applications in house or did you elect to use any external sources? Actually, we built all of our applications and mobile sites in house. We have a very skilled team with access to all of those development tools. This also means that we can react fairly quickly to trends.
You mentioned that you are most proud of the conversions tracking and the metrics that you're able to pull from the apps. What channels have you preferred for marketing? Where do you find people? We use almost all available channels. For example, we actively work with CPC, CPI and CPA networks. We have our own internal affiliate program. We secured some good direct deals.
So we know with online conversions that typically 10% of registrants convert to paying members and they stick around for 3 months. A typical new member registrant costs about six bucks or so. How does that compare to a mobile channel? What do you think the industry standard number should be for the mobile channels, in terms of conversions and the time people stick around. Here at Cupid, I can tell that there is a big difference between the mobile channels and web. At the moment, we probably see 25 to 30% lower price for mobile registrations. But I think the industry will change because of a lot of demand for mobile traffic and in the next six months, we'll have the same metrics for mobile as we do for web traffic.
Is the mobile platform available to partners for white labeling? Our web white label platform will have the HTML5 element with it so our partners will have mobile optimized sites. They simply, as default, won't get an iPad app, or an iPhone app, or an Android app. However we certainly could build one for partners quite easily.
So here's my second question that follows on from it. So, yes, you can do white labels. And the question that you would ask me is how much money I'd spend on promoting it. I would say I'm going to spend $200,000 in the next month on trafficking just for mobile. Where would you recommend that I spend the money? If you don't know what types of traffic is best for you, you might have to go to CPA networks so you can get your metrics on your installations or your registrations. You can also go to some mobile agencies which are a lot of the market at the moment. They can provide you some help with CPA and CPI networks.
So specifically, who would you say I should not use? What channels or specific source do you think are the worst? For every source, and every network, you can find some verticals that won't perform well for you. It's all about A/B testing.
In terms of mobile payments, what are the options that you are allowing users to use? We tried to add all of the web and mobile payments. Obviously, we have a credit card payment. We have a mobile specific SMS payment, we use mobile PayPal. We use a specific mobile system, Payforit. We keep an eye on all innovations in mobile payments so when something new is available on the market, we can add it to our sites and our applications.
You also have the Cupid apps available for download on iPhone. So Apple's taking their 30% cut. How do you feel about that? We don’t like it, but we have to deal with it. We prefer to use Android, because we can use our own in house payment system.
Who else do you think is doing a good job in mobile dating? I don’t' think anybody is doing anything particularly impressive in commercial terms. We would like to see what Facebook does with mobile and when they get their mobile advertising platform running.
If you were Facebook what would you change on the Facebook mobile app? I don't know, because the problem is not that they don't have a good mobile application. Almost 50% of the users are using Facebook on their mobile. The problem is that they are not monetizing well on mobile. The mobile advertising is the real announcement. So we'll wait.
Are you offering advertising through Cupid? Yeah, we sell some apps for our non-paid members for additional monetization.
Are you focused on app downloads or are you showing other ads? Most of our ads are cross-promotion of our other brands.
What do you think Cupid mobile is going to look like in a couple of years' time? What's your vision moving forward? Regarding our worldwide presence, in mobile we've got a very, very high presence in countries with high mobile penetration like US, UK, France. So our plans is to maintain our high positions, retain our places. Our Android application tops the lifestyle category in the Android marketplace. We are going to retain those positions and get better positions with market growth in European countries and Latin American countries.
OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 18 – Manhunt.net is gay and adult. Apple doesn’t do adult. After trying a PG app Manhunt decided to take a different approach. Here’s my interview with the CEO, Adam Segel, and their head of Product, Tim Feeley. – Mark Brooks
You've taken an unusual approach with Manhunt with mobile. You've actually gone with m.manhunt. Why did you go the online route instead of the native route? We are an adult dating site and there are a lot of content restrictions to be in the Apple Store and the Android Market.
How is the conversation with Apple? Apple is elusive. They don’t' really have conversations with you, they just tell you no. We see 40% of our traffic using mobile, I'm glad that we don’t' have to pay 30% of our revenue to the Apple Store. People are paying us directly on the phone and it's terrific.
How does that work? Well they just use their credit cards. They go through our regular credit card processing, we just made a mobile version of our page.
The element you're missing out on is the element of discovery. People going on Google Play and the iPhone store and looking for apps like yours and not finding you. They are probably looking directly for you, but they'll discover you on Manhunt.com. They'll know about m.manhunt.com? Yes. Fortunately we have a tremendous brand throughout the world so we're able to get the word out about our product. But you are correct, we do not have that advertising platform.
So how have you dealt with location with HTML5? Luckily, HTML5, especially on mobile platforms, does support querying for a mobile users GPS coordinates. Technically, there's a degree of precision that's a bit less when you are requesting via HTML5 versus a native app. But for our intents and purposes, it's perfectly suitable.
Most people, when it comes to mobile dating, don't really want specific location from what I'm hearing. Vicinity is of more interest. As long as you're within a 20 minute drive, it seems reasonable really. Or a 15 minute walk if you're in the city. For our users, it's more like a 5 minute walk, but still that's within the scope of what we're able to offer.
What limitations have you found with HTML5 versus a native app? The largest limitations is the notifications systemthat come with iPhone and Android and that we're unable to have. When people get new messages or when a friend of theirs is online, they can't get that push notification. The other is the ability to upload photos. It's perfectly fine on Android, but Apple has blocked that. There is no way through a browser to upload a photo. So our solution to that is a third party applications that facilitate that.
Have you got a solution for Blackberry? You can use Manhunt on the Blackberry, but it's a pretty rudimentary, very old mobile system that isn't pretty and doesn't have location and all that. Every time we query our members, it's really members abroad that have Blackberry. In the States, they don't really seem to have it as much or really care. It is something that we're thinking about, it is on our radar, but top priority is Android and iPhone.
How about international? Have you seen particular growth of mobile in international markets? Our number one biggest international market for mobile is Australia, where just short of 60% of our logins come from mobile devices. We also have great adoption in Spain and England.
In the USA, in terms of modes of payment; have you got a preferred provider you could recommend? We use Litle as our credit card processor – a combination of Litle and Global Collect. Global Collect helps us with all of our international billing and Litle does our domestic.
When did you launch the mobile app? It was less than a year since we've had the m.Manhunt out there.
How did you get the word out? Fortunately for us, there were two primary ways. One was when people started accessing Manhunt through mobile browsers, we took them directly to the mobile version. We also message all of our customers.
What features are you most proud of? I think that we're still rapidly improving to this day, but I'm proud of how we are able to integrated our millions of desktop members who aren't yet using mobile or choose not to use mobile, and exposing them on the Manhunt mobile experience. From a feature set, we try to be very much on par with Manhunt and extend that experience to your mobile device.
What's your thoughts on the iPad? How does that fit into your product roadmap? We are available on the iPad. We are seeing a slight, but steady increase in iPad traffic.
Have you really seen much difference between the demographic of your mobile users versus your usual online users. Does the age skew younger at all? A tiny bit, but not really noticeably. We're really seeing a broad user base of the mobile, just like the desktop. We're seeing guys in their 50's and 60's using their mobile apps, just like we are the 21 year olds to 28 year olds.
In terms of user acquisition as well, are you finding that you're acquiring via mobile? Are you actively advertising and marketing out to mobile as well? We are. We are advertising through our Google channels and we advertise mobile separately. We haven't found any tremendous mobile channels on which to advertise. Our competitors don't allow us to advertise on their apps, so it's been a little bit difficult. But we are seeing a steady increase in people joining through the mobile phone.
We've probably got a few of them watching this interview. What message would you have for them regarding advertising and swapping advertising? I can't really pressure them to let us advertise on their app because I probably wouldn't let them advertise on mine. But I would tell them that they do a great job and I'm very glad for them because it's helped us all to evolve to a much better mobile place for users to be able to have the solutions available.
Who do you hold in high esteem? Who else out there do you think is doing a good job on mobile? I think Grindr obviously started the trail and did a really nice job with it. I also think Scruff do a terrific job of having the app readily accessible and easy to use.
How would you say Manhunt mobile is going to look in a year's time? What's your goals and vision for the mobile product? We're making it easier and easier to offer your precise location coordinates. We've always kind of struggled with “are users willing to travel the extra 5 miles to find a guy that's exactly their type?” We found that they won't go 5 miles. They'll take a lesser guy who is closer than a hotter guy who's farther.
Also as people are using our apps more and more, they are asking us for some of the features that we haven't yet incorporated into the app; so this our next step.
I went to a conference recently and saw Windows Mobile exhibiting and I was very impressed. They've done a nice job with it. What's your thoughts on the future? How do you think they're going to be easy to work with? We haven't really looked into designing for that platform yet. Once we're able to discover the best way to approach that, we're looking forward to bringing Manhunt to all of the devices.
