All Interviews – Page 22 – Online Personals Watch

Gavin Potter And Nick Tsinonis, Founders Of Intro Analytics

Posted on April 11, 2009

OPW INTERVIEW — Apr 11 — The founder of yesnomayB and Netflix Prize finalist, Gavin Potter, have joined forces to bring behavioural matchmaking and personalization to online dating and social networking sites. Here’s our interview with the Founders of Intro Analytics. – Mark Brooks

What is the founding story of IntroAnalytics?
Gavin: For the last couple of years, I’ve been working in collaborative filtering loosely based around the $1m datamining competition called Netflix Prize for the best collaborative filtering algorithm that predicts user ratings for films, based on previous ratings. Nick got in touch with me and said, “do you think we can apply the same type of approach to internet dating?” So we gave it a go. We found that we could get some very accurate results just by looking at how people browse a particular dating site.

So the idea of this is to help people get better results from their browsing?
Gavin: That’s absolutely right. Most dating sites run and work on profiling information. If you can use profiling information and browsing information you can get much more accurate recommendations.

If I’m only clicking on images of women with red hair, as a result you’re going to give me profiles of women who only have red hair?
Gavin: That’s almost right. What we try and do is capture a person’s actual behavior rather than base it on the information in the profile. So, if despite what they say on the profile, they only click on women with red hair than our algorithms will tend to recommend women with red hair. If they only click on women with an income above a certain level, then our algorithms will tend to recommend women with an income above a certain level etc. This is the beauty of this technique, it captures what people actually do rather than what they say that they want. When you combine the two together you get a better result.

Nick how did you get involved with IntroAnalytics?
Nick: We launched a dating site called yesnomayB.com about 2 years ago. The whole premise of the site was to make a first-impression choice of people based on a high-quality photo with keywords. We then use a collaborative filter algorithm to recommend new dates to you (just like Amazon recommends books on what choices you have made in the past). We found this an extremely challenging task and I was starting to lose hope until I met Gavin in March last year. He presented me with incredibly accurate results based on user browser behaviour.

Further, it was more amazing to see very good 2-way recommendations being presented to members who had never clicked on each other before.

Does it also look at the text of the profile?
Gavin: It only captures what people are looking at – if they are basing their results on profile information it will capture that. If they are basing their browsing behavior on attractiveness it will capture that. It is true, however, and slightly to our surprise that after the location of the potential date, attractiveness appears to be the most important characteristic regardless of the information provided. We’ve now worked the algorithms on dating sites that contain substantial profile information as well as websites that contain very little and this finding doesn’t seem to change.

How many clicks will it take until you really start identifying what this person likes?
Gavin: You can start from just one click but clearly that’s not going to give you a very accurate result. As soon as we identify 10 individuals that someone has expressed an interest in, we can start getting some quite accurate results in terms of predicting who they would be most interested in.

In terms of identifying their interest, is it both just clicking on images or also initiating communication?
Gavin: You can use anything that expresses an interest. Right now we are working with a couple of sites who are looking at combining browsing behavior with messaging or going on a date with someone.

You said it’s a mathematical algorithm. How do you quantify its results?
Gavin: There are 3 ways. The first way that we’re trying to quantify is to see if the users are interested in using the recommendations that come out of the algorithm. The second way is when we are looking at whether people have messaged. We’re trying to predict whether someone will message someone and then we see how accurate those predictions are. The third way, we are still experimenting with, is to look how many people we’ve converted based on using this technology.

If some new person joins a site, we can quickly identify who that person might be most interested in and we can then make some accurate recommendations to those people.

Are there any other sites using your service at this point except of yesnomayB?
Gavin: There are 3-4 companies evaluating our technology at the moment.

The technology right now is at yesnomayB.com. Nick, what are your observations so far?
Nick: We can say with certainty that our users are definitely using the recommendations and we have received som every positive feedback. We believe that recommendations will play a major role in converting our members to subscribers.

If you look at other industries like Amazon and Netflix: Amazon’s recommendations create 30-35% of its overall sales. I also know that Netflix rents two thirds of it’s movies through recommendations.

Recommendation and discovery of products and services is complex but easy to implement with the right algorithm – all dating sites of the future should be doing it as users and dating sites both win.

Brendan O’Kane, CEO Of Messmo.com

Posted on March 21, 2009

OPW INTERVIEW — Mar 21 — Messmo does mobile and now serves the personals industry by extending dating sites onto all mobile phones.

What is your background?
20+ years at large UK and US software companies in senior roles, particularly in sales and marketing. For 7 years I've been an active Angel investor, based out of Australia, in both the mobile and social networking space: Blue Sky Frog, Australia's first multi-million user mobile property, and KidSpot.com.au, Australia's #1 parenting and social networking site.

Tell us more about Messmo
A couple of colleagues and I made an investment in some interesting technology for mobile. The easiest way to think of it is SMS Version 2; if you have mobile Internet, SMS should be free.

Messmo did an 8 month beta test, in the consumer market and picked up over half a million users. We also started a dialogue with one very large global personals player based out of Australia, and we realized there were some significant opportunities in the personals space. We created Messmo Media to help personals sites extend their experience to mobile in a very simple, elegant way.

What functionalities have you built into Messmo so far?
It's very much like SMS. It's highly interactive; messages can contain pictures and all things you would expect if you were using an Internet backbone.

Messmo has built a very closed environment. Using Messmo with personals, members can't see each other except when they come through the personals site. It's a no-spam environment, no external advertising.

How can you help Internet dating companies make more money?
In three ways. Firstly Messmo has patented technology that can trigger a mobile transaction which means the user gets billed on their mobile bill. This opens the door to tempt all those non paying members, when they receive a new message, to make a quick impulse transaction, such as a day pass, via a single click. Secondly increased interaction – most members spend 20 or more hours away from a PC each day, but usually their mobile is with them night and day. Delivering messages and replies at zero cost, increases interaction and the likelihood of the member quickly returning to the site. Thirdly Messmo has very sophisticated viral and recommendation technologies (all you friends are in your contact list on your mobile) that were proven in the test period. These have enormous potential to help drive down the cost of new member acquisition for sites.

Who would you say in reality are the end users in mobile dating in your experience?
Mobile dating can mean two different things. To a mobile operator, any on-deck solution that makes them money is mobile dating. But to an existing site owner, with their own membership, mobile dating should simply mean extending their existing communication to their member's mobiles, when the member is not at a PC. We think the second definition is what mobile dating is about.

What countries do you serve?
Messmo is global; in any country that supports mobile data you could reach a Messmo user. This is significant because let's imagine that there was a personals site we'll call "Cupid Make Friends". If they were visible on Messmo, a user anywhere in the world could, when running Messmo, see Cupid Make Friends straightaway. Their interaction with the site would be identical, whether they were in the UK, Italy, Thailand or Australia.

How would you differentiate the Messmo offerings from a company like Trilibis?
The most popular experience in the world on mobile is of course SMS. We replicate that experience and add extras like much richer messages, but the interface and integration is very very simple. think days, not weeks or months compared to alternative approaches.

Greg Pierson, CEO Of iovation

Posted on March 14, 2009

OPW INTERVIEW — Mar 14 — iovation helps dating sites and social networks work together to beat scammers, spammers, and those that would be abusive towards our communities. Here's my interview with Greg Pierson, the CEO of iovation. (Full Disclosure: iovation is a client of Courtland Brooks). – Mark Brooks

How is iovation funded at this stage?
iovation raised $15 million in growth capital in 2007 and the financial partners we have include Intel Capital, SAP Ventures and European Founders.

What markets does iovation serve?
We serve customers in a range of markets with very different types of fraud and abuse. In addition to online dating customers we serve organizations that are more pure social networks. We have organizations in gambling and online gaming, in financial services and in online retail.

How does iovation help dating companies work together to beat scammers and the like?
The way we serve all of our customers is with a platform that exposes the reputation of internet devices that are connecting to their businesses. What's different vertical to vertical is the types of problems that our individual customers are dealing with. Of course, that varies. But the base technology and infrastructure that we provide is the same. Let's say you're an online retailer. Would it be valuable to know that independent of the identity or transaction information that a consumer is giving you through an internet connection, what if you knew the device they're using had defrauded you in the past? Or would it be valuable to know that that device has defrauded some other iovation customer in a way that is something you care about?

Do you see much cross over between the other industries you serve and the dating industry?
We absolutely do. One thing to think about is that the bad guys, if you will, are much more prolific and much more active in their abuse. Someone who is spamming and advertising competitive services in the dating space are going to be doing it on every network they can get access to. The same thing if someone is running scams. We see a surprising amount of cross over in individuals and organized groups that are defrauding businesses in vertical A and are also defrauding businesses in vertical B. We also see linked frauds where individuals are using organizations to get data from users to steal identities. Then using those identities to launder stolen credit cards in a different vertical. So absolutely we see cross over within and across verticals we serve.

How does the iovation service work from the user perspective?
If you're a good average Joe and not causing problems at a particular online dating site you're going to see nothing. The only thing you might see is that the sites that you're using that are using iovation have less abuse and less folks who are scamming and spamming the community.

Dating sites that we're serving set up rules. They decide what's right and what's wrong and when an end user is violating one of those rules and that site decides to keep them out, now what they're going to see is when they try to connect to that business from any device they've used in the past they're going to get some kind of message saying they're not getting access. When they get frustrated and say fine I'll set up a new account they're going to find that doesn't work either. So they're going to have to completely start over and go out and use completely new identities and completely new devices.

How does it work from the the internet dating abuse managers side?
Let's start with value. Let's say you had a million dating accounts and the only way you had to understand the relationship between accounts was if someone started to use the same email address or physical address. But scammers go out of their way to make sure they're not using identity information that can correlate them. So we help you understand that account A and B are related because they've logged into your network using the same or related internet devices.

Many of our customers have sophisticated tools that are either 3rd party or they've built them themselves that catch problems. We can say, guys if you're concerned about one problem you better go look at these other 50 accounts because they have used the same physical devices to access your site and they are therefore related. So in this example we've provided the 50 to 1 uplift on their other tool, whether it be some automated tool or a manual process.

Then we stop the revolving door. On many social networks the only thing you need to access a site is an email address and account name. So its pretty hard to use many 3rd party services to protect yourself when that's the case. So once you've identified a problem and iovation has helped you realize that that is related to 50 other accounts and you've shut them all down, now how do you prevent the individual from simply coming back 10 minutes or 10 days later and trying to pretend to be somebody else? That's where we come in to say no, no guys don't allow this new account to be set up its coming from a device that has in fact defrauded you or done something inappropriate in the past.

We are building a shared infrastructure. So the other value that our customers see is that when a device is associated with a problem they care about that has taken place on some other iovation customer's site, we can bring that to their attention so they can act in whatever way they feel is appropriate. It's a real time platform that is answering reputation inquiries in under an 8th of a second. But it's not just that.

In addition our individual customers have access to our fraud team here in Portland. So we are working with them in terms of training and looking over their shoulders and helping run special reports to make sure they get the most out of our system and have their rules set up in an optimal way.

What is in the works for iovation? Are there any new announcements coming up?
Up until this point our reputation manager platform has been all about exposing problems with certainty, problems that our customers can react to in real time. We have been testing a risk scoring service for the last few months with a small group of about 20 of our customers. This is going to be a very nice compliment to our existing platform. Organizations will be able to react in real time to devices that we know have caused a problem for them, or some other iovation customer, as well as, flagging new account set ups or logins or other interactions on their site that we suspect for a number of different reasons from indirect relationships to problems. i.e account velocity, log in velocity and those types of things. We know from testing with the initial group that we're seeing some very good results that our current and future customers can look forward to.

See all posts on iovation

Dominic Senn, CEO Of BasisNote.com Interview

Posted on March 7, 2009

OPW INTERVIEW — Mar 7 — Basisnote is into DNA matchmaking and they have an interesting test. It doesn’t require the user to mail back a mouth swab or DNA sample and the test will be under $100. One to watch. I talked with the CEO, Dominic Senn. – Mark Brooks

Tell us more about Basisnote.com
It is a story of 3 friends that worked as researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and decided to start their own business. The basic idea behind building our own business was to bring olfactory to Internet dating.

How exactly do you match people?
We match people based on their individual scent profiles. This individual scent profile has a genetic basis with a link to your individual immune system. There is an attraction when the immune systems of two people are compatible. The way we realize whether or not the potential partner is compatible with others is through the smell, through the individual scent profile of this person. It is clear that that a lot has to match for a working relationship, but without a matching chemistry in the sense that “you like my scent and I like yours”, intimacy, the foundation of a working relationship is unlikely to evolve. Hence, basisnote helps people to find someone with a better matching chemistry faster and more reliably.

Are we talking pheromones?
No, its totally different from pheromones because those are the same for all people. The scent profiles are individual. Everyone is unique. It’s also chemically speaking a different type of substance that we emit.

How does that work from the end user perspective?
Our users order the test kit through a dating site. We ship the test kit to them within 24 hours. The test is simple and secure. You put it in your mouth for a few seconds and 5 minutes later you get the result, your individual chemistry or scent profile. Then you read this profile from the test kit and add it to your already existing personal profile at the dating site. We provide all the IT interfaces to get the matching with other people at these dating sites that have also already done the test. So the implementation of the whole system into existing sites is very simple.

What exactly are you matching?
We have a scale from 1 to 100 for how well you match. We also create a virtualization of the matching which gives you a visual representation which is kind of a bar code that represent your scent profile. If you put two scent profile on top of each other, you see how well they match.

Are we talking about the likelihood of having healthy offspring or are we talking about the actual compatibility and the chances of two people getting on?
All of it. The basic driver behind this mechanism is healthy offspring. That is the reason why we feel attracted to those people that have a good match in terms of this scent profile. There are a number of reviews that clearly show that if the compatibility is high in terms of this chemistry matching, it increases physical attraction first but also the stability of relationships.
The mechanism goes this way; your DNA determines your scent. The scent is then unconsciously recognized by your partner. We can’t read the DNA of our potential partner that is sitting on the other side of the table. But we can smell their typical smell and this smell gives us a positive or negative sensation and we experience attraction or not based on this smell.

I came across GenePartner.com and ScientificMatch.com. Are you looking at a different part of the DNA via the scent?
No it’s exactly the same part as they do and we measure the same thing. What is different is the way the analysis is done. They do the analysis in a laboratory where people have to send in their whole DNA, which is complicated, expensive and brings along data privacy issues, which, depending on the country, can severe. To replace this laboratory test, we have developed together with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH an instant test that is as simple to use as a pregnancy test. This test analyses only the part of the DNA that is actually relevant and it is an over-the-counter product, so it does not cause the data privacy problems that go along with a DNA laboratory test.

What does it cost for the end user?
We are now negotiating with the company that does the production of the test and it will certainly be below $100.

Can you see it being used on a couple as they’ve entered a relationship and have been on a few dates and they want to do this as a fun thing?
At the end of the day the best measurement instrument is your own nose. So if you already know someone and you’re together with this person, we would say trust your nose and don’t go for some kind of scientific genetic compatibility testing.

Julie Spira, Cyber Dating Expert And Author

Posted on February 14, 2009

OPW INTERVIEW — Feb 14 — Julie Spira is a cyber dating expert and has a book coming out on February 13th which is called The Perils of Cyber Dating – Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking For Love Online.

Why are you a cyber dating expert?
I was on the Internet before most people even knew there was an Internet or even had an email address. I first started on Love@AOL in 1994 when I was the first one on my block to put up an online dating profile. Since then, I went on over 250 dates and received four marriage proposals, which included one husband and one fiancé. Suddenly I became an expert at cyber-dating and was instructing my friends on how to successfully put up their profiles.

What inspired you to write the book?
I wrote The Perils of Cyber-Dating because I felt I had compelling stories to share with other online daters. I wanted to encourage singles of all ages with an email address to join an online dating service. I had to start my life all over again and I believed that I could make a difference in the lives of others by sharing my real life stories in cyberspace. The stories are humorous, witty, and very relatable.

Are you a fan of online dating?
I am absolutely a fan of online dating. Though I had some perilous and heartbreaking stories; I had some heartwarming stories as well. I’ve always embraced the Internet and was an early adopter. I think the Internet is a fabulous way to meet someone online. Most people suffer through a few bad dates or event a heartbreak like I did from online dating, but it shouldn’t discourage them from trying to go back online again.

What do you love about Internet dating?
What I love the most about it is that it’s so instantaneous. I live a very busy life and as a busy professional, I don’t have a lot of extra time. The Internet is available 24/7 which made it very easy to connect online.

What advice are you giving in the book to people who are considering Internet dating or how can they do better with the services they use?
I have my Rules of “netiquette” in the book and hope to teach people to see the red flags from my personal experiences. I believe that finding the right partner online is like finding a piece of real estate. If it’s marketed well, both in real estate and on your online dating profile, you will get a lot of activity and hopefully a match will be made. It’s very important to have a profile with good photos. Recently I had my profile photos taken by LookBetterOnline.com and as a result the response rate to my cyber-dating profile has tripled.

So what do they do differently? What kind of photographs did you use in the past?
My profile photo was actually fine but a few years old. With a professional photographer, they were able to capture my image with excellent lighting. It is important to stand out in the huge sea of online dating profiles. I believe that your first photo should be a headshot and fairly recent.

Do you encourage people to put up photographs in general?
Absolutely! Photographs, videos, anything interactive will get noticed. Men are very visual. Either they will like what they see or they won’t. They will pass over the profiles without a photo.

What do you think is most important for guys as they’re looking over profiles?
Men scan through the bouquet of photos and often don’t take the time to ready the profiles. They need to realize that a woman can get hundreds of emails from men, especially when their profile is brand new. If a man writes something personal to a woman mentioning something specific in her profile, he will have a greater chance of receiving a response. You’d be surprised at how many men “copy and paste” the same introduction letter to the same fifty women. Women have figured this out, and tend to ignore generic emails from men.

Do you talk about various Internet dating sites within the book? The different characteristics of the different sites?
I do mention the sites that I was on in a specific story line or chapter. My book is more of a personal tell-all memoir and romantic journey with my personal Rules of “Netiquette” and stories of those who broke those rules. I married a man who I met on Matchmaker.com and was engaged to a man I met on JDate.

What sites do you personally prefer?
For me it really depends on the season. I have been on probably over 10 sites in the course of 15 years. I was quite successful at meeting quality men on JDate and Match.com. For those who are just starting out, they may want to try Plenty of Fish as it is free and easy to use. There is something for everyone now and if you are looking for a serious relationship, you should join a site that caters to that crowd. If you are looking to “hook up” there are plenty of sites for those singles as well.

Andrew Weinreich, CEO, Meetmoi.com

Posted on January 31, 2009

OPW INTERVIEW — Jan 31 — Andrew Weinreich is the CEO of an interesting location based mobile dating service. He was also the founder of SixDegrees.com. – Mark Brooks

You’re the founder of SixDegrees.com. Why did MySpace steal your thunder?
We started SixDegrees in 1995. We sold it in December 2000, well before Myspace started. I think we were the first to define that space on the Internet. Social networking was invented and reinvented and reinvented again. We were the leading social network and then it was Friendster, Myspace and now Facebook.

Did you have it in mind when you started SixDegrees.com that it would help people with their dating prospects?
No. There were only a handful of websites, and I was looking into opportunities on the Web. What was compelling to me was publishing a database that wouldn’t have existed but for the Web. There has always been this notion of meeting people you don’t know through the people you do know, and that’s really what SixDegrees or any social network is.

What inspired you to start Meetmoi?
What excites me are spaces where something’s about to become reinvented. Online dating is one of those areas that generate real revenue and where people have shown a real inclination to change their behavior. Instead of limiting yourself to meeting people in an offline context, it may be that you can meet more people, present yourself in a better light, if you do it online and if you have the time and patience to be deliberate in what you say and how you say it.

Everything is going to go mobile. Dating lends itself to being reinvented from the online medium to a mobile medium. That is exciting, an industry that can be reinvented and a new player has a chance to dominate.

How does the Meetmoi service work from a user perspective?
You can register from your PC or phone. Some users can self-identify their location or we have a tiny snippet of code that you download and it’s all permission-based, but you have the ability to share where you are on an ongoing basis so we can look for people that meet your requirements that are around you. We will show you people not just based on the online criteria of, for example, age, but distance from you. Making dating more efficient because we incorporate location is really what mobile dating is all about.

Are people concerned about stalkers? What are the concerns with mobile?
I have a very simple principle. Users control every single aspect of their information. They control what they share, when they share it, to whom it’s shared and for how long it’s shared. If you stick to that rule, users will trust you and you can deal with a lot of these very legitimate privacy and safety concerns.

How is the service growing and what kinds of people are using the service so far?
We’ve been very pleased. I would say 20s and early 30s, these are people that are very comfortable on their phones, they have a bit of technological sophistication and their time is precious to them. They’re looking for someone who can have a cup of coffee with them now. They’re not interested in setting things up 2 or 3 weeks down the road but being able to plan last-minute and that’s what Meetmoi offers.

How does the service make money?
Meetmoi has free and paid memberships. With free memberships, you can browse profiles, people can contact you. The paid membership allows you to initiate contact with another member and that costs $9.99 a month. We have relationships with the carriers that allow us to charge you directly on your phone bill.

Do you have plans to extend internationally with the service?
The service works internationally now but not with SMS messaging; it works with email. We absolutely intend to extend SMS alerts and SMS interactions internationally in the near future.

Is there a way that other internet dating sites can work with you?
Yes, we will in 2009 announce partnerships but we’re absolutely open to helping dating sites extend their brand and extend their offering into the mobile arena.

What would you say your goals are through the end of 2009?
To expand membership, expand the functionality that we offer and to structure partnerships with other communities looking to work in the mobile arena and generate revenue in the mobile arena. Those partnerships can take many forms but I would expect us to announce a number of them both domestically and internationally over the course of 2009.

See all posts on Meetmoi

Arthur Radulescu, CEO, ASE Softnet

Posted on January 20, 2009

OPW INTERVIEW — Jan 20 — Arthur Radulescu is the CEO and founder of ASE Softnet, the company behind several quite popular internet dating and social networking sites. – Mark Brooks

What is your founding story?
I started working in the internet industry almost 10 years ago. I had almost no idea about computers or programming. I spent the first 3 or 4 years working all the time including weekends, which allowed me to get all the information I needed in order to start my own company.

I had the advantage of discovering the Internet in its early stages. In the last 10 years we’ve built hundreds of websites including dating and community sites.

What are some of the top internet dating sites that you built?
One of the biggest and I think one of the most known websites, we’ve worked on few years ago, was a gay dating site Adam4Adam.com. Other websites, we’ve worked on, were Mary.com, PeopleFishing.com, MyPartner.com and Shopmania.com which is a price comparison and also social shopping community.

Which sites would you say you’re most proud of and why?
At this moment the website, I’m most proud of, is Shopmania.com because it combines everything we’ve learned so far. It’s a very large community of users in 25 countries and is translated into 15 languages.

What would you say is your site building philosophy?
I think we can always do better than what we did last time. With every new site we build, we try to bring in something new and this helps us to evolve. Also it’s important for us to work on some challenging websites that require interesting and complex solutions.

What are the main building blocks? What are the main technologies that you like to use?
We’re using PHP, Perl and MySQL. We’re also developing on Oracle. But what we like using most is PHP, Perl. It’s very fast and reliable.

What do you do better than your competition?
We’re not only doing programming, we offer programming consulting services. We’ve built so many websites and have some very good knowledge with internationalization and localization, adapting the software to different languages and regional differences. Even though it seems easy, it’s not. We have a very powerful mechanism that we developed for creating multi-language websites. There are many problems that can appear when you develop an international website starting with computer text and coding, formatting of numbers, writing directions from left to right or from right to left that could cause problems in design.

What proportion of your business now would you say is social networking and internet dating related?
It’s about 50%.

How is business now? The climate has changed a bit so have you seen things move in any direction?
We still have enough clients and I would not consider this a significant crisis. I think things are going to change in the next year and we’ll get back to normal. On the other hand, I think in such periods you have the opportunity to develop a new business because the competition is less significant.

I must say your pricing has been extremely competitive in the past. What would you charge for building a dating site like Date.com?
It’s hard to say. It really depends on the requirements. You need to consider more and you can’t build a website like Date.com from the first step. A website like this gets developed in time. There is a first version, then a second version and then it will improve. The website will need millions of users and this can’t happen in a month.

Say if you had 6 months to work on a site, what kind of ball park price would you say?
I would say from $30,000 to $50,000. But again we build the first version and then improve it. You can’t launch a perfect website. You need to understand this because this needs to be added to your marketing strategies. You have to wait 3 or 4 months to get the best conversion, to see the website is perfect and then okay you can put money into advertising.

The dating industry seems to be doing quite well right now surprisingly or not surprisingly really if you think about it. On the one hand, we were concerned about the slump and people bailing on their memberships but on the other hand it still represents a pretty good deal. So business is up.

Christian Wiklund, CEO, Skout.com

Posted on January 18, 2009

OPW INTERVIEW — Jan 18 — This is Mark Brooks with Social Networking Now. I’m here with Christian Wiklund who is the CEO and founder of Skout.com. Christian thanks for joining us.

What is Skout‘s founding story?
The founding story is pretty interesting. I was actually snowboarding at Lake Tahoe 2 years ago and was figuring ‘why can’t I upload a picture from my mobile phone out of this beautiful mountain to share this with my friends and have it shipped to their web browser.’ So with that premise I thought of building a prototype with some of my friends that later became the co-founders of Skout.

We quickly transformed it into a location based social networking service. We thought that it would be pretty interesting to keep track of your friends, where they are what they are doing? Then it developed into ‘who is around me and what are they posting?’

i.e. ‘what strangers around me in San Francisco and what pictures did they post tonight? What is up in my town?’ All this from a little device. We then in 2008 created our user base and looked at what everyone is doing with Skout and it turned out that 83% said we’re using Skout for dating and flirting. The killer space is going to be dating and we decided to move full throttle into that space. That is why we’re now announcing that Skout is the first ever LBS social dating platform.

So are you relying on the telephone to tell the Skout service where people are at?
The core philosophy we have in the company is to not exclude people based on their device or based on what carrier they happen to be on. So we want to cover even the simplest handset, so as far as location goes if you don’t have access to a fancy device you can enter the location manually. You can actually tell the service I am in Seattle at this address or you can tell it I’m in L.A. at this address by entering it in clear text.

As the device becomes more sophisticated, for instance with the iPhone app, which we’re launching very, very soon, we take the GPS chip and just make a query to that and get exact GPS coordinates or cell tower coordinates. So depending on the device you have a different experience, more or less automatic.

So what are some examples of phones that will do location based services and talk to Skout right now?
iPhone is one. Android is interesting with Google Gears because it can actually make queries to the location API via the web browser? Skout works on any phone that can access mobile web, so we have built 4 different interfaces for the mobile web experience. We know what phone you’re accessing Skout from. So depending on the screen size and the properties of the phone we’re going to direct you to a unique experience, one of those four.

It’s very, very costly to support many platforms. We have to look at the mobile ecosystem. It’s more or less what the internet was in 1995 with a lot of platform fragmentation and a lot of big players who do not want to play well together.

So let me pose a scenario for you, it’s Friday afternoon and I’m sitting in a coffee shop and I sign into Skout and I would like to go on a date. What happens next?
What happens on Skout is we have passive and active Skout. So you actively open up a browser for your mobile web experience and you say I want to see other singles that match the criteria I’m looking for in the area. We’re going to make a query against our database and depending on how much traction there is recently in the area, we’re going to present singles to you, as close as possible.

So let’s say Sarah is 5 blocks away, you will be able to see that Sarah is 5 blocks away, you will not be able to see exactly the address but you’ll see the distance. You can then start chatting with her and look at her pictures.

You might be in transit, you might be in a classroom, etc. and use active scouting to look for profiles in your phone…who is close to where I am, who is active right now, who was active within the last 2 hours?

Then we have passive scouting where we set up something called the geo-sense. What is a geo-sense? That is when you say I want to meet someone who fulfills these different criteria and I’m willing to travel “x” amount of miles today. So then you put the phone in your pocket and as the match enters this geo-sense which might be a 10 block or 5 block radius, you’ll get a text message sent to your phone saying hey Mark we’ve found a match that just went online on Skout. She is 5 miles away, click here to start chatting.

You click on the link and depending on what device you have its going to open up the mobile web experience and you can instantly look at their profile and she’s going to be online so if you send her a chat message and start chatting instantly. So Skout is all about the conversation.

Can you also set certain criteria? So you would say I’m only interested in people within this age range who also don’t smoke and that sort of thing?
In the first release for the Skout dating release we have age definitely, we have been quite lightweight on other properties. We believe that love is about the conversation and not about algorithms. So we are trying a lightweight approach where the profile picture and your age and the conversation via mobile chat is going to help you decide if this is a good match or not. We believe timing, location, profile picture together with age is going to take you quite far.

How about video?
Six years ago I was able in modern Europe to do video conferencing on my cell phone. The phones in the US right now do not have this capability and I definitely see that coming. I see it as the next step. So if you look at the communication abilities of Skout, first you can do what we have now which is chat and the next step I see anonymous VOIP or an anonymous numbered call and talk to the person in the here and now and the next step will be video.

Skout is the mobile social network for the internet dating and social networking conference which is coming up in Miami on January 22 to 23. Can you tell us more about how that is going to work for the attendees?
Yes I’m very excited about this initiative. What is going to happen is everyone who comes to the conference is going to be preregistered on Skout. They are going to be friends with everyone else who is at the conference. What does that mean? You can instantly get an overview from your mobile phone what is going on at the conference.

Let’s say my business development guy is looking for a content exchange deal with some company. He can place the post in his phone, hey I’m Rich from Skout and I’m looking for content exchange deal, please chat me up. He can instantly get replies from other users at the conference.

We did our first actual real life case for this in San Francisco at a conference where there were 300 attendees and we had 70% signing in and using the service and chatting about the different panels. They sent pictures and they tied the conference together in a very interesting way. I think it will be very, very possible.

Is there any way we can live blog the sessions?
Yes definitely and we even have RSS feeds. So you could actually post an RSS feed from the conference, so anything that happens at the conference could go out to the outer world. Basically the text updates we have are very comparable to Twitter, so you can post 140 character text from your phone. If you want to take a picture you can take a picture, we also support video. So if you have a mobile device capable of recording video you can post it at Skout and its going to show up in the RSS feed tagged with the location, who sent it and when it was sent. Then other users at the conference can comment on the different media that is being submitted by the users.

Christian thank you so much for your time. You’ve been listening to Social Networking Now.

Here’s a demo of Skout on YouTube.

Robert Wuttke, Be2 CEO And Founder Interview

Posted on December 20, 2008

OPW INTERVIEW — Dec 20 — You’ll be hearing more about be2. They are a rising star in Europe and are launching in the USA. The company is founded and run by Robert Wuttke, PhD. He’s a regular attendee at the internet dating conferences in the USA and Europe. – Mark Brooks

What is your background and the founding story of be2?
I have a PhD in sociology and history. I did my studies in Germany and Italy and then spent a year at MIT in Boston. I focused on sociology and have my first business experience in the media industry with Bertelsmann AG and Lycos Europe. At that time I became aware of the first internet dating products, which fascinated me because online dating can bring together people who would otherwise have had no chance to meet each other offline.

Congratulations on the round of funding you just received. What will you do with the 15 million Euro?
We are going to focus on improving our service, which has always been our priority. Then we’ll further expand our product into other countries. But in particular we want to start penetrating the markets we’re in now, serve those markets better and increasing our respective market share.

Why do you think personality profiling works well for dating sites?
There are different people with different needs on dating sites. One of the needs is to find somebody for a long term relationship. Typically people 25+ have put this focus much more up front. So for somebody, who is looking for a long term relationship, it makes more sense to find the compatible matches immediately instead of browsing through a database and finding out later whether the person is a match or not.

In general, how do you think personality profiling on dating sites can be improved?
They will get better not just by becoming more reliable in terms of psychology but also through other things like the expression of attitudes, preferences and interests with sophisticated algorithms, rather than just simple questionnaires. There are a lot of things that will be done over the next couple of years and I think we’re just seeing the beginning of what is going to happen. What makes the be2 test very strong is that the number of questions is very elegantly reduced. We don’t ask irrelevant questions and I think this is something that users appreciate. We are going to improve the test even more now.

I understand be2 has very aggressively opened up in a number of countries, over 30 countries at this stage. What are your lead countries at this stage?
We like the Spanish speaking countries, but also are intrigued in what’s going on in Europe overall and central Europe where we are less present at the moment. But this is something that will also change over the next year or so because we’re now going to use the funding to start penetrating markets better. Right now you can say be2 does not have a single location it would depend on in terms of revenues.

Are there any particular people that you would like to reach out to people in the next year or so?
I’m looking forward to continuing our dialogue with academics.

See all posts on be2

Eve Peters, CEO of MIXTT.com Interview

Posted on December 13, 2008

OPW INTERVIEW — Dec 13 — MIXTT has a spin on the traditional one-on-one date that appeals to the younger set. Group dating. I spoke with the CEO and Founder of MiXTT, Eve Peters. – Mark Brooks

What is your background Eve?
I studied Economics and Public Policy at Stanford, then worked at Accenture and two different law firms. Starting MIXTT was a major switch for me; I was gearing toward being a lawyer until I had the idea to start the company.

How did you come to found MIXTT.com?
I had used Match.com and JDate, and found that they weren’t a good fit for my generation, nor for people who were relatively social. I think the one-on-one date is becoming a less and less frequent occurrence for people of younger generations. So I had this idea that there should be a group dating site. There should be a way to meet people without having to set up a romantic date as on Match.com or E-Harmony. There should be something more casual.

At that time I headed down to Argentina to live there for a year. It had been a dream of mine, and it was the right time in my life. I had plans for volunteering and other sorts of work with non-profit organizations while I was down there. What ended up happening, though, was that I serendipitously came across an ex-venture capitalist, a tech CEO and a young entrepreneur all within my first couple weeks there. The business idea came up in conversation randomly, and all three of them, from their various perspectives, were highly encouraging about actually pursuing it.

How does it work from a user perspective?
A user signs himself up and then invites his friends to join a group that he creates. So, the friend groups have a group profile together, and people have their individual profiles as well.

You don’t have to have a group to sign up, you can sign up as an individual and find other people in your city that you might want to group up with. But the idea is that you go on there with different friends and you seek out another group of friends who are interested in meeting people.

How is the uptake with the groups so far?
Our growth isn’t as exponential as we would like it to be. It’s going slow and we’re actually seeing more people who are more accustomed to the traditional models – just signing themselves up and not creating groups. But, we do find the ones who are creating groups tend to be more active on the site. They’re communicating more with each other, sending messages and planning dates, etc. MIXTT is more friends meeting each other for play and for friendship, which can ultimately evolve into dating.

Is there any functionality within there to help people invite new people into the group?
Absolutely. There is a simple Invite to Group feature. So you can invite anyone that looks interesting. If you don’t want them to be permanently a part of your group you just send them a message and clue them in on the plan. Also each group has a social calendar where they post what they’re up to.

What happens when all 3 guys like a particular woman I wonder?
That’s a good question and it comes up a lot. I think what happens in that scenario is what would happen in real life. It’s no more magical then the way dating works in real life. In fact, it’s supposed to emulate the way people go out and meet each other in real life. Luckily, with groups of friends, I find that typically we don’t all go after the same guy. Everyone has his or her particular taste. So I’m sure that’s bound to happen here and there, but people will deal with it the same way they would if they had met that group of 3 girls or 3 guys in a bar.

How do you make money?
Ha – we don’t make money. Yet. We just launched in September, so our priority is really getting traction right now. Down the road the plan is threefold – ads, premium services, and affiliate programs. We have worked out programs with Open Table and Ticketmaster, so that when groups go to dinner, an event or a concert, they can do that right through the site, and we can capture a piece of each of those transactions.

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