Category: All Interviews

Match.com, GM for France Arnaud Jonglez – OPW Interview

Posted on August 9, 2008

Arnaud_jonglez OPW INTERVIEW — Aug 9 — Match.com is doing well abroad.  Here’s my interview with the Match.com General Manager for France, Arnaud Jonglez. – Mark Brooks

What did you do before joining Match and how long have you been with Match?
I’ve been with Match since January 2007 and I started working in the internet back in 1997 when I started an online agency in Hong Kong. After that I worked for Lycos and Orange as well.

Lycos had a dating product. Were you involved with that?
Yes. Lycos acquired Spray network, the owner of SprayDate, a large Scandinavian dating service, that we rebranded into Love@Lycos. At that time, Love@Lycos was the very first dating service allowed to be featured on TV in France. France is a very regulated country. Now a lot of internet dating companies go on TV but at that time they were the first ones.

How much is Match advertising on TV in France now?
Since Match decided to invest in the French market in 2006, we did 3 big TV campaigns, one in Q3/Q4 2006, one in Q1 in 2007 and the other one last summer. We created some very nice TV spots that were custom made for the French market and focused on the long-term relationship. It really helped us and our brand awareness grew from 30% to 52% in just 10 months. We are now capitalizing on that awareness through important online campaigns.

How is Match.com’s position different from other competitors in France?
There are two kinds of dating sites in France – “self service sites”, where members are proactive and search the profiles and then “matchmaking sites”, where people take a test that can last up to one hour and at the end the system sends them the matches. The specialty of Match is that we have both. We still leave the control in the hands of the users but we also offer what we see as the best matching tests and services that are on the market, developed for us by Dr. Helen Fisher, one of the major researchers in the field of romantic interpersonal attraction and the author of “Why we Love”. We are targeting people that are around 30 years old. 50% of our member base is older than 30 years. The service is really made for people looking for long lasting relationships.

When we started in France, the online dating market was not well served. We discovered that France had the highest number of users who tried dating services according to a Comscore survey conducted last year. The survey found out that 22% of French web users tried a dating service at least once, when at the same time it was only 13% in the US, which is a much more mature market. But at the same time, when we were asking people if they were happy about the experience and if they would recommend it to somebody else, 60% said no. As the global leader we are present in 37 countries but we only saw this in France.

What the market was offering, was really short term relationships. Nobody was actually offering Love in the country of romanticism! We started asking people what they were looking for and most of them were looking for a relationship that works, a long lasting relationship. That’s why Match started to invest in the French market back in 2006 because the gap between the offer and users expectations was so big.

What’s the key distinctions between French internet dating and elsewhere?
People have different ways of expressing what they want and things may be appropriate in one country and not appropriate in other countries. But I think everywhere people tend to look for the same thing which is to find a mate and a relationship that works. In France we have a unique pricing. France is the only country in the world where we offer the service free for women.

Is Match mobile offered in France?
Yes we do have this service but we don’t push it very aggressively. We have it as an additional service that we offer to our users at no extra cost. Match mobile is not our key focus in France because we still growing fast on the web.

Are there any product introductions you can mention?
Since 2006 we have been rolling out our plan and made some strategic moves in France. First we launched a new site specific for the French market in 2006. Then in 2007, we increased the media pressure off-line and online and started offering the service free for women on Women’s National Day last year. It was great timing since our main competitor started charging women at the same time.

We do a big survey at least twice a year, where we ask our members what they would like us to develop and what their expectations are with online dating. We get more or less the same answers every 6 months which is to start a relationship that is going to work. So in January we decided to launch a French version of Chemistry that is integrated into the Match main service. So far the result has been amazing. Just during the first few months 160,000 people took the 30 minutes test, which shows just how interested people are in tools that help find their soulmate. For us this is also a proof that our vision of the French market and our positioning are right, so we have decided to invest even more in these features and released a V2 of this service just a few days ago. This service that we launched 8 months ago under the name Match Alchimie will help us accelerate our growth on the French market and stay ahead of the competition who is now trying to develop Chemistry-like products.

See all posts on Match.com

Frumster, Ben Rabizadeh – OPW Interview

Posted on August 2, 2008
Logo of Frumster

Frumster, LLC is no longer for sale as of January 2009. The company has decided to reinvest all revenue  into increased marketing and improvement of their technological platform. The company does not anticipate putting the company back up for sale in the foreseeable future.

OPW INTERVIEW — Aug 2 — Ben runs Frumster and JWed, and they are for sale. According to Compete they have ~6% of the traffic of JDate, but have a lot more potential to grow. – Mark Brooks

What’s the company’s founding story?
Frumster.com was started in December of 2001 by a gentleman in Israel (actually a Canadian who had moved to Israel) and I was one of the first members to join the service. I had heard about it pretty much on the first day. At the time I had nothing to do with the site in terms of ownership. I was pretty impressed with the service, and after about a year, the owner was going through financial difficulty because he was running it for free and it started taking up all of his time. So he started asking for donations, but he didn’t get enough. Suddenly, he started charging a monthly fee for the service without warning. So it went from a free service to $18 overnight. And within 48 hours he set it back to a free service because of so many complaints.

It was obvious there was an opportunity there. He needed money to operate the service because by that point it was pretty much a full time venture. I was in between jobs, so it was just a good opportunity for me. I contacted him and asked him if the business was for sale and it was. We ended up purchasing it by September 2003. So pretty much 1 ½ years after he had started it, we had taken it over and turned it into a real business.

What does the name Frumster mean?
I think he told me he got the ‘ster’ originally from a Saturday Night Live skit with the copy machine man. Benster making copies! Napster and Friendster, etc. Frum is a Yiddish word which means religiously observant. So when it was started, it really was a niche service. At the time, the only Jewish dating service out there was JDate, and the religious community didn’t feel comfortable in that environment. It wasn’t niche enough for them. So he created Frumster as a breakaway from JDate to attract the religious niche.

Frumster requires you to specify your level of observance. What are the choices?
You can choose between Traditional, Modern Orthodox-Machmir, Modern Orthodox-Liberal, Yeshivish Modern, Yeshivish/Black Hat, Chasidic, Carlebachian, Shomer Mitzvot. We later added the non-observant categories, which are Reform, Conservative, and Traditional, and we have a unique category called Traditional and Growing.

Frumster originally was started as a site targeting religious Jews, but over time, and it happened pretty rapidly as soon as we bought the service, we transformed to a marriage-oriented service. It’s been like this for several years now. We really don’t mention too much about religion anymore as it’s really focused on Jewish dating for marriage. We still retain the religious flavor of the environment and make it comfortable for people, so we’re very strict about, for example, uploaded photos. We make sure they’re modest. No pictures in bathing suits and the like. We still retain our religious type of environment, but our marketing is focused on our target audience, who is anyone who is very serious about getting married.

So the site is for sale. Why are you selling?
The site is for sale, mostly, for personal reasons. When I bought the company, I really bought it as an investment so I just wanted to take the company to the next level. It was really a home based website that had no resemblance to a business at all, so we had to create a company. My goal was to turn it into a real business and sell it and move on to the next thing.

So it’s really a personal choice. I think of myself more as an investor then a manager/operator.

How much are you asking for Frumster?
We’re trying to get the most we can, obviously. But typically, from what we’ve seen in the dating industry, the valuations are about 2 ½ to 5 times annual sales. So we’re looking in that range.

How much revenue is generated from the site?
This year we’ll be close to $800,000 if not over, so somewhere plus or minus $800,000 for 2008. That’s roughly 5,000 subscribers. Our subscription rates are less then half of our competitors, the big ones, J-Date, Match.com and eHarmony. So we’ve been increasing our fees. So we think that as we catch up with our monthly fees, we should be over seven figures in revenue.

Do you have plans to start another site?
Aside from the sale, I should mention that we started a new Jewish dating site called JWed.com, which is also part of the sale. JWed is really an incredible opportunity because it speaks to the much larger JDate niche, the non-observant Jewish niche, because again even though we accept non-observant Jews on Frumster, the name Frum speaks to religious clientele and actually dissuades those who are not religious.

So we started JWed, which we’ve been in the process of launching in the last several weeks and it should be ready now. We’ve already been accepting registrants and things are going pretty well. So that’s what we’ve been focusing on: JWed. Most of the buyers we’re talking to are really interested in JWed. Frumster is a niche, the members are there, it’s solid, it’s not going anywhere and everything is word of mouth. Its one of those niche sites that have low marketing costs because its community based. Whereas JWed is a much, much larger customer base spread around the world more geographically then the observant base. That market is about 15 times the size of Frumster.

I don’t know if you know JDate‘s numbers, but it’s a pretty big market. We’re very excited about JWed, so if we happen not to sell we’re really going to be focusing on JWed in the next year or two, and if we do sell, there is a possibility we’ll still be involved in a strategic role.

LifeProject, Fernando – OPW Interview

Posted on July 26, 2008

Fernando_ardenghi OPW INTERVIEW — July 26 — LifeProject Method, created by Fernando Ardenghi, is an innovative and high precision quantitative method that allows us to meet people based on similar personalities. He plans to launch his own online dating site incorporating LPM. – Mark Brooks

What’s your background, Fernando?
At 37, I’m an Argentinean electronic engineer. In 1996, I started my doctoral thesis but didn’t complete it. Since 1997, I’ve been working in different Argentinean factories (including a Nuclear Power Plant). I’ve also been studying entrepreneurship since 2001.

What got you interested in the Internet dating business?
In 1997, I took the normative 16PF personality test when applying for a job. Could the knowledge I’d acquired from my failed doctoral thesis be useful for a business opportunity? Out of curiosity, I investigated methodologies and tests recruiters use to evaluate job candidates. The result of the normative 16PF personality test (expressed as a quantized pattern), plus an adapted quantum mechanics math equation, led me to invent a quantitative method to compare similarity between patterns that could be useful for dating purposes.

What research have you done that’s focused in the space?
I haven’t conducted my own research yet; I need a database of at least 100,000 people to take the 16PF5 test. Reading up on research conducted by renowned academics, I’ve yet to see any scientific paper (published by an online dating site that claims scientific matching or any related academic) showing how its ‘recipe’ really works, i.e. proving they can offer enduring, long term relationships (or marriage) with low divorce rates.

I noticed that the word ‘compatibility’ has many meanings for online dating sites, academics, researchers, and psychologists.

Sometimes the word compatibility means a high degree of similarity between several variables (religion, education, income, personality, likes and dislikes, etc.) of prospective mates; sometimes compatibility means a mix of similarity and complementarity between variables; sometimes when a dating site says compatibility or even chemistry, nobody really knows exactly what it means! Some online dating sites offering compatibility matching methods use the word similarity as: “a proprietary Dyadic Adjustment Scale”, others mean: “a proprietary multivariate linear regression equation”, some say a mix of similarity and complementarity meaning: “a proprietary multivariate logistic regression equation”, still others mix similarity and complementarity meaning: “a proprietary equation to calculate “compatibility” between prospective mates!”

Since 2003, I’ve been testing online dating sites who claim scientific matching by creating dummy M/F profiles and using them as test points for reverse engineering purposes. I discovered that proprietary tests or models used by those sites could have great precision in measuring different psychological variables, but the matching algorithm (they apply) has low precision when comparing one profile to others. The whole precision (measurement_of_variables + pattern_calculation) is less than anyone could achieve by searching on one’s own! I solved that problem and contacted many researchers/academics and online dating sites, with no success until now.

What is LifeProject Method?
LPM is the codename of an innovative and high precision quantitative method that compares similarity between quantized patterns, like:
The pattern 6.7.6.8.9.6.7.7.8.7.2.5.8.7.3.4 is 74,79865772% similar to the pattern 5.7.4.8.7.4.5.6.4.6.8.9.6.8.4.4
The pattern 6.7.6.8.9.6.7.7.8.7.2.5.8.7.3.4 is 92,55033557% similar to the pattern 7.7.6.8.8.7.6.5.8.7.4.5.7.7.3.4
The pattern 6.7.5.8.8.6.7.7.8.7.4.5.8.7.3.4 is 88,38926174% similar to the pattern 5.6.4.7.7.5.6.6.7.6.3.4.7.6.2.3
The pattern 6.7.5.8.8.6.7.7.8.7.4.5.8.7.3.4 is 87,58389262% similar to the pattern 7.8.6.9.9.7.8.8.9.8.5.6.9.8.4.5
LPM takes into account the score and the trend to score of any pattern.

In the above example, it used the results of the 16PF5 test, but it can use the results of other test, like the 30 subdomains of the “NEO PI-R” Big5.

  • The ENSEMBLE (whole set of different valid possibilities) of the primary domains of the Big5 is 10E5 (quantized from 1 to 10) and 10E10 (by percentile)
  • The ensemble of the primary domains of the Big7 used by WeAttract is 10E7 (quantized from 1 to 10)
  • The ensemble of the 16PF5 is: 10E16, big number as All World Population is nearly 6.7 * 10E9
  • The ensemble of the 30 subdomains of the Big5 (quantized from 1 to 10 and not by percentile) is a terrible very big number: 10E30

LPM doesn’t include sex, sexual orientation or religion. It only takes into account personality (measured by a normative test, like 16PF5 or the 30 subdomains of the “NEO PI-R” Big5 Big5).

In LPM, “compatibility” (between prospective mates) is a high percentage of “similarity” between personality patterns, perhaps over 90.00000000% ± 0.00000001%
LPM algorithm calculates “similarity” between personality patterns using the following adapted quantum mechanics math equation.
BRA <#X| means person #X’s 16PF5 Report
KET |#Y> means person #Y’s 16PF5 Report |CQ| means Comparison Operator
<#X|CQ|#Y> means the Comparison between client #X and client #Y
<#X|CQ|#Y> == K01 + K02 + K03 + K04 + K05 + K06 + K07 + K08 + K09 + K10 + K11 + K12 + K13 + K14 + K15 + K16
(A) Warmth; (B) Reasoning; (C) Emotional Stability; (E) Liveliness; (G) RuleConsciousness; (H) Social Boldness; (I) Sensitivity; (L) Vigilance; (M) Abstractedness; (N) Privateness (O) Apprehension; (Q1) Openness to Change; (Q2) SelfReliance; (Q3) Perfectionism; (Q4) Tension. 16 independent variables that take integer values from 1 to 10

How will it help dating sites?
LPM is a new way to meet people based on similar personalities. I chose the normative 16PF5 test available in different languages, because no other dating site uses it. In August 2005, Dr. John A. Johnson told me, “There are probably undiscovered factors beyond similarity of any type that determine relationship quality.” I think LifeProject deserves an opportunity to prove it can contribute to long-term relationships with low divorce rates. If not, many people would be interested in meeting/contacting others sharing nearly the same personality.

What does it cost for online daters?
The annual fee for end users is expected to cost USD300 for the first year, with a yearly re-subscription of $30. Fortunately the US, Canadian, European and Latin American markets remain enormous. The “unexploited” Latin American market is now over $100 million.

There are currently no sites with the vision to see the potential for this type of matching method. The inevitable next step is for me to bring it to market myself.

Sparkbliss, CEO Joel Blatt Interview

Posted on June 28, 2008

Headshot_joel1 OPW INTERVIEW — June 28 — Sparkbliss is a tiny upstart startup dating site.  Here's our interview with the Joel Blatt, the CEO and Founder. – Mark Brooks

Listen To The Interview.mp3

What is your founding story?
I started Sparkbliss because I had a personal need to meet eligible people myself and I also saw a growing market opportunity in terms of what I deemed the conventional online dating approach as being flawed, not providing the results that we expect in typical business models.

What makes Sparkbliss different?
It's a private online dating site. We understand the the importance of protecting and controlling your personal information and not broadcasting it over the internet and not exposing it where it could compromise you. With Sparkbliss you truly control that information. So unlike every other social networking and online dating site, which enables you to search a database of photos and profiles, Sparkbliss doesn't allow that. The only way you can view Sparkbliss members is if you are invited by an existing member to view their bios. You can also forward the bios to your friends who you think would be interested in that person.

So it sounds like you are encouraging people to become matchmakers. Is that correct?
Yes. And I see incredible benefits to that approach. We hear about romance scams and sweetheart swindles, so I truly wanted to provide that truly safe and private forum for dating and meeting people. And by having the matchmaking model, people that you know, people you trust, are going to be doing your bidding and they will not make an introduction if you have outdated photos or plagiarized descriptions of your likes and dislikes. The matchmakers not only provide the introductions but they also add a testimonial or reference.

How do you motivate and reward the matchmakers?
For them, the motivation is the satisfaction that they're helping people they care about.

How do you make money? Is it free?
It is an advertising based model. It's a free online dating and matchmaking site.

How are you priming the pumps?
I've just been doing a lot of PR and conducting a lot of interviews. As of today, for example, I was interviewed by ABC radio.

I'm very confident now, especially from the reaction from the investment community. The need for protecting private information is emerging and Sparkbliss just fits nicely in saying 'look you do need to consider your personal privacy and here's how to do so without taking a whole lot of risk.'

Baihe.com, Jason Tian – OPW Interview

Posted on June 21, 2008

Jason_tian OPW INTEVIEW — June 21 — Chinese internet dating sites use mobile billing as their primary billing mechanism.  But the government threw a spanner in the works and capped the amount providers could bill each month. Too many mobile companies were tricking users into signing up for monthly dues. So, there was a big change in the fees that the government was allowing to be charged through telephones. It went from 30 RMB to 10 RMB a month. I recently heard there has been another change; anybody who charges through the phone has to get permission again from the user before they can rebill every month. It has had a big impact on all the websites which were using mobile. Baihe.com used reacted by switching its business model to become a real world matchmaker with an online dating element. – Mark Brooks

How are other dating sites dealing with the imposed limitations for mobile billing?
Actually they don't have a good way to deal with it. Most of the services which are relying on the mobile are now leaving the space. Their profits are shrinking very fast. Mobile payment as a major payment method for online dating companies is shrinking quickly. However, at the same time, online payment is growing fast with ecommerce growing and the banks efforts. In the last year, online payments doubled and it's still growing quickly. Of course, it's still much more complex compared with mobile payments. With online payment growing, we can predict the payment environment will improve for online dating companies.

When we last spoke you have moved very significantly and quickly through to offering real world matchmaking services. How have things changed in the last year since we spoke?
We have made significant progress in offline matchmaking business. Our price increased two times and we are profitable. Our average price is now $1,200.

What services are you offering?
For every candidate we verify their identity and do some communication before they meet each other. We make sure the candidates are a good match. A lot of the customers are afraid that they will be refused by the other candidate. So we provide the pre-date communication and then we arrange the date.

Do you offer any coaching services as well?
We provide some coaching in how to communicate and this is also a paid service. We have one -to-one coaching and some training calls for groups of people. We also published a book this month. Lots of TV stations and newspapers are very interested in this book: "Women Must Marry a Good Husband".

How do you charge for the coaching services?
It's now based on the training class. We charge $40 US per class. At this time, we are designing a new service.  We will provide clients with one year of coaching.

Who does the matchmaking?
For VIP customers, the matchmaking is done by the consultant. They are using our back end assistants to filter the candidates from our user base. For the new product we designed, we will provide a coach to the customer and they will find the candidates by themselves.

What regions do you serve?
We have offices in Beijing and Shanghai. Also we provide remote services for other big cities in China.

What have been the major challenges that you've encountered as you have created this matchmaking service?
We have solved a lot of problems and there are still a lot of challenges. The first challenge was how to build trust. As time passes, more and more customers start to recognize that we are serious about providing this matchmaking service. Almost 50% of our current users are referred by their friends who already used our service. The second challenge is that there are not enough qualified matchmakers. And the third one is in balancing profitability and service quality. The profitability depends on how many customers are served by one matchmaker at the same time. If you assign too many customers to the matchmakers, they cannot handle the workload and the service quality drops down quickly.

How do you determine pricing?
Some customers are very difficult to serve because they are very critical and need a lot of attention. So we developed a system which gives out an estimated cost, the best price to close the deal. The system helps us identify potential personality issues. Actually we cannot decide very accurately for every single person. We can only make the system fair on average. We have some very profitable customers and there are also some customers who are difficult and we lose money. That's much like insurance companies.

How do you measure service and success on an ongoing basis?
The first factor is success rate. Is the client getting married? Are they engaged? Have they decided to terminate the service because they have some commitment with someone? Secondly, sometimes they don't find their right person through Baihe, but still we like to know if our coaching helped them. We measure our service profit, and monitor the attitudes of the matchmakers and whether the service is delivered in time and is meaningful. So we do customer satisfaction surveys every month and decide if the performance is adequate from the service team.

See all posts on Baihe

Zhenai, Dr Song Li – OPW Interview

Posted on June 14, 2008

1 OPW INTERVIEW — Jan 14 — Dr Song Li runs a leading dating site in China that offers telephone based matchmaking. We originally met at Beijing's iDate in 2006, then Shanghai in 2007 and then again at iDate in Tokyo in May. He's observed the best of the West and created the best of the East. – Mark Brooks 

What do you charge for Zhenai (formerly 96333/SinoFriends) and how is it different from other dating sites?
We charge an annual subscription fee of 1,999 RMB, which is about $300. We have a unique business model, different from any dating site in China. It's a combination of online dating and telephone based matchmaking. By the way, we changed our domain name. We were formerly known at 96333.com and we have changed the name to Zhenai.com. "Zhen" means cherish and "ai" means love.

First you can do online dating like Match.com and if you find someone you would like to date, you can call our telephone matchmaker team. They will ask questions about your personality and then call the person, you are interested in, on your behalf and essentially try to package and sell you to your prospect. So that's the first service. 

Then if there are some sensitive questions clients would like to ask but are afraid to be too intrusive, they can call our telephone matchmakers and, on their behalf, they can find out the answer from the other client. That's our second service.

Third is when our telephone matchmakers find out for clients whether the other side has an interest after the first date. They provide feedback post-date.

And, if they want more?
Right now we don't have that service but we are thinking of adding more.

Do you offer any coaching services?
No we don't do that. It's always very difficult to see the balance between providing more value added service and the cost. We choose what we think are absolute critical services that daters need and focus on those.

How do you recruit the matchmakers? What are the main things that you're looking for in matchmakers?
Mostly we hire university graduates who majored in psychology. We found psychology majors are very good at providing advice to people.

How do you do the matching? Are the matches delivered online or via a matchmaker?
It's a combination of online questionnaires and phone calls. All of this is done over the phone so there are no in person meetings.

A lot of matchmakers insist on in person meetings. It's rather interesting that you're doing it over the phone. But in person meetings they tend to charge a lot more as well.
That's right. In China, offline matchmakers charge from 6,000 RMB ($800) to 60,000 RMB ($8,000). So our price point is lower then the lowest offline matchmaking agencies. It doesn't make sense for us to provide face to face meetings. First of all, we're an internet company. We don't want to move into an offline franchising kind of a business because we would have to open offices in multiple cities and China is a very large country. It's like you do it nationwide or don't bother at all. With the phone we can cover the entire country. And we are the only company that focuses on this model. We want to be the very best in one space. That's why we are teaming up with FastLife Speed Dating because they provide professional offline speed dating service.

When did your launch event go with FastLife Speed Dating?
We had the first speed dating event on May 31st jointly with the largest print media group in Shanghai Xinmin Media Group. We designed this event for IT professionals, colloquially known as "Zhangjiang Men", who work for the technology firms located at Zhangjiang High-tech Park. FastLife's 's team was organizing and running everything. We got over 100 women and XinMin Group helped get 100 IT guys.

See all posts on Zhenai

FriendScout24, Christoph Mempel – CEO Interview

Posted on May 24, 2008

Bild_009 OPW INTERVIEW — May 24 — FriendScout24 is the top internet dating site in Germany and Switzerland and ranked #3 in Spain. See rankings. Here's our interview with the CEO, Christoph Mempel. – Mark Brooks

What is FriendScout24's founding story?
FriendScout24 was founded 1997 under the name People United by private founders in Cologne. In 2000, People United was acquired by the Scout24 group, a private finance company, and was renamed FriendScout24. The company then moved from Cologne to Munich, where most of the Scout24 companies are located. In 2003, the Deutsche Telekom Group, the largest telecommunications group in Germany, which has an internet presence, bought the whole Scout24 group, including FriendScout24.

How many people work at FriendScout24 now?
Right now we have 90 employees, and we think by the end of the year there will be about 110. We are constantly growing. To give you an idea of our development: we started with 5 to 10 people after the acquisition by Scout24.

How would you characterize FriendScout24 against your competition, and how is the service different?
In Germany, we have with 7 millon members the largest database of singles. FriendScout24 is the market leader and stands for reliable and first class service. For example, we constantly work to secure the authenticity of the user profiles. We want to offer our users everything they need, to get the best chance of finding the right partner by offering them a big variety of interesting singles. I think this is the most important thing to know about FriendScout24.

I see you're in Germany and Spain, Italy, Austria and Switzerland. With your top 3 positions in Germany, Spain and Switzerland, how are things going in Italy, which I hear is the emerging market for Internet dating.
This year, we could add the Netherlands to that list. We launched our service in the Netherlands at the end of January. Regarding the Italian market, we're doing quite well. We entered Italy almost a year ago and the market situation is similiar to Spain. The challenge right now is getting more and more online traffic in Italy. We support our brand with a lot of press work, furthermore we are working on identifying different channels, which we can use to push the online traffic and the business opportunities in Italy in general.

How have you reached out to users via mobile phones?
In Germany, we launched a mobile application very early and we were one of the first companies to implement such a service. However, this was no focus for our business for quite a while, because the technical development of mobile phones was not that fast. Now it is emerging again. Therefore we will extend our mobile application features, and will also implement new product innovations in this field.

Have you also considered launching applications on social networks such as Facebook and other local networks?
It's interesting that you ask, as this is also on our list this year. We believe, that this is not a big topic right now. In Germany, the social network companies, including Facebook, are ready to start with a German site and there are further popular sites, e.g. StudiVZ. We are monitoring this segment of the market very seriously and will – based on the developments – check the appreciation for such applications.

One of the arguments that I hear time and time again is that social networking is pulling people away from the Internet dating market. Is that true or do you think the two can work together?
I think they can work together. We don't see a shift in people going away from dating sites to social network sites and I believe it's still a different business. Two years ago, when the hype about social communities started, we weren't sure if there would be an impact on our work and if this would draw a lot of users from our sites. In reality, we can't see a big impact of social communities on our work, because the focus is quite different. Besides, social networks are successful in Germany, and especially StudiVZ, in terms of page impressions, is a very highly ranked site, regarding the younger target group. However, our members are not only looking for a social network, but also for a targeted search of a soulmate. We have 9,000 registrations daily, so they don't appear to be a real threat.

What are your goals for FriendScout24 over the coming year?
One of our main goals for this year is to secure and expand our market leadership in Germany. We see a market consolidation right now in Germany. For the last 3 – 4 years everyone expected a consolidation, but it didn't happen in Germany. Therefore it is important for us, to keep and to strengthen our position. There is a lot going on in the German market. I'm sure you're informed about Meetic, which acquired Neu.de, a big player in Germany.

A second goal is to expand our European presence. We have a few other countries on our list to launch our product this year.

Talking about product innovation, we do have a lot of convenient features for our users. It's our main focus, to offer a big variety of attractive features which make it easy, fun and successful to find a partner.

The Internet Alliance, Emily Hackett – OPW Interview

Posted on May 18, 2008

Internet_alliance_emily_hackett_pho OPW INTERVIEW — May 18 — The Internet Alliance is watching your back. Emily Hackett is the Executive Director.  Here's more on what they do and how they protect the interests of social networking and internet dating companies. – Mark Brooks

Tell me about the Internet Alliance? What's your mission?
The IA monitors political and legislative activity in all 50 states and is active in about half the Capitols each year, focusing on states where Internet legislation and policies are being debated. The IA lobbies to pass bills that make the Internet work better and defeat bills that stifle or limit ecommerce. Our mission is to promote consumer confidence and trust in the Internet so it can become the premier marketing medium of this century.

Who are your leading members in the Online Dating and SNS industries?
IAC (InterActiveCorp) Barry Diller's group, which includes Match.com. AOL, eHarmony, and Yahoo! We also represent a broad section of the industry including Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Experian, United Online, and VeriSign.

Why do you believe that the online dating industry shouldn't be regulated?
A well-educated consumer can maneuver the online and offline dating world safely. There is a tremendous amount of information available online to help consumers safely approach any dating service.

IA members believe that online dating background check bills offer no real protection to consumers, unfairly discriminate against online businesses and take an ill-advised approach with regard to protecting consumers who use the services. There has been no outcry from consumers for background checks, nor failure of the market to respond to those consumers who want them. These bills are discriminatory. Dating services that do business via voicemail messages, newspaper personals or faxes of user's profiles are all exempt. It doesn't make sense to impose onerous regulation on online segments of this market while exempting competing services that use other media.

What are you focusing on most now in terms of legislation that might affect the dating and SNS industries?
We have been focusing on a variety of bills that require background checks, background check disclaimers or verification of age.

Online Dating:
Many states don't make their criminal records available in easily searchable forms. Consequently, the only "real" option under these bills is to use private vendors. Some of the bills would require that such a vendor maintain a database whose information contains more than 170,000,000 criminal records. Coincidentally, this just so happens to be the exact figure publicized by a large private vendor owned by ChoicePoint, Inc. called RapSheets.com.

Criminal databases maintained by private vendors may not be able to get accurate information from every state. These databases may only contain felony convictions. This means someone arrested for a domestic violence or sex related offense, but had that arrest pled down to a misdemeanor, would make it through the screening. Background checks could easily be circumvented. The dangerous result of this gaping hole in the system is that a woman on the other end of the computer will be led to believe that she is communicating with a "safe" customer, because that felon appears to have passed a "sex offender registrant search."

This is special-interest legislation that will do little to protect consumers using online dating services and is to the benefit of one company. By pushing for background check disclaimers, True.com is asking the Legislature to give them the edge they have failed to accomplish in the marketplace. The New Jersey legislation doesn't require background check disclaimers for advertisements, newspaper personals, telephonic dating services, or in-person matchmaking services.

Social Networking:
The IA's highest priority is keeping children safe online. The IA supports bills that would require convicted sex offenders be subject to continual supervision of all incoming and outgoing email as well as periodic unannounced examinations of the person's computer by a parole officer, law enforcement officer or assigned computer information technology specialist. The IA supports funding police and prosecutors who need additional tools like training to investigate, identify and prosecute cyber criminals. The IA would support making it a felony for any person 18 years of age or older who uses a computer to knowingly solicit a minor.

Social Networking Task Force:
IA members are participating in the Harvard Berkman Centers' Internet Safety Task Force, developed as part of a recently announced Web safety initiative from MySpace and the nation's attorneys general. The task force is evaluating various Internet safety technologies, including social networking age-verification tools, and will produce quarterly reports on its findings next year.

True.com has persuaded state legislatures to sponsor bills that favor their practices. Where are we now with this legislation?
The newly passed New Jersey law, which the IA opposed, requires Internet dating services offering services to New Jersey members to provide a safety awareness notice to customers and a notice disclosing whether criminal background screenings on its members have been performed. It was signed January 13, 2008 and became effective May 1, 2008.

An Internet dating service that does not conduct criminal background screenings of it members is required to provide notice of that fact in one of three ways: electronic mail message, on the members profile or on the service's website.

If an Internet dating service conducts criminal background screenings, then the service shall disclose whether it has a policy allowing a member who has been identified as having a criminal conviction to have access to its service to communicate with any New Jersey member; shall state that criminal background screenings aren't foolproof; that they may give members a false sense of security; that they aren't a perfect safety solution; that criminals may circumvent even the most sophisticated search technology; that not all criminal records are public in all states and not all databases are up to date; that only publicly available convictions are included in the screening; and that screenings don't cover other types of convictions or arrests or any convictions from foreign countries.

What can these industries do to protect themselves?
Educate members on how to protect themselves online. Join the IA. The state legislative process can be a nightmare. The IA team consists of seasoned professionals who are excited by the challenge and the prospect that our work will help make the Internet marketplace grow and prosper.