All Interviews – Page 19 – Online Personals Watch

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

Listen to the interview

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

Listen to the interview

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

Scott Pattenden, Founder And CEO Of iTelebill

Posted on April 12, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – Apr 12 – Scott Pattenden is the founder and CEO of iTelebill. His company was founded in 2008 and provides dating sites with the ability to let their members charge subscription fees through their mobile phone by using SMS. They work with Social Gaming, the Adult industry and as of about a year ago, the dating industry as well. – Glenn Millar

Why should a dating site care about offering mobile billing?
There’s a large section of the global population that doesn’t have access to a credit card or payment card. Beyond that, in the U.S. alone, about 1/3 of the population doesn’t have credit available on their credit cards as a result of the recession. There’s over 3 billion cell phones globally. So this, combined with many users’ unwillingness to disclose personal and payment data to third parties, makes an alternative payment offering quite essential.

And how important is mobile billing in Europe?
The level of credit card penetration in quite a few European markets is very low, particularly compared to the US. So, mobile billing, is even more important in Europe.

What are the key distinctions with the U.S. market?
The US market is still underdeveloped with its SMS technology, but after several years of slow progress, the last 12 months have seen phenomenal growth. These gains, coupled with the increased rate of card declines caused by the “credit crunch,” means that Mobile billing in the U.S. has been a real growth sector for us.

What dating sites are using mobile billing successfully?
White Label Dating and FriendFinder Networks have added our mobile billing solution to their existing offering. The Dating Factory has built our technology into their platform from day one to maximize the revenues they can generate for prospective partners. We are fortunate to have taken on some excellent clients who are really expanding their horizons and their billing options.

What evidence have you seen that mobile billing raises conversion rates?
Our implementation on mainstream sites has seen 10-15% added to their existing revenue streams. On adult oriented or niche dating sites, that figure has topped 20%. At the end of the day increasing consumer choice is always a positive in terms of end-user conversions.

From the consumer’s perspective, how difficult is it to charge via SMS?
We designed our system to minimize user inputs. All the user needs to do is send a keyword to a short number by SMS and then click continue on screen. We handle everything else from that point on. Even subscriptions and ewallet “auto top-ups” require no further user input; much the same way a subscription card payment is handled.

Isn’t mobile billing extremely expensive? If the customer chooses mobile billing, won’t it cut into the dating site’s profits?
This is a common misconception. We recommend passing all additional costs onto the end user. This ensures that only members not currently billing by card will choose mobile billing. Since these people are not willing or able to use a credit card, these mobile billing customers are “found” money; incremental revenue from customers who would have previously left the site at the payment page.

But if you are going to pass the cost on to the consumer, why would they ever choose mobile billing over a credit card?
Personally, I am more than happy to pay by credit card, but data shows I am in the minority. A 2009 report from the Office of Fair Trading in the UK found that 1 in 3 people were still not making online transactions, with a lack of trust in security of their online data listed as the main reason. A whopping 78% of people who already make some purchases online said that the same reasons held them back from making more. In the dating market, people are also attracted to the anonymity that mobile payments offer and are more than willing to pay the premium for this service.

In the U.S. you can only charge $10 at a time through SMS. Most dating sites are more than $10 per month. Doesn’t this make SMS billing impossible in the U.S.?
We have several innovative “work arounds” in place to enable us to bill more than that, such as billing on consecutive days on “separate” monthly subscriptions to hit higher targets. The complexity and intransigence of US carriers leaves us with no other workable solution at present. However, the discussions around the new framework for 4G services should make things far simpler in the near future.

How do you prevent fraud, i.e. someone charging a subscription fee to someone else’s phone?
The user must have their phone in hand to charge to their number. Since mobile carriers consider securing the handset the end user’s responsibility, this is not an excuse for non-payment of outstanding charges. In addition, all our services are operated on HTTPS secure servers that are fully PCI compliant. We also check number ranges and usage patterns with several fraud detecting algorithms to minimize our exposure to fraudulent transactions. Finally, we have a couple of other methods as well, but I would rather keep those to ourselves!

See all posts on iTelebill

Alexander Harrington, President Of MeetMoi

Posted on March 30, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – Mar 30 – Meetmoi has one of the best mobile dating offerings around. We interviewed Andrew Weinrich, the CEO , in January 2009. Andrew was the founder of SixDegrees.com, no less. Here’s our interview with Alexander Harrington, a Wharton MBA grad, and the President.

Listen to the interview

What is your background?
I joined MeetMoi as President in June of 2009. Prior to that I had been Senior Vice President of Strategy Operations for Zagat, most known for its print and online restaurant guides.

How would you say work with Zagat has influenced what you’re doing with MeetMoi?
MeetMoi had a great strength in technology and direct marketing and I had a direct marketing background. I think I managed an enterprise that was very brand focused and had strength in licensing and these are directions I’ve taken the company.

Zagat is certainly a great service and I use it every couple of weeks. MeetMoi of course is a great name as well. How are you going to build that into an unique dating service?
The thrust of MeetMoi is centered around the value of bringing dating into a mobile context. People carry their devices with them wherever they go. The real time communication channel and the location based element add a new dimension to dating. It makes it much more immediate and reduces the friction to help people connect in person in a way that traditional dating websites don’t.

How do people really react to location based services? Do you find you have a majority of users using it?
One of the hurdles to get over is getting consumers comfortable with sharing their location. When people share their location with us they’re sharing it with us alone and we don’t disclose it to other users. We can then return matches nearby.

I can’t help thinking some users would imagine somebody walking up to them using their phone like a homing beacon. How accurate is it? How closely defined location wise is it?
Right now what we share is distance; we don’t share direction or specific location. So you can’t very well track someone down with that information. It just gives you a sense of who is nearby and who could potentially be available to meet in person, which is the most natural way of getting to know someone.

You’ve introduced virtual gifts recently. How is that going?
It’s going great. One of the things we discovered about virtual gifts in a dating context is that consumers are less price sensitive and we found our higher price point $5.99 is actually in some days the best seller, better than the $3.99 and $1.99 price points. It’s a great differentiator and users are willing to pay because there are additional services that come with it, for example “a la carte” communication that you would otherwise have to subscribe to.

Have you done an analysis on how much more people respond once they’ve received a virtual gift?
We have looked at the numbers early on. I would say users are two to three times more responsive.

I can imagine people who are using mobile dating to be a little more active and a little more interested in events. You have just teamed up with Time Out. How is that working out?
They’re a tremendous partner for us. For years they have been creating content around single lifestyle and nightlife in major cities around the US. So it is the right kind of brand to work with. We provide them both mobile dating and traditional online dating in an integrated experience. The users that they’ve added to our network have been really active and engaged.

What does the future hold for MeetMoi? Where would you like to end up 2010?
We would like to be the largest mobile dating company in the world. We see mobile dating not just as a niche business. We see mobility as a killer app especially for people in their 20’s who are interested more in casual dating.

See all posts on MeetMoi

Bradley Boyd, CEO Of SetForMarriage

Posted on March 8, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – Mar 8 – I like the name, SetForMarriage.com. Its a matrimonials site essentially. One step more serious than eHarmony, but without the personality test. The man behind the site is Bradley Boyd. – Mark Brooks

What is your background?
Actually I’m a student at the University of Houston. My degree is in Business Management and this is my first entrepreneurship role.

What drew you to start a dating site?
I have several friends who’ve been on eHarmony, Match.com, PlentyofFish.com and some of the other big dating sites. My buddies are ready to settle down and get married but they kept meeting people on these sites who were just casual online daters. They didn’t feel like those mega sites worked for them. So I wanted to provide a viable alternative for them.

Would you say you’re more marriage minded and serious than the likes of eHarmony in terms of positioning?
I think I would. I don’t think eHarmony uses the word marriage in their marketing. What I’ve noticed they use “find your life partner”. In our marketing campaign we go after the marriage minded people, people who are not afraid to say: “I’m ready to get married, not just find a life partner.”

What would be the difference between marriage and life partner?
I’d say marriage is going through the matrimony, through the ceremony of being married to someone compared to having a life partner. eHarmony matches you up with somebody perfectly but leaves the door open.

I’ve looked over the site and there is no personality profiling. Why is that? Would you like to have a personality profile or do you not believe in it?
We left out the personality profile on purpose. We give the power back to people. I don’t think a computer algorithm should tell somebody who their perfect person is. Let nature run its course and if you find somebody in your area or anywhere in the US on our site that you feel may be a potential marriage partner for you, by all means, we leave it up to you to decide.

When was the launch date?
August 31, 2009

What do you have in the way of investment? Who else is on the team?
The investment to the site is out of my own pocket. I self funded it and I only have a developer who is developing the site.

Are you interested in raising funding?
I’m definitely interested in that.

How many members do you have so far?
We have 1,500 members currently.

How many paying members you have?
6 or 7.

How are you driving new users to the site?
Currently we’re advertising on Facebook. We’re driving new users by email marketing campaigns from a company called Ad Knowledge. The biggest deal for us getting new users is me doing interviews on local TV around the country.

You are getting a fair amount of press, I noticed. What are the biggest interviews you’ve done so far?
The biggest interview besides your site has been probably Greenville, South Carolina, Colorado Springs, Charleston, South Carolina and here in Houston. Houston is probably the biggest markets we’ve hit.

Why $15 a month?
I chose that price because in our economy not everybody has a lot of money to keep throwing to online dating sites.

What are your goals for the site, say for December 2010?
As far as the number of members, I would love to hit around 20,000 by the end of the year. Then we would like to continue with the development, refine the site and clean it up a little bit.

See all posts on SetForMarriage.com

Dave Wilkie, CEO Of Weopia

Posted on March 2, 2010

OPW INTERVIEW – Mar 1 – Professor Michael Norton from Harvard tell us that more is less. The more profile information that is collected on dating sites for singles, the less the interest from other singles, according to his research. When singles talk to other singles that they know little about, they tend to imagine as more ideal than they may be. Enter virtual dating. Weopia is a virtual dating service we found intriguing, so I interviewed the CEO, Dave Wilkie, a few days ago. – Mark Brooks

How would you describe Weopia?
We like to call it a companion tool to online dating sites. Users of dating sites can use Weopia to have a virtual date.

What is your background?
My background goes back into advertising. For 18 years I owned an advertising agency in Canada. I’ve taken about 1 year off to build Weopia.

What drew you to the Internet dating space? What inspired you?
Back in my teens a friend of mine mentioned how small our dating pool was in the high school. Then in the advertising business I worked on a program with IBM, which was a resume job matching service like Monster.com. We really got deep into the matching process and so along the way I started to get more interested. A colleague of mine, who was a tech oriented person, just sold his business. He asked if I would consider doing something together and I said how about an online dating site?
He was a big fun of Second Life so that is where the idea popped up back in March 2008.

I took a look at the site and I’m amazed with the graphics, how on earth did you build it?
It was a long process of trying different technologies until we found the right one. We found a Unity platform. At the time they were doing smaller games and various interactive 3D environments but mostly game oriented. So that platform worked quite well for us but it required a lot of back end work.

What is it you like most about the Unity platform over the other offerings?
It’s very progressive.

What would you say were your biggest challenges in building the site?
Our biggest challenge was to limit what we could do. In a virtual world, which mirrors reality, the creativity can just go rampant.

In terms of the user experience, is there any particular user behavior that surprised you that was unusual?
I don’t know if it’s a surprise, we sort of expected it, but many people think that what we’re trying to build another Second Life. But we’ve built an intimate dating environment for 2 people. Second Life is completely different thing, although it’s a virtual world and was the inspiration for our program.

How do you get people?
We tried to get the word out through press releases. I was also happy to see that people are Twittering back and forth about Weopia. We had quite a big flip in traffic and people were passing the word around. We intend to do some advertising once we get Weopia the way we think it should be. Then we intend to start charging at some point.

What sort of price points do you think you’ll come in at?
About $4.95. We tried to price it around the cost of a couple of coffees at Starbucks. But there will be a whole bunch of variations on our pricing.

Would you say your end goal is to show this service off so that you can partner with other internet dating companies? Or do you want to be the end destination?
We would like to offer the service to the online dating industry as a bridge between texting and chatting inside the online dating sites and the meeting in the real life. The researches in the virtual world dating conducted by Professor Michael Nortong, Jeana Frost and Dan Arieli show that if you go on a virtual date prior to meeting in person you’re much more likely to like the person. I think that’s just because people have high expectations over the text chats.

What are your plans for 2010?
We would like to go mobile. We’re looking seriously at the iPad and iPhone. But what we would really like to see happen by 2010 is to be accepted into the online dating industry so people can go and meet more people quicker and find love faster.

See all posts on Weopia

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: