All Interviews – Page 19 – Online Personals Watch

Mike Fitzgerald, CEO Of Dating Central

Posted on July 26, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – July 26 – Mike runs one of the original and oldest white label dating services out of Gibraltar, which is just off the coast off Spain. There are some handy little tax benefits for being based in Gibraltar. Read on. – Mark Brooks

You’re based in Gibraltar. Tell us more about Gibraltar and the benefits of being in Gibraltar.
We moved to Gibraltar in 2004. The company was growing to the point where the VAT and corporation tax were becoming a hindrance to us for developing the company. The benefits of being in Gibraltar are zero rated VAT, so we pay no VAT on our membership fees, and the corporation tax is a flat fee of around 600 pounds a year. So we moved here and went from paying 16 to 20,000 pounds a month in VAT to paying zero. We also went from paying 50 to 60,000 pounds a year in corporation tax to paying 600 pounds. So from a company point of view, our overhead shrunk by 25% overnight by simply moving to Gibraltar.

Is there any down side to being in Gibraltar?
The biggest down side to Gibraltar is probably staffing. Finding skilled staff that know anything about affiliate management, SEO or web design is very, very hard. We normally have to use people who are based in Spain or fly them in from Romania or London.

Bringing them over for interviews is one thing, however climatising to Gibraltar is another one. You either love it here or you hate it. You can either fit in straight away and enjoy the lifestyle or you can find it to be slow.

Have you considered using a distributed work force and giving them the freedom to work from anywhere?
We do have staff who work from other places. We have a couple of people on the coast that work for us; we have some people in the UK that do copywriting for us. In the past, we’ve used design houses in India, Russia, and Eastern Europe in general, as well as Canada. So we do have staff that work from other places. However the core staff, such as affiliate management, customer service representatives and office managers, we need in the office.

There are some benefits for affiliates with you being in Gibraltar I understand. Could you tell us more about that? How do you attract affiliates with your business base?
When we moved to Gibraltar we spent a great deal of time talking to the tax people in the UK and Gibraltar to make sure we weren’t doing anything illegal and that we weren’t breaking any laws. So from an affiliate point of view, you don’t have to pass anything on to the tax man or the VAT man because the actual transaction is taking place in Gibraltar and not anywhere else.

Once again that’s a heck of a competitive advantage for your improvement in business efficiency. What is the founding story of Dating Central?
Me and my business partner Graham Hampson received our business degrees in Manchester in 1997. I was working in the insurance industry, on the IT side, and Graham was working for a design house. We both realised early on that design houses were reinventing the wheel every time they built a website, in a time frame of 6 to 8 weeks. We both agreed that the best way to build a website was to look at a template building system. You would then have a core engine that created these templates for you.

At the time, back in 1998/99, there was a great deal of buzz about the dating industry. So
we created a website called StudentsVille.com. We were going down the avenue of creating the world’s first white label dating service to allow all of these backroom web masters or small enterprises to have their own dating service without having to put in weeks of work and thousands of pounds.

About 6 months later, we started turning over a profit and within the first year we started to employ people. We’re self financed and never had any capital investment. Within 2 or 3 years we were making a very healthy profit. We were attracting affiliates from all industries and from all parts of the world. Once we moved to Gibraltar, we built the company up again. We managed to completely rebuild the structure, the database, the content as well as the back end. We were able to complete that project at the end of 2009. Whereby now, we have a completely new engine and new templates. Now it’s all very much Web 2.0.

How would you say you’re differentiated against the likes of WhiteLabelDating out of the UK and Global Factory who are going after the continental European market?
We differ in terms of the actual application itself. The WhiteLabelDating.com system is very much an “add your logo here” system. With our system, we try to integrate our service into your site. We are also a lot more open in regards to fees. We provide statistics where you can see a full breakdown of all your members, all of your commission, all of your charge backs and you can see at a glance, in real time, what you have done. So as far as the likes of WhiteLabelDating is concerned, we take it to the next level in terms of customisation and integration.

Our service is also tied to the niche markets. For example, we have Christian networks and Disabled networks. We’re giving our affiliates the ability to enter that market with zero overhead and zero cost. So I think the niche element of our service will always mean it will be very difficult for any competitor to come in and take away our membership database or our affiliate base. We spread ourselves across the different niches and it allows us to deal with a competitor entering the market.

You have some very specific niches. What would you say are your top couple of niches?
It’s changed in the last 5 years. We had a very stable Christian niche 5 years ago. The biggest surprise is the Lesbian network, which has really taken off. The ethnic network, which is for African-American and European Africans, has also done quite well.

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Anna Cooney And Jim Strong, Founders Of Urban Social

Posted on July 19, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – July 20 – Urban Social is…, well, I’m not sure, so I thought I’d ask the founders. – Mark Brooks

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Urban Social is a most intriguing company that has been around since 2004. Can you tell us a bit more about what you do. Is Urban Social an events company or an internet dating company?
Anna: Our core business model is internet dating but our target market has always been directed towards outgoing singles. Our goal was to create an environment that offers them a little bit more than just online dating. So we brought online dating and events together. The events are offered by 3rd party organizers.

That’s very smart using a 3rd party. What motivated that? How does it work with them?
Anna: We only work with the companies that we feel offer the best dating events. We promote the events all around the country, so that our members have the opportunity to get out and meet people at these events, no matter where they are. It’s done through affiliates basically. We advertise them and our members find out about them.

Do they have to follow your event format or do they have more flexibility?
Anna: There is a lot more flexibility. We try and offer a wide variety of events. We’ve had things like blind dating, dating in the dark, “I’m a single, so get me out of here” weekend s and wine tasting dating ….So it’s not just about speed dating, it’s about offering them different opportunities and different ways to meet people.

What is the biggest event you’ve had so far?
Jim: I reckon the St. George’s Day event we did about 2 years ago, which was a fantastic event. We had about 120 people at that one.

What is the founding story? What drove you to start Urban Social?
Anna: We were a group of university friends living the single life in and around London. We felt there wasn’t anything in the marketplace at the time for us when it came to online dating. So we put our resources together and developed a bit more of a fun and niche site that really spoke to us.

How has the site progressed over the years in terms of the size of the business?
Jim: We’ve progressed well. Initially, it was all about getting enough members onto the site for it to be viable. So that was focused around getting hundreds of our friends and friends of friends to join the site. After that, the word spread and we grew quickly. We were also voted the best online dating site one year in a national newspaper in the UK. We also have affiliate programs in place, some key white labels and we’re continuing to grow at a steady rate.

A lot of dating sites have tried speed dating and they’ve generally found that it is tougher than it looks. So what would be your advice to a dating service that was considering running their own speed dating events?
Anna: It’s all about having a niche offering I think. You really need to come up with something different , and make sure you do it well.

Jim: The biggest advice we can really give is to focus locally. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to market locally than it is nationally. And marketing is really where you can lose a lot of money.

Have you run any larger events with over a couple of hundred people?
Anna: No we haven’t, we’ve kept them quite niche , as we feel the atmosphere is better at a smaller scale event . The average event size that we do is around the 50 or 60 mark. We find that they work much better that way.

I worked with Cupid.com back in 2004 when we bought PreDating.com, a speed dating company. We thought the 2 worlds of users would intermingle and get along great. But what we found was the people who came out to events love events and the people who do internet dating love internet dating and never the twain shall meet. There was some overlap but ultimately the socialites were more likely to be out and about than on internet dating services and we didn’t see quite as much overlap as we thought. Is this just an American thing or did you see something similar in the UK?
Anna: We’ve really seen a good conversion rate between the two but I think that’s more to do with our style and our target market.

Jim: We also find that because we offer such a comprehensive service to our customers, we’ve got a very near 50/50 mix of male/female, which isn’t the norm in the industry. So typically we’re targeting urban fun single professionals and those sorts of people tend to be very busy but also interested in getting out to meet people.

So we have found in the UK anyways, that it’s fairly successful. The events certainly appeal to women slightly more than the men, who can prefer online. But when you bring those two together you get great events.

What are your plans for Urban Social between now and 2011? What do you have in store?
Jim: We are looking into expanding our white label service to the US and Australia. We’re also looking at chat features, and a London centric site.

Clifford Lerner, Founder & CEO Of SNAP Interactive

Posted on July 7, 2010

OPW – July 7 – SNAP Interactive operates AreYouInterested which is a social dating service. They’re one of the few public companies in the internet dating arena, so we have insight on their numbers here. I talked with the Founder/CEO Cliff Lerner.

How are things going?
Things are going very well. We've been growing our mobile application, our website and our Facebook application. Earlier this year there were a lot of Facebook changes that we had to navigate around and I think we did a very good job. I'm very happy with where we are as a company right now.

What were the changes that most affected you?
All of the communication flow on Facebook changed – the viral channels, the algorithms on posting to the wall and the notifications were all removed. There are probably some more that I'm forgetting. Fortunately, however, we never really saw any negative impact from any of the Facebook changes and our subscription revenue has actually risen steadily throughout 2010.

As a matter of fact, they helped us pretty significantly. We now have direct contact with our users via email. We now require our users to give us their email when they install our products, which we weren't able to do before. So that alone gives us an easier way to communicate with them directly.

How many brands do you have at this stage?
For starters, we actively support AreYouInterested.com, which consistsvof the iPhone application, the AreYouInterested.com website and the AreYouInterested Facebook application. We have a few other brands thatvwe also support and maintain, including FlirtWithMe and MeetNewPeople. However, we aren't actively building new features on these brands. We have a few apps on MySpace, Beebo and Hi5 as well.

I noticed that with the MeetNewPeople application you're at 4 million installations and with AreYouInterested you're over 13 million at this stage. Yes, MeetNewPeople is pretty close to 5 million and AreYouInterested is over 15 million at this point.

How do you do it?
It had a lot to do with really good timing. We launched very early on the Facebook platform when not many companies knew about this and a lot of our growth occurred at an earlier stage. Since then we've been very focused on metrics. We are still growing virally and up until December of 2009, all of our growth was in fact viral growth. But since then Facebook has made it more difficult to grow virally, so we've been focusing on adding new features and buying traffic to coincide with our conversion to a subscription model. So far it has been working very well.

How much of your user base would you say is primarily mobile compared to your online user base using laptops and computers, percentage wise?
I'd say a couple of percent. At this point we only have an iPhone application and we're strongly considering building a mobile application for other devices. However, for the iPhone we have over 150,000 installs and we get about 40,000 sessions per day. What I find most encouraging and interesting is that the average user logs in spends over 30 minutes per day on our iPhone application.

An iPhone user can seamlessly interact with someone on our Facebook app or the website. So we have that critical mass of users on the iPhone. The user accounts are also integrated, so you can sign up on our Facebook application and download and use Facebook Connect on our iPhone app as well. Specifically, all of your information is the same and you can interact and navigate from either of your accounts.

We haven't done any traffic buys on mobile yet. That is something we're going to consider in the future. Right now we're looking at mobile really as gaining as much market share as possible, and learning what users want to do on a mobile dating app. We recently launched a couple of premium features. For example, we've implemented virtual gifts, which are doing very well I might add, the ability to send pictures along with your message and the ability to see who views your profile.

Are there any user behaviors that have surprised you with the addition of the virtual gifting?
We built a pretty sophisticated virtual gifting system earlier this year and it's been very successful for us. We offer users the ability to buy gifts one at a time or get unlimited access with a subscription. We have gifts that cost as little as $1.50 and go as high as $50. We actually sell a few $50 gifts every day. Naturally, people spend money on these gifts because they're much more likely to get a response and it's much more engaging.

Who would you regard as the toughest competitor?
I don't really view traditional dating sites as competitors. So I would have to say sites that are built on top of the social networks such as SpeedDate, HotorNot and Zoosk. But I don't really view them as traditional competitors either because a lot of our features are built on top of Facebook. There are really only a couple of applications out there (including AreYouInterested) that have a critical mass of users on the social networks and critical mass is obviously key to dating. So at the end of the day, I would say as long as the social networks can continue to grow and build tools and features that allow us to grow on top of them, we'll continue to be in a very good place.

Among your competition, who would you say you are the most inspired by? Who do you keep the closest eye on?
There have been a few companies recently that are getting more into dating through friends of friends. I definitely keep an eye on them. It's not as important to keep an eye on the competitors as it is to keep an eye on the social networks in general. For example, what direction are they heading in? What communication tools are they going to allow us to use? MySpace, for instance, has recently become a lot more developer friendly. So keeping an eye on social networks is much more important to me than what our competitors are doing.

Have you got any plans for SMS?
Not at this stage. We're relatively new to the mobile space and just now starting to develop our gameplan.

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Larry Wilson, Founder And CEO Of Opposites Connect

Posted on July 2, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – July 2 – eHarmony matches based on similarities, but some argue that matching people on complimentary i.e. opposite traits, makes life more interesting for the matchees. Matching on opposite traits seems like a black art, to me. Matching on similarities seems like something that is far more predictable and repeatable. Opposites Connect is a new site that matches opposites. They’re running TV ads right now. I talked with the Founder and CEO Larry Wilson. – Mark Brooks

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What is your founding story and what inspired you to start Opposites Connect?
All dating sites have the same methodology. They are looking to fix up people with their perfect harmonious match, or in other words, their mirror image. It might work for several people but I’d be willing to bet there is a huge populous in the single’s community that this method doesn’t apply to. It just seems to be common sense to me. My grandmother used to tell me that opposites attract.

As a result, I started looking to see if there was anyone out there who did it that way. I was actually shocked to see that there wasn’t.

Why opposites? Do they really attract? Have you found any evidence perhaps that has drawn you to the conclusion that there’s a better approach to help people meet based on opposites?
Yes, actually there is a lot of anecdotal proof. As I said, my grandmother said opposites attract but it is important to draw the comparison between opposites attracting and opposites connecting. Sure you can attract for a variety of reasons but will you be able to establish a connection as well? That is what we’re striving to accomplish.

We all know people in our lives, for example, couples that have been together for 15 years or more. We look at them and we say: “Them? They’re so different. How is it working for them?” But it does! The whole concept just stands to reason. The differences that you have and the conflict resolution skills that you develop from having different preferences and ideas about how certain things should work really foster a long term bond.

So when I had this idea, I approached 3 prominent relationship experts, psycho-therapists if you will, who actively see clients on a daily basis. They informed me that the number one problem of the clients they have is that they’re constantly going for the same type of person over and over again and it has failed for them. We are the dating site that lets you look at that other person, that person you might not normally give a chance to even though they might have so much to offer.

How do you help opposites connect on OppositesConnect.com?
For starters, we try to make sure that people are similar to a certain degree. For example, are they both single? Are they looking for a long term relationship and do they both believe in family, etc? They fill out the questions in our questionnaire.

Once we’ve established the basics, we want to find out what makes them different. Specifically, what makes them unique. We want to give them terrific conversation starters. There needs to be more to a conversation on a first date than saying, me too.

We think that one interesting, thought provoking and fun date will lead to another and another and another and eventually, develop a long term relationship. This is where our success comes in, not necessarily in terms of producing marriages but developing fun dates into long term relationships.

How are you promoting the site? That’s always the golden question for new dating sites. You’re building to critical mass fresh out of the gate. How are you getting to the first level of membership?
We’ve just launched our Beta site. We’re doing this very slowly and in a very orderly fashion. Shortly we will start rolling out our national advertising campaign. You’ll be seeing our banners and ads on many of the leading sites. We’ve also filmed 2 promotional videos.

Another important part of our PR and advertising is the fact that we’re free for the time being. If you look at our site, you might agree with me that it’s a beautiful site. It’s certainly not what people are used to seeing when they go to free sites. Will it be free forever? I don’t know that. If we can generate the necessary revenue through advertising, I would love to keep it free.

We’re also going to launch an iPhone app and an affiliate program. As I said, it’s all a very slow step by step process.

Where would you like to be by the end of the year? What is your vision for the end of December in terms of membership and achievements for the site?
We would like to have anywhere from thousands to hundreds of thousands, certainly within a calendar year. I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to accomplish this, given that we are a free alternative site. It also helps that there is nothing like us out there at the moment.

My research showed that while we were developing our business plan, 60% of all internet daters were on more than one site at a time. In most cases they even paid $20 to $30 a month for what essentially measures up to be the same matching technique. We offer an alternative, so I see no reason why it shouldn’t be a success.

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Christian Wiklund, CEO Of Skout.com

Posted on June 24, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – June 24 – One day dating sites will combine mobile, with location based services and hey…looks like Skout is doing this already. Keep your eyes on this young buck company. They’re innovating up a storm and gaining traction with younger hipper, social, iphone touting audiences. – Mark Brooks

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What are some of the features that you’ve found that people have been using the most across your mobile dating apps?
Definitely the “See who is around” feature. If a guy is looking for Asian girls in San Francisco he can see who is active tonight and reach out to them with an instant messaging solution. There is also a lot of chatting as well as photo sharing. People can also publicly comment on the photos being posted. Those are the features that we feel are of the highest use.

With the location based service, one of the concerns that always comes up is safety. How do you safeguard the user’s privacy? When they want to be found how do you help them? When they don’t want to be found how do you make sure they’re not?
Privacy is something we have to address very carefully. Since we’re in the people discovery business we don’t show exactly where someone is. We would never show you on the map. We only display that you are within a certain distance of someone, so the service is very different from Foursquare, for instance. If you choose to connect with someone, you have to explicitly tell them where you are. It’s more than an opt-in solution for revealing where you are.

Given that the location based services are down to meters, wouldn’t it be more accurate to use a new term? Either vicinity based systems or district based systems?
Yes I think proximity is a pretty good word – proximity based dating. Nobody calls it GPS tracking. It’s good for tracking cargo on the sea, it’s good for down to the meter tracking of inventory but I don’t think people would need to track other people on the granular level. You can only locate them through cell tower positioning, which might be in a 0.5 mile radius. I personally think that’s close enough. If you can get to the person in a 10 minute cab drive, it is close enough. It doesn’t have to be down to the meter at all.

What kind of demographics use the service?
It ranges between 20 to 35; young professionals who live in large cities, LA, Bay Area, New York and so forth. They spend a lot of time in the bars having fun. They are very outgoing and social and not looking to commit tomorrow. They’re not there to get married but they are there to meet new friends and potential dates as well as expand their network.

Now that you run Skout and BoyAhoy.com, what would you say would be your top competitors?
For BoyAhoy, which is our gay brand, Grindr is our top competitor. They provide a similar service. There are some differences of course but it is still a location based service. For Skout, which is a brand for everyone, for straight and gay people, we don’t have any big threats that we can even track at this point.

How big are both services at this stage? How fast are they growing?
At Skout we’re seeing 200,000 new members per month and at BoyAhoy we see around 70,000 new members per month. The growth has been phenomenal. In the past 7 to 8 months we’ve seen 25 to 35 percent growth month over month. It’s through the roof.

What platforms are you on?
We are on the iPhone, and Mobile Web; we have a destination site as well. We’re launching Android shortly as well as Symbian.

How are you promoting the services?
It’s been a lean start up and we haven’t done a ton of ads. We get a lot of attention from the media. Then of course there is the traditional word of mouth where people recommend us to their friends.

Moving forward, we’re definitely looking into how can we leverage other social graphs to fuel the growth even faster. And we definitely plan expanding to new platforms that will give us better reach.

How are you making money at this stage? Are you break even?
We are profitable. The way we monetize is with a hybrid model. We offer premium accounts, we have a virtual economy where users can buy virtual gifts with virtual currency and we also have a feature where users can buy advertising for themselves.

We’re definitely looking into transaction versus subscription models and doing a lot of experimentation in those regards. So we’ll see in a few months what we have to settle for, if it’s going to be a hybrid model or be a transaction only or subscription.

Is there any advertising in the works?
There isn’t a lot of money in mobile advertising. It’s not performing really well.

You also have an iPad app in the works; can you tell us more about that?
Yes we have an iPad app and its core functionality is the same as the iPhone but it does have a really new cool feature coming out. We call it “hot map”. Depending on what type of people you want to meet tonight, we use historical data and real time data to figure out where you should go.

See all posts on Skout

Dan Abelon, President And Co-Founder Of SpeedDate

Posted on June 18, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – June 18 – SpeedDate brings people together to participate in first dates over their webcams. The service resides at the intersection of two very interesting and important trends. The rise of computer based webcam use, and the rise of phone based webcam use. Have you seen the iPhone 4? That’s a real game changer that should bring growth to the likes of SpeedDate, Woome and other sites that offer webcam based dating services. – Mark Brooks

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How big of a deal is mobile for SpeedDate?
It’s an extremely big deal for us. We’re fairly focused on mobile. We launched as a destination site on SpeedDate.com but over the past year mobile services have been an increasing part of our business. 20 to 30 percent of our activity each day is coming from mobile.

How do you define activity?
I would define activity as people registering for the site as well as using the services offered by SpeedDate.

So that’s 20% defined by activity which is log ins. How about the money split? Are you seeing the same sort of money split?
I can’t give exact details on the financial side but it is definitely a growing part of the business overall. We’ve found that the people who use our mobile services are not more or less likely to pay for the service than people on the site. But I think it’s an area where there is a lot of potential for the online dating industry in general. I think it will become a bigger focus for other companies in the industry as time goes by.

I’ve heard rumors that some mobile dating apps monetize better than others. Do you have any comment on that?
We’re monetizing pretty well for both the iPhone and mobile as well as for the site. We’re not seeing a huge difference there. However, there are some challenges on the mobile side. The marketing and distribution channels are not nearly as built out over the web. I wouldn’t say it’s the Wild West but it’s still a pretty early stage in terms of the inventory that is available and how easy it is to expand.

How is it going with the iPad app?
It’s going well. I think it’s a really exciting platform in terms of what’s available. On the iPhone we have 1.3 million downloads. I’m not sure how long it will take for the iPad to get there but I think there is a lot of potential.

If we were to look at mobile versus online; has there been any surprises to you for usage patterns between mobile and traditional online users?
The interesting thing is that there are a lot of females who are using the iPhone and iPad applications.

You must be excited about the new iPhone having a camera on the front. It fits perfectly with your application. What are your plans for the new iPhone?
Yeah we’re really excited about it. I think all killer dating apps should be mobile so you can use it anywhere and anytime you want. The killer experience from the app should also be live and interactive. I think when you marry those 2 together, the interactive side and the mobile side, then the world basically changes for singles.

Do you have any plans to integrate into SMS as well?
Yeah, that is something we’ve been thinking about. As time goes by and we obtain more potential users
outside of smart phones then SMS will become more attractive for us.

What words of advice would you give to the industry for anyone considering creating a new mobile app?
Experiment and innovate with the user experience.

See all posts on SpeedDate

Deepak Thomas, Head Of Mobile Products At Match.com

Posted on June 17, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – June 17 – Deepak manages all things mobile at Match.com. Match takes mobile dating seriously. For good reason. Did you know that in 2014 its predicted that there will be more people accessing the internet via their mobile phones than on desktops/laptops, according to Morgan Stanley. – Mark Brooks

How much of a priority would you say it is for Match.com to expand the mobile channel?
Mobile is definitely at the top of our list of priorities. We’re pretty much able to address any phone in the market that has a data connection.

What market observations would you say you’ve made that are driving the high prioritization of the mobile platform?
First of all, we’ve seen an increasing number of our site users turning to mobile phones as a means of accessing Match.com. So that has clearly been a driver for us.

We’ve also seen that there is a significant subset of users who have turned to mobile as their primary means of Internet access. I’m one of them. These days I always have my smart phone next to me and it has essentially become a laptop substitution device in several instances.

Which platform is growing the fastest at this stage?
The Apple iPhone platform has been a blockbuster for us. We launched an application on this platform in March 2009 and initially it was intended to be an engagement platform. People would log onto Match.com and discover we have an iPhone application so they would have the option to continue using Match.com on the phone. Also, we’ve noticed that a very large number of iPhone users who have never been to Match.com are discovering us on the iPhone platform. So we’re very happy with the outcome.

So in terms of both traffic and rate of adoption, iPhone has been growing very fast. If you were to look at the trends, both Android and Blackberry have very good traction as well.

I’m also seeing some evidence that the conversions from registrants who are paying members, on the iPhone platform specifically, is almost an order of magnitude greater than on the likes of WAP phones. Is that one of the conclusions you’ve drawn?
Yes. Because the iPhone platform has a much better user experience, in many cases it replaces site usage. So we do see that people on the iPhone perform better than people who are purely on a web-based experience.

You must be pretty excited about the iPad and the new iPhone with the camera facing forward.
Yes, I think both present opportunities for us. iPad already runs our iPhone application as it is. The site works very well on the iPad as it is, but we’re actively looking into building a more targeted application.

The front facing camera on the iPhone is something that we’re still trying to formulate a strategy around. I can’t say that we have a very clear vision on what we would do with that new functionality.

Hopefully people are going to get more comfortable with using a phone with the front facing camera and that could really usher in a new era for internet dating.

What are your thoughts on advertising to drive traffic to your mobile products?
When we started out on the iPhone platform we were getting a lot of organic growth. People were coming into the app store and discovering us under the social networking category. That continues to be the case and there are a lot of people who find us on the app store and that is because of the high number of downloads we get.

It has to be a great way for Match to effectively capture the younger demographic and more importantly position the Match brand favorably as a hip mobile brand for the youngsters.
Mobile definitely attracts a younger audience. According to Pew Research Center’s report on millennials and their phone usage, 85% of millennials sleep with a mobile phone next to them. So we clearly see that the audience that we attract on phones are younger.

Match.com has been using Trilibis for quite a while now. It’s a couple of years now, isn’t it?
We started using Trilibis in 2007, so it’s been a while.

How is that going? What do you use them for and why?
Trilibis fills a critical niche for us. Next to the iPhone or Android, there is still a very long tail of older phones out there which are still very popular with our user base. This is a very large portion of the mobile traffic that comes to Match.com. While that traffic is getting replaced by the smart phones, it is still very significant that we will want to have a presence on these older phones. The problem Trilibis is solving is that the resolution, formatting and the layout on these devices are very fragmented.

What kind of revenue is mobile throwing off at this stage? I noticed that 2-3% of Meetic revenue was from mobile products. Can you give us any indication how that fits with Match?
I don’t have a percentage number but I can tell you that mobile is one of the fastest growing channels when it comes to acquiring new users.

How about SMS related revenue? How much of your revenue is from subscription and how much from SMS?
All of our revenues are from subscriptions. We don’t monetize SMS. We provide SMS as a free utility so it’s an opt-in model wherein you can sign up for SMS Alerts.

How engaged would you say the mobile users are versus your online users?
A typical mobile user views twice as many profiles as compared to someone who is just using the site.

Have you seen much rollover from online to mobile users?
Yes, a lot of our users start with the online experience and then they download our application and use that as a complementary channel to access Match. That is really what results in the higher number of profile views.

I’ve heard that the mobile users are in some cases willing to pay more for the convenience than they would on an online dating site for the mobile version. Have you seen any evidence of that?
Match treats mobile as another channel by which people are able to access the Match service. So we don’t really make a distinction between mobile users versus site users. I guess that question doesn’t really apply to us.

I seem to be hearing a lot about virtual gifts in the mobile space, especially with the younger demographic. What is Match’s position on virtual gifts in the mobile environment?
The virtual gifts model doesn’t fit with the current Match model. The Match model typically involves people browsing user profiles, communicating with members, winks and emails, and possibly culminating in an offline meeting. So just the way the service is set up I don’t really see virtual gifts fitting into the current model.

See all posts on Match.com

David Siegel, Author Of A Book Called “Pull: The Power Of The Semantic Web To Transform Your Business”

Posted on June 14, 2010

OPW – June 14 – David Siegel is the author of a new book called Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business. David is also working on a next generation dating service.

I would like to learn more about your background and the semantic web. How might it be applicable to the internet dating world in the future?
I started one of the first web design firms back in ’94 and wrote the first book on web design in ’95. As the web has grown, it’s gotten much more complex. It has turned into a big tangle of links and keywords, rather than anything organized. So the idea of the semantic web is to go back and organize our most important information and make it easily accessible. In my view, the goal is for companies to transition from pushing information to pulling it. So along with working with startups, trying to get a new dating site going, and starting a family, that is what I’ve been working on for the past 10 years, and that's how long it's taken me to get this book out. It's called Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business.

How can you help people who are looking for their other half?

The goal of the semantic web is to put everything on a web footing, which is far bigger than Facebook, Google, AOL, or even Match.com. The idea is that you would be able to build a universal profile and host it anywhere you like, just like a blog or a web site. The profile would then enable you to use search engines to look for people across the entire Web, so that you don’t have to continuously log into dating sites. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the dating sites will go away. Instead, they’ll become services. They'll add value to your search, helping you filter and find the people you're looking for, without hosting all the profiles themselves. I'm working on one such engine now that is independent of the dating site I hope to launch.

Soon, people will be able to establish what I call an “online data locker.” This is where they consolidate all their personal information: medical profile, resume, school and work history, a personals profile, as well as profiles for social networking, family management, vendor-relationship management, and more. Then all they would have to do is apply that single profile to as many services as they want. So try to imagine a day when a dating site doesn’t have any members. Why duplicate the profile-making process? If a dating site wants extra information, it can ask for it, but this goes way beyond Facebook Connect.

This sounds rather utopian. How long is this going to take? And what are the risks going to be?

It’s already happening, and it's being supported by groups like the W3C, which governs web standards. We have FOAF, which is Friend of a Friend, a social graph of people you’re connected to. Those connections will continue to strengthen, multiply and diverge into different kinds of groups. As we add more and more information, we'll find ourselves at our "personal information dashboard," and we'll stop going to so many web sites. Check out DataPortability.org. They want you to own your information, so you should be able to move it from any account to another. For example, if I’m on eHarmony, I ought to be able to move my dating profile to another dating site or to my personal data locker and then manage it from there. Try that on Facebook – they've said they are joining Dataportibility.org, but they haven't done anything about it. Google, on the other hand, wants you to be able to get your data out if you want – see DataLiberation.org. This is going to be a big deal. If Facebook and other businesses don't embrace data portability, they will suffer the consequences.

Second, we already have serious security and identity risks happening today. People are willing to give out personal details to sites like Facebook, which exposes them to search engines. So those issues are already a reality. We’re just going to have to iterate our way from here to an end point that's much more secure. Fortunately, a group called Identity Commons (IdentityCommons.net) is already developing the identity and networking protocols necessary to build true webs of trust. Then we'll add icards (see informationcard.net) and that will start to make the dream of a private, secure data locker a reality.

Could the personal data locker be Facebook?
To get the answer, you’d have to read my book. Facebook provides a place to put your information, but it doesn’t provide the privacy, security, control, or the kinds of disambiguation and modularization of data we'll need. I would keep an eye on Google, which recently hired Chris Messina, an Open Web advocate. If they play their cards right, Google could start leading the way. Another site to watch is Power.com, where you can aggregate a number of different social networks in one place and manage them from there. The aggregation movement is hot right now (Hootsuite, Mint.com, GoMiles.com, etc), and the personal data locker is the ultimate aggregator – you'll have everything under one roof, with as much security and as many passwords and personas as you want to manage. I think Facebook could eventually follow Friendster and Myspace into the heap of irrelevant data silos.

Facebook is under fire for releasing more and more of people’s personal information. So it almost seems like users are starting to demand this kind of data locker already. I’m envisioning a central place. But based on what you just said, it seems like it can be multiple places. Is that correct?
There are many potential scenarios, and with open standards we'll probably see all of them. Microsoft Health Vault is actually an excellent place to put your health information right now. Mint is acceptable for personal finance, but those who've read my book know we have a long way to go. Interoperability is the key. The last thing you want to do is enter all of your contacts or enter all of your health information to find out it can’t be applied to anything else. You’d want to be able to apply it everywhere. You’d want to build it once and then reuse it over and over again, and that's one of the principles of the semantic web.

Will this all be free?
I hope not. I like to think of my personal information as pretty important. I'd love to pay to have it stored and organized properly, the way I do today with my photos. I prefer to pay, because I want high levels of storage, security, privacy, and support. Of course, plenty of companies will make the data locker free, but be aware of what you give up in exchange. I'm sure we'll see a range of offers, but I personally would be happy to pay and be in complete control.

For more information, visit David online at http://thepowerofpull.com and follow him on Twitter: @Pullnews and @_dsiegel.

Karinna Kittles-Karsten, Founder Of SacredLove

Posted on May 27, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – May 27 – Karinna Kittles-Karsten is The Love Educator. She’s a former model, has authored the books Intimate Wisdom: The Sacred Art of Love, as well as hosting and producing the DVD Sacred Love-Making. Single women are inordinate consumers of relationship content. Karinna is a producer of such content. I thought I’d help introduce you, the dating industry, to her. – Mark Brooks

What is your background?
I am a seeker, artist, educator and entrepreneur in the field of love and intimacy. It’s been a lifelong passion of mine to discover and study global wisdom on love, sex and intimacy. Because of this, I’ve traveled all over the world. I was fascinated by how couples and singles relate to one another in different cultures. Their similarities and differences were also very interesting.

Tell us more about SacredLove.
SacredLove.com has a unique offering in the online dating and relationship enhancement space. It supports you before, during and after finding the right partner.

You have a love spa. How does the love spa work?
We offer dating and intimacy tools that singles and couples can access 24 hours a day to improve their relationship experience through our one of a kind love spa membership.

What are the tools?
We have an audio/visual menu that includes selections to boost your self confidence and body image. The selections teach you how to communicate to increase your dating success as well as your ability to get close to someone. We also have a visual menu that plays selections to increase your sexual intimacy skill.

You have multiple membership offerings. Can you walk us through your offers?
For starters we offer traditional online dating where you can create a profile and look for love online. In addition to online dating, we of course offer the love spa. We also have a web TV channel membership called Empowered Relationships TV that features inspiring date night programming.

In conjunction with our membership plans, we also have the couple’s connection feature which is like Facebook for couples. Another one of the special features we offer here is our mobile connection provided by our partnership with messmo.

Are the couples communicating with other couples?
Couple’s connection works in two ways. A couple can have a private profile in which they would interact amongst themselves but if they want to meet other couples online and become friends, they can open up their profile and meet other couples on the platform.

It sounds like you’re covering a wide range of the relationship continuum. How about conflict resolution? Is there anything in your services that will help couples get back together?
Absolutely. In the love spa you’ll find selections on how to resolve conflict, how to get through life’s challenges and how to become intimate again.

How are you promoting the site at this stage? How are you using social media?
We’re using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to engage our customers that are highly involved in social media. This step is in the process of being implemented as we speak. We are also open to relationship oriented dating sites approaching us to discuss using our services for their members as an extended engagement.

How would that work?
On traditional dating sites you might find a dating coach offering, which is usually a blog or articles with dating tips and perhaps some one on one advice. But at Sacred Love, we focus on connecting people. So in an arrangement we would provide content for bringing people together and helping singles to date more successfully.
This is a great opportunity for the online dating space to engage. Why would you have a million or more members and then let them go somewhere else? There is a real need in the online dating space to foster love, intimacy as well as create ongoing engagement.

Moses Brown, Founder Of HerWay.com And OnlineBootyCall.com

Posted on April 26, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – Apr 26 – I first met Mo when I was working at FriendFinder in 2003. He’s done very well with OnlineBootyCall and has turned some of his attention towards developing an interesting new site called HerWay.com. I interviewed Mo back in August 2007. (Full Disclosure: Mo is a client of Courtland Brooks)

What did you do before you started OnlineBootyCall?
I was a software engineer. I worked as a database administrator and one of my side projects was an online dating site. That is how OnlineBootyCall started.

Why did you choose OnlineBootyCall? What other names did you consider?
There was really no name consideration. I just registered the domain so I could use it to do some web development and I had no idea the site was going to take off. I was the first member and now we’re close to 5 million members now.

Congratulations. You’re working on a new site, HerWay.com. How does this site work and how is it different from other dating sites?
HerWay, as the name implies, works a little differently. We set it up so it works similar to the Sadie Hawkins dance, a high school dance in which female students invite male students to dance. So on HerWay we allow the females to make the first move.

Isn’t this a distinctly American concept?
I would say 95% of the people I’ve asked heard of the concept. The dance idea started in the US but I’m not sure how many people internationally know about it.

It sounds like you’re empowering women but do women really want to be empowered in this particular respect or do the guys really want to lead?
I wouldn’t necessarily call it empowering women. It is more about saving them from being inundated with emails from guys who they aren’t interested in. So giving them the opportunity to search for someone they really want versus fielding messages and responding to winks and stuff or responding to guys telling them they’re not interested, is a lot more efficient. One of the things we’ve noticed is women are often inundated and guys are often ignored on dating sites.

So it sounds like you’re trying to readdress the boundaries with HerWay.com?
Yeah I think so. I’ve talked to a lot of women who have joined the site and they appreciate it. It’s like a breath of fresh air. It’s not for everybody, of course. Some women like to be chased and they like the traditional dating experience.

What inspired you to start HerWay.com?
While operating OBC, I started noticing that whenever a female would reach out to a guy, the response rate was sometimes up to 10 times better than the other way around. So it led me to believe that it’s really up to the female to decide who she’s going to meet regardless of who initiates the contact.

How is the site growing? How are you getting the word out?
Right now it’s mostly word of mouth. We’re growing at nearly 1000 members a day with little to no marketing efforts, which is going to change pretty soon.

Do you have any other projects in the pipeline?
We do but it is a little too early to discuss right now. There are a couple of projects we’re excited about to get started. So when that comes up we’ll definitely let you know about that.

See all posts on HerWay.com
See all posts on OnlineBootyCall

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