Category: All Interviews

Michael Alvear, Manhunt.net Cruise Director – Interview

Posted on September 15, 2007
Michael Alvear

OPW INTERVIEW — Sep 15, 2007 — Michael Alvear is the ‘cruise director’ for Manhunt and a sexpert. He’s also the co-host of the TV show ‘The Sex Inspectors‘ in which couples reveal their bedroom problems and are then filmed, yes filmed, in their bedroom. The program pushes the envelope for English TV. Here’s my interview with Manhunt sexpert Mr Alvear. – Mark Brooks

How did you become a sex expert, Michael?
Seven or eight years ago, I was writing quirky op-ed columns. The syndicate for sex-advice columnist Dan Savage wouldn’t sell his column to gay newspapers and the editor was really angry about it. So, the editor came to me and asked me if I’d like to write the column. I picked up Savage’s book and thought it was brilliant. I started writing, the column was a hit, and I just kept expanding and syndicating it until it was in about 14 different gay newspapers. Then, it turned into a book called Men Are Pigs but We Love Bacon. That’s basically it.

What do gay guys need the most advice on?
Believe it or not, I get more letters from people who want to have a relationship than from people who have any kind of real sexual problem. That’s been the biggest surprise for me. I get letters from people who don’t understand why they don’t have a relationship or why they’re not dating. You wouldn’t expect it from a site whose slogan is “Get On/Get Off”, but Manhunt can produce some really heartbreaking letters. I think Manhunt has become this all-purpose place whether you’re looking for a quickie or a long-term relationship. If you go to any city on the site and put in “LTR” (long-term relationship), you’ll get hundreds and hundreds of profiles. And if you put in something absolutely sexual, like “hung” or “bottom” or “top”, you’ll get about as many.

From a strictly sex standpoint, the biggest questions are about anal sex. Also, a lot of the “problems” in the bedroom tend to actually exist outside the bedroom. I get a lot of questions about how can I get my boyfriend to do something, how can I get my boyfriend to stop doing something, how can I get a boyfriend period. I’ve written advice columns for both straight women and gay men and I noticed how much more graphic gay men are when phrasing their questions. A lot of their questions are a little X-rated, but at least you get to the heart of the matter very quickly.

What do straight women need the most advice on?
The top two sexual issues for women are lowered libidos and a loss of sensation. With men, the two biggest issues are premature ejaculation, if you’re under 30, and impotence after 40. In terms of the relationship questions, there is almost no difference between men and women. The absolute biggest relationship issue is what I call desire discrepancy. That’s when you’re hot for sex and your partner’s not and the person with the low desire feels harassed and pressured and the person with the high libido feels rejected and abandoned. It creates a real dilemma for couples.

Any other interesting questions?
Some people ask how they can use the site better to attract people. I don’t think it’s that much different than going to a bar. If you have a picture of nothing but your body and your body parts, then you’re making it really hard to interest someone, unless you’re just looking for anonymous sex. Some people want to date someone, but they’re not willing to put up their face picture. Others put up face pictures, but they’re not smiling. Would you go up to somebody in a bar who wasn’t smiling and not looking at you? I think the same rules apply.

What’s the craziest question you’ve ever had?
The most interesting question I’ve gotten was from a guy with two good friends who had never met each other before. One of them was HIV positive and the other was HIV negative. They all went out one night and sparks were flying. It was clear the two friends went home together and the guy felt guilty and wanted to know if he should have told his HIV negative friend that the other one was positive. I’ve gotten HIV questions before, but they’re about how to tell, when to tell, those sorts of things. This was the first time I had gotten a question from a guy in the middle, and so I thought that was very interesting. It was all about divided loyalties.

Alright, as for the craziest one. This white guy goes home with a black guy. The black guy gives him a condom and the white guy freaked out when he put it on because the condom was black. He thought the guy had put ink on his dick or something. So, he freaks out and rips it off and the black guy gets all insulted and thinks he brought home a racist. But, the white guy just didn’t know that condoms come in darker colors.

I think every online dating site should have a sex-advice column because when you’re dealing with romance and dating, you’re dealing with sex. And there is so much ignorance out there. There is so much fear, alienation, and isolation. People will ask me medical questions because they’re not “out” to their doctors yet. One guy wanted to know if his hemorrhoids where from God punishing him for having anal sex.

In the beginning, Manhunt was divided about content. Would people really read the content? But, it’s been a phenomenal success. Six months into it, every two weeks I get an aggregated list of questions and the last one filled up 31 pages of a Word document. And this was on a site that never had content before. Unlike other sites, where you have to go through nine layers to even figure out where their column is, Manhunt puts me in a very prominent position and does so in a way that doesn’t interfere with the basic premise of why people are there. They’ve designed and marketed it well, and that’s part of Manhunt’s brilliance.

What other sites do gay guys use? Match, Yahoo! Personals?
We use everything. I think absolutely there’s a stronger preference for the gay sites, but you have to cover all your bets. Most people I know belong to more than one online dating service. I haven’t looked at the statistics, but I’d be shocked if there weren’t a very significant number of people who belong to more than one.

Randy Nicolau, AzoogleAds CEO – Interview

Posted on September 11, 2007

Randy_nicolau_azoogleads_907OPW INTERVIEW — Sep 11, 2007 — AzoogleAds sends a LOT of traffic to internet dating sites. It's one of the top affiliate networks and is highly respected amongst affiliates. Here's my interview with the CEO, Randy Nicolau. – Mark Brooks

What is AzoogleAds’ founding story?
AzoogleAds was founded in 2000 by two affiliates, Joe Speiser and Alex Zhardanovsky. At the time, they were running competing coupon and discount websites. They realized early on that if they combined their volume, advertisers would pay them more. So, they began gathering all their affiliate friends under one company name, Zoogle. The aggregated traffic led to higher payouts, which they passed on to their affiliates. The model kept spinning like that until today where we are working with some 30,000+ affiliates.

What does AzoogleAds do?
We are an ad network, which means we essentially do two things: We help affiliates make the most amount of money from the traffic they have, and we help advertisers improve their yields and affiliate networking traffic through highly-effective campaigns.

What do you do differently from other affiliate networks?
I think the main thing we do differently is we provide a very high-touch service to both publishers and advertisers. I think most of the recent independent affiliate surveys rank AzoogleAds as the number one network particularly in terms of the service we provide our affiliates. We recognize that our affiliates have very unique businesses, websites, and abilities to drive traffic, and we very often customize landing pages, advertisements, and service offerings to meet their specific needs.

Unlike other affiliate networks where you’re just a number somewhere on a spreadsheet, AzoogleAds actually assigns you to a very knowledgeable affiliate manager who, if you’re a beginning affiliate, will hold your hand and help you get your campaign up and running. If you’re a more sophisticated affiliate, we’ll help you perform whatever technical integrations are necessary to operate your business more efficiently.

So, on the affiliate side, I would say high touch and high service. The second thing is we think of ourselves as a company of direct marketers. We live, eat, and breathe all of the data that we are generating here on a minute-by-minute basis, and we use that data to create more effective campaigns, such as the search optimization of affiliates’ websites. We have access to literally billions of pieces of data that we’re constantly mining and using to improve the performance of our advertisements. And that benefits both affiliates and advertisers.

Why do affiliates trust AzoogleAds?
Primarily because we’ve been doing it longer than anyone else. We weren’t a company that was started by some venture capitalists who had some great idea. We were founded by two affiliates who partnered with a bunch of other affiliates to create this company. So, now we have a six-year-old reputation for having rock-solid payouts and always paying our affiliates on time. You could spend all the branding dollars in the world to build your image, but nothing is going to be more powerful than actually providing a high level of service and standing behind your products year in and year out, which is what we’ve done successfully for six years now.

What can you do for Internet dating services?
We can drive very high volumes of high-quality traffic for online dating services. We have access to multiple sources of traffic and recognize that not all sources are created equally. Some sources of traffic are going to provide higher retention rates for online dating companies and higher lifetime values. And, conversely, there is lower-converting traffic for which you obviously would want to pay a lower acquisition price.

We help our dating companies understand all the different traffic sources and create specific offers for the channel that they’re going into. Once we know from where the customers and potential customers are coming (web-based advertisements, banner ads, search channels, etc.), then we can determine what type of order flow or offer would work best.

We also utilize a small portion of email solicitations to help drive traffic to our online dating advertisers. So, again, an entirely different order flow and typically a very different offer flow. The biggest thing we do is to always push and encourage our online dating partners to test, test, test. It still amazes me to this day the very limited amount of testing that goes on. So many people launch something, think they have the formula figured out, and never test it again. We find the whole “set it and forget it” model to be highly ineffective and unsuccessful.

Are you looking for more internet dating advertisers at this time?
I wouldn’t say that we’re looking for more; we’re looking for the right ones. This isn’t a game about quantity; it’s about quality. Let’s say, for example, there’s a universe of 50 online dating properties. Why would affiliates want to work with properties 2 through 50 if property number 1 is going to give them the highest yield? We can and do drive hundreds of thousands of dating leads per month, and would rather work with those partners who have the willingness and the budgets to take on our “fire hose” of customers. 50 or 500 leads a day won’t allow us to scale. We need to work with the bigger partners who can handle our volume of leads and are willing to do everything from price testing to offer testing down to creative testing and creating for different channels.

Online marketing is an incredibly complex medium and we need the partners that have the scale and the ability to work with us to maximize each one of those channels. It’s not just creating; it’s not a one-size-fits-all marketing solution.

What is AzoogleAds’ cut for linking advertisers and services?
The advertiser side is fixed. They come to us and we work out the various offers. For example, maybe they want to do a 7-day free trial that converts into a monthly subscription. We would tell them that costs, hypothetically speaking, $5.00 per completed free trial. They would know upfront the fixed amount. If somebody wants to drive traffic directly to a subscription and their subscription rate is $29.95 or $39.95 a month, we would give them another price for that. In essence, every time we would bring you a customer who charges “X” amount to their credit card, you would give us “Y” amount. That’s all predetermined.

What percentage of that we give to the affiliates is on a case-by-case basis. In the same way that AzoogleAds gets rewarded by its advertisers for being able to deliver high volume, we in turn reward our affiliates. Those who are able to drive very high volume traffic for us are rewarded with a much higher payout than smaller affiliates who get a fair or reasonable payout. I won’t disclose exact splits, but they’re consistent with what you’ve seen in the industry.

This interview also appears on FrequentFlirters.

Michael Cerda, Jangl CEO – Interview

Posted on August 31, 2007

Michael_cerdaOPW INTERVIEW — Aug 31, 2007 — Jangl has the best and most successful telephony integration on a dating site I've yet to see. It's live on Match.com. The service has been industry tested, is making money and is also live on AdultFriendFinder, Facebook and Tagged. Here's my interview with Mike Cerda. – Mark Brooks

What does Jangl do?
Jangl connects your phone and your online life, safely and privately. That’s it in a nutshell. Jangl bridges someone’s phone with their online presence. And, by online presence, we mean an online dating or social networking profile, a classifieds ad, an auction, a blog, or any other place where there is an online communication happening. The phone wasn’t part of that before Jangl. But by bridging the phone and the web, Jangl is making phone numbers behave and respond to consumers in the same way an email address does – with privacy, control and management features, and ultimately convenience.

What is Jangl’s founding story?
We set out, back in 2005, to build a lifestyle communications company that delivers services without all of the friction of headsets, downloads, and plugging into various pieces of hardware. We also wanted to offer services that consumers can use when they meet people in various ways online – not just another VoIP service based on cheaper long distance.

Thus, our focus on bridging phones with consumers’ online lives. Privacy was the first problem that we needed to solve and that’s what we focused on as a company: you can’t bridge the phone and the web without offering consumers privacy and control. Right after our initial $2 million round with Storm Ventures and Labrador Ventures in 2005, we began working with Match.com to power its MatchTalk service. Of course, that required us to scale very quickly. Six months later, we raised an additional $7 million. Storm Ventures, Labrador Ventures and Cardinal Venture Capital are the three investors in Jangl today.

Ultimately, as steep as that ramp was, it was good for us, because today Jangl is the only company of its type that can power a large-scale deployment like that. Social networks are growing so incredibly quickly, they have to partner with companies that can keep up. In part, that’s why Jangl today connects 20 million online profiles with phones – because we’re a consumer-oriented service with an enterprise-grade network.

Who are your top 5 partners?
Our top 5 partners are Match.com, Various (which has the FriendFinder properties), Tagged.com, Justin.tv and Facebook, with an application called Phonebook. Another one very interesting to me is Revision3 which, among other things, is producing Diggnation, a terrific show with Digg co-founder Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, and The GigaOM Show with blogger Om Malik and Joyce Kim. It plays into our social media efforts.

Our service is obvious with regard to online dating and social networking because it lets people who are trying to meet each other talk on the phone without exchanging numbers. But, our service isn’t so obvious with social media. Social media is all about producing content and bringing an audience to that content and having everyone engaged in a continuous feedback loop. Jangl brings phones into that loop.

Do people really get anonymous calling yet?
I think they get it when it’s presented in the proper context. I don’t think people sit around and say, “Oh, I wish I had some anonymous calling capability.” People get to emailing and flirting with others online and want to take it to the next level, but aren’t sure if the other person really is who they say they are. They want to be able to control who calls them and when and that’s where we come in. You also have to understand that connecting the phone and the web is a brand new concept. When you describe to people what that means for them, the need for anonymity and privacy and control become much more apparent.

Where is the money?
For Jangl, the money is in licensing, consumer subscriptions and transactions and, soon, advertising. So, for example, take licensing. In online personals, money changes hands between the consumer and the property. When we provide the ability to talk on any phone, from anywhere, with anyone you meet online, we receive a cut of this premium feature.

In social networking, though, money is not changing hands between the consumer and the property. It’s changing hands between Google AdWords and the properties. In social networking, we’re trying to own and monetize the dial tone in those social networks, much the same way the social networks monetize the traffic.

The numbers are staggering when you consider that Jangl is de-siloing two huge markets: the phone and the web. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 200 million online profiles, and 225 million cell phones; worldwide, it’s 500 million profiles and over a billion mobile phones. The global advertising spend in social networking is about $1.4 billion right now, and is expected to double by 20101. Total mobile ad spending is at $1.4 billion, but expected to grow to over $14 billion by 20112. So the numbers are there no matter how you look at it. We’re bridging two huge markets that, for as much as they’ve exploded already, really still have the majority of their growth in front of them.

What are your goals for Jangl through the end of 2008?
It’s all about our service, partnerships, and advertising. Obviously, we’ll continue adding functionality to Jangl itself — moving beyond talking and texting, and moving into content sharing, more precise control over when and how people can be reached, functionality based around groups of people. We plan to drive more activities through this utility we’re offering. You’ll see us do things in places like Facebook, where we build adjacent applications to promote usage of Jangl Phonebook. You’ll see us do things like this inside Tagged, as well, where we build a service along the lines of phone tag. We’ve got strategies around user-generated content, phone numbers, mobility, and new and interesting partnerships evolving in the classifieds and auction space. We’re doing a lot of plug-ins for other IM clients, for the various mail services that are out there.

In terms of partnerships, vertically, we’d like to get the majority of the top 10 online dating sites using our service, and we’re about to announce another win there. We are in a few of the big eight social networks and want to make our service available to the other social networks as they deploy APIs and so forth.

Also in 2008, we'll be launching our advertising play, talking with buyers and planners, with customers, with different parties associated with the advertising food chain. Again, we're mindful of doing it right – but already having multiple revenue streams lets us take enough time to ensure it is.

We see the rest of 2007 as a real estate land grab because we would much rather be in every profile as part of users’ communication flow rather than being a widget directory. If you can have residency in each of these profiles, half your battle is won. Jangl’s doing smart deals that get us there and that’s what we’re focused on for the rest of this year.

Moses Brown, OnlineBootyCall CEO – Interview

Posted on August 25, 2007

MosesOPW INTERVIEW — Aug 26, 2007 — Moses Brown is proud Online Booty Call has only had one marriage confirmed on his site.  Check out the press release they released announcing the fact. While most of the industry is attracting people for love, marriage and romance, OBC promises a booty call. The message is refreshing for many who frequent OBC, it's to the point, and fun. Moses announced 10 commandments of dating back in January. I. Thou shalt get out before the sun rises, II. Thou shouldest never ask "can we see each other from now on?", III. Thou shalt refrain from referring to our activities as "love making."  You get the picture. OBC is doing rather well, and was #13 on the Hitwise internet dating rankings for July. Here's my interview with Mo. – Mark Brooks

What is OnlineBootyCall’s founding story?
OBC’s founding story didn’t involve any market research or strategy. It was just a project I was doing while I was an engineer. Then, the dot.com disaster struck and I found myself without a job. So, around October of 2002, I turned my project into a business.

I think the name alone generated attention. I was the first member and, of course, told all my friends about it and from there word just got around. I don’t think people had ever seen something like it before. We introduced a referral program and the concept just continued to grow from there. It’s a kind of grassroots story.

When did you start charging?
On day one. I had heard stories that you had to reach a critical mass to get members to the point of wanting to upgrade. But after only about 40 members, I got my first conversion. Back then, the pricing was a little different. Not much more actually then it is now, but it was like $7.95 a month.

How would you say OBC is different from other dating sites?
It’s different in the approach. We approach dating in a light-hearted fashion. Obviously, the name implies more of a stage-one service for people who are just entering the dating scene. The culture on OBC also is a little different from most mainstream sites. We have more of an urban, hip-hop crowd. We embrace that, we like it, we like being different. I’m sure some of our users are on other dating sites, but we attract 18-24 year olds and I think for a lot of them OnlineBootyCall is their introduction to dating.

How many marriages have you had so far?
A grand total of one. In October 2006, we reached one million members and had only one confirmed marriage then. I’m proud to say that our members are following our Booty Call commandments. It’s not like we discourage people from getting married. It’s just that most of the people on OBC are in a place in their lives where they’re not ready to get married, but still want to meet others. I had someone ask me, “You have one confirmed marriage, but how many divorces have you caused?”

How do you handle scamming?
Scamming is a tough one. I think the kind of scammers we’re getting range from people who want to peddle prostitution to Nigerian scammers. We’re pretty much experiencing what I think the rest of the industry is experiencing. Unfortunately, as you become more popular on the Internet, you’re naturally going to become more of a target for people, like hackers and scammers, who want to harm your site. I don’t know if the percentage of scammers has increased, but there definitely are more people making attempts and we’re consequently stepping up our efforts to stop them.

We were actually introduced to a new product (I think it’s by Iovation) that actually produces a fingerprint for every user who visits your site. We did a test run and were able to track down people who were creating multiple accounts and joining for the wrong reasons. So, it’s been pretty effective actually. We also have a sniffer program in place. Every profile that is created is reviewed. We have a support team that takes action when a report is flagged from inside a message a member receives. Finally, we try to educate our members about what to look for as far as scamming goes. We all have to share our information. The only way the online dating and social networking industries can beat the scammers is by sharing.

Have you considered offering a mobile OBC?
Yeah, we’re very interested in that. We were about to launch mobile a couple of months ago and got interrupted by another project. I just got back from a mobile social networking conference (the best one so far) and was just taking a look at which approach would be the best one for OBC.

Where do you see OBC in a year and a half?
We hope to reach a broader audience and also grow considerably internationally. We reach users in the U.K., Canada, and Australia, but haven’t really spent time developing those contacts yet. That’s our next focus. That’s where we see the next wave of growth.

Hannah Schwartz, RSVP CEO – Interview

Posted on August 23, 2007

SchwartzInside Internet Dating Show includes interview with the co-Founder of RSVP.com.au. Download Radio Show

OPW INTERVIEW — Aug 23, 2007 — RSVP.com.au is ranked the #1 dating site in Australia by Hitwise (see rankings). It was bought by Fairfax, an Australian newspaper group, in 2005 for $38.9 million. I interviewed Hannah Schwartz, the CEO. – Mark Brooks

What is RSVP’s founding story?
RSVP is Australia’s largest and most trusted online dating site. It’s been operating in Australia for over 10 years. In 2005, Fairfax Media – a large media group – purchased it from the original founder for approximately $39 million.

Right now, we have over one million members and can account for 2,500 weddings and 350 babies. And those are just the ones we know about. We believe there are more. We are a relationship-focused dating website, which means we’re helping to facilitate lasting connections. We have over one million monthly visitors to our site on any given month and are by far the market leader with a share of around 55%.

How would you say the Australian style of dating differs from the UK and USA?
I think in many ways the online dating experience on RSVP parallels a sort of older fashion approach to courtship. Online, we see the men tending to make the first move and the women responding. In this day and age, that’s very interesting because at parties and pubs people don’t necessarily act that way. Women are just as comfortable making the first move as men.

RSVP offers travel and event options that traditionally have not fared well in the industry. How do you make them successful?
We offer over 400 events annually and I think there are a lot of reasons for their success. We listen to our members and give them everything they want, from speed dating to large balls and parties to more intimate gatherings. The events are local and age specific and I think both of those are very important points. People will only travel a certain distance. And usually people who are in their 40’s or 50’s are more interested in meeting people around their own age group, as opposed to, say, people in their 20’s. We see members bringing non-members to the events, so there are always unique mixes of people. And we constantly work with our event managers to ensure high-quality experiences. For example, we instituted e-ticketing for accurate head counts.

In terms of travel, we’re really focused on expanding our offers this year. Again, we’re really listening to the customers and offering trips that are age specific, which is very, very important. Australians are great travelers and so, right away, the response has been good, especially for travel abroad. We’re also getting requests for shorter travels. Being part of a large media organization like Fairfax Media allows us to work with known and experienced travel providers, which is critical.

What are your thoughts on new methods of communication?
Our site is focused on relationships, so we spend a lot of time making sure the profiles are of high quality. We proof and review every single photograph and profile that is created or modified. We know our members trust us to provide them with credible profiles and take this into account every time we consider another mode of communication.

Right now, we facilitate online chat and email exchange. We are evaluating other modes, such as anonymous voice connection. We don’t disclose our members’ personal information upfront; it’s up to the members to do so. We have a lot of privacy controls in place and educate and encourage our members to really get to know somebody online before they actually meet face to face. So, we’re looking at technologies that can help us continue that same level of privacy, yet offer more immediacy and intimacy.

What are your thoughts on mobile dating?
We launched mobile over two years ago and were the first in the market to do so. What’s really unique about our offering is that we have been able to replicate the online experience. With your computer or phone, you can search the same profiles with the same parameters. We’re going to continue to innovate on our mobile offering. We believe mobile chat will be especially important to our younger audience members. I mean, we’re seeing all age groups using it, but we do see it skewing younger.

We’re working very closely with the Australian providers on determining the right pricing model. It’s important for the telco’s to manage the cost implications for the mobile user.

What are your goals for 2007 to 2008?
We will continue to educate consumers on the benefits of online dating. A lot of our marketing focuses on the fact that we’re safe and sensible and smart and modern. Our future growth will be in addressing the unique needs of our core members. So, we’ll be developing functionality for the changing needs of our members as they migrate through various life stages. Additionally, I think there are lots of ways to enhance the search result experience. Now, you can search on a variety of metrics such as height, salary, and education, but how do we take that deeper? Future searches will focus on interests and personality types.

Sexologist, Yvonne Fulbright – Interview

Posted on August 12, 2007

Yvonne_head_shotOPW INTERVIEW — Aug 12, 2007 — Online dating services are in the business of love, which also makes them part of the sex business. Here’s my interview with sexologist Yvonne Fulbright, author of Sex with Your Ex & 69 Other Things You Should Never Do Again, and Touch Me There! A Hands-On Guide to Your Orgasmic Hot Spots (http://www.yvonnekfulbright.com) – Mark Brooks

What is your background? How did you become a sexologist?
My interest in sexuality education started early on, as a sixth grader. I had just moved to the U.S. from Iceland and was the first girl in my class to have developed. As a result, I wound up dealing with conflicting messages – positive ones from my Icelandic mother and negative ones from my American peers’ parents.  Although my upbringing suggested that my body changing was a perfectly normal part of growing up and becoming a woman, American society, in general, made it seem as if something was wrong or dirty or perverted with a 10-year old already sporting breasts.

This discrepancy inspired me to take advantage of an opportunity I had in school to give a presentation on the female reproductive system to my sixth grade class. I did it to educate and empower and, of course, learn more about what was going on with me. The day I captured my classmates’ attention, I just knew at that point that I had found some sort of calling and passion. Nothing moves an audience like sex, and I learned that when I was eleven years old.

Later on, I completed an undergraduate major of psychology and sociology, with psychology seemingly the one way to study sex at the college level. I then went to the University of Pennsylvania for a Master’s in Human Sexuality Education. I took a couple of years off to work at the American Medical Students Association and to get some public health experience, before going on to New York University for a Ph.D. Because the master’s degree in sex education was not being warmly received by most employers, I thought that going for a Ph.D. in International Community Health Education, with a sexual health focus would allow me to be more marketable, but at the same time stay true to my sexual education interest.

What role does sexuality play in short-term versus long-term compatibility?
In the short term, from kissing to sex, sexual expression really tells you a lot about someone. For instance, you can quickly tell if your partner is selfish and only into his/her own gratification, or if he or she is a giver, making sure that you’re satisfied and that the whole experience isto be a pleasurable one. Also in the short term, there’s a sexual chemistry specifically. A lot of times I get asked the question, “I like this person, but there’s no chemistry. What should I do?” I would say in the majority of cases, the chemistry does not come with time. It tends to be pretty immediate. Because of how Mother Nature made us, we tend to know earlier rather than later whether somebody is going to be sexually attractive to us.

With that said, it’s also the sexual chemistry that is going to make for the intrigue that will make for the long-term compatibility. Sex might make you hold on longer even when a relationship isn’t going well. It’s that powerful of a force.

How good of a job are online dating sites doing in educating their customers about sexuality issues?
I think at least a couple of the sites are getting better. Whether it’s due to public demand or social responsibility, more sites are using established resources in the field. They are incorporating expert sexologists, versus self-proclaimed ones, and attracting editors from the sex ed business. This latter turning point is especially huge because an editor without legitimate knowledge about sexuality doesn’t have the sexual savvy to really be in charge of the content, to know whether it’s right or wrong or even if it’s appropriate or not. Oftentimes, this lack of education can lead to a reinforcement of stereotypes and misconceptions, like those along the lines of Mars/Venus. It’s still a favorite topic, but because of recent efforts, I don’t think it’s as bad as it used to be.

I also think the dating sites are doing a better job of finding a balance between PG and R-rated content. They’re recognizing that we are sexual adult beings and need content that’s sexy and realistic.

How can online dating sites address and handle sexuality while maintaining credibility and class in their advertising?
They need to acknowledge sexuality without exploiting it in the content. When you promote sex as the reason to meet people, you’re objectifying your clients and pretty much throwing out any chance of them treating each other with great respectability. Some of the sites, like True, advocate looking beyond a person’s looks, but then use women who basically look like Hooters girls in their ads. Sex certainly sells, but it only sells to certain people. Again, know who you want to attract. Sites like these may wind up having more males sign up, but a lot of the females will be turned off by a site that appears to be full of women who don’t look like them. In attracting some customers, these sites may end up losing others.

In this society, we certainly sexualize the females more than the males. But there’s a way to have visual be erotic and sensual without necessarily being sexual. When sites push sex too much, I actually think it comes off cheesy.

What reliable sex education resources are available to consumers online?
I would recommend sexualhealth.com. It has been around for at least a decade, was established by a couple of sexologists, and has sex experts on the panel. Loveandhealth.ifriends.net has a lot of good articles and a great Q&A section. It, too, is written by experts. I also like goaskalice.com, which is based out of Columbia University’s health center. It is really good, has a whole bank of information, and is geared more towards younger people.

Oodle CEO, Craig Donato – OPW Interview

Posted on August 6, 2007

CraigOPW INTERVIEW — Aug 6, 2007 — Oodle is trying to beat Craigslist at its own game by bringing together classifieds from numerous classifieds site on one site.  Including personals. Here's my interview with their CEO, Craig Donato. – Mark Brooks

Tell us how Oodle got started.
I started the company back in early 2005. At the time, I was using classifieds for a number of different things and found the experience incredibly painful. I was finding great deals, but it was just too difficult. I was going to a lot of different sites, newspapers, local online sites, local community sites, etc. and then sorting through each of their listings. And because a lot of the classifieds data is unstructured, going through the listings was a fairly time-consuming and difficult process. On top of that, good listings were flipping very quickly. So if you were looking through the listings and found a great deal, you had to act right away. If you weren’t on top of it, it was gone before you knew it.

The whole process was a really big problem. So, it just occurred to me one day that there was an opportunity here. I could create a site where someone could see all the listings in a particular market and easily search through them thanks to normalized, well-structured data. On top of that, people could tell the site what it is they were looking for and when listings like that popped up, emails could be sent out to alert them. That was the founding vision behind Oodle – essentially to make shopping through the classifieds an easy process.

How do you drive traffic to your site?
We drive traffic in a number of different ways. We’re fortunate enough to have good growth. People keep coming back to our site. One week they may be looking for an apartment, the next for a job or new car. We do invest money into search engine optimization. We do a limited amount of search engine marketing, though not a lot. We also actively pursue and get distribution deals. We’ve done distribution deals with a number of different folks, like Lycos Classifieds. We also work with newspaper companies, like The Washington Post and the San Francisco Tribune. We’re actually working with a number of different local media organizations to power their classified sites.

How does Oodle make money?
Oodle makes money primarily by enabling the folks in our index to feature their listings. A while ago when we launched the service, our main revenue stream was advertising. And we started hearing from a lot of the folks in our index comments like, “We love the traffic we’re getting from Oodle. How do we get more?” It occurred to us that there was a great opportunity to allow the folks in our index to feature their listings.

Now, if a publisher wants to pay us, we’ll feature their listings. This has several benefits, including prominent search result rankings. For instance, if someone is looking for a Honda Accord and that publisher has a good Honda Accord ad, we will display it at the top of the results list. We also show featured listings in the right-hand bar. If there are multiple featured listings in the results, the top spot will go to the one with the highest bid. It’s a bidding-based model.

AnotherFriend, Kevin Greene, CEO – Interview

Posted on July 24, 2007

Img_kevin_on_ownOPW INTERVIEW — July 24, 2007 — Kevin Greene runs Ireland's AnotherFriend.com and is a regular attendee at the European internet dating conference. He has based his company in Poland, and is planning a Polish dating site, amongst other things. – Mark Brooks

What is the founding story of AnotherFriend.com?
Over seven years ago, I was working as a freelance web developer and tended to move around quite a bit. I was doing a lot of internal work, like intranets, and needed a showcase for my talents. At the time, there were only a handful of websites making money and online dating was one of them. So, AnotherFriend.com was born on New Years Eve, 2000. 

We only got really serious about it, though, in the last three to four years. Now we're the No.1 online dating service in Ireland – probably four to five times larger than our nearest competitor.

What would you say are the main differences between the UK and Irish online dating markets? Who are you competitors?
The UK market is probably a year or two ahead of us. Consumers there are definitely more accepting of online dating. When we first started, very few people in Ireland were willing to put their photos online. That's changing slowly, for sure, but it's not there yet. About 85% of our membership base is from Ireland. We also get quite a lot of members from the US and UK, and have had a few of the marriages between Americans and Irish people. But our core focus is Ireland.

To maintain our dominant market position, we use various marketing strategies. Online marketing certainly works for us and Google is fantastic for that. We've also partnered with a few other websites and a number of newspapers in Ireland, such as The Irish Examiner and The Irish Times, since 2004. Also PR, member events, viral marketing and member testimonials have played their part.

Because Ireland's population is quiet small, the market is not as attractive for competitors as is the larger UK market.  However, we have seen the Irish market filling up with competitors over the last year or so. Our nearest competitors are MaybeFriends.com (owned by Scottish Radio Holdings) and MeetingPoint.ie (Owned by Independent Newspapers). We are one of the few indigenous independently managed sites. Bebo hasn't really impacted our business because it tends to cater to the younger age group (the 15-23 year olds). Our site is aimed at the main serious dating age group – the 28-48 year olds.

What have you been up to lately?
This year, we launched a new niche site, http://www.SingleParents.ie aimed at the growing single parents population in Ireland. While running AnotherFriend.com, we noticed there were a lot of single parents on it and figured there was a big demand for a site that catered to them and their situations. Now, there's no need to wait until one is in a relationship to say, "Oh yeah, by the way, I have a child." Everything can be out in the open right from the start. Members have found this to be a great benefit.

We've also recently partnered with Pluto Life Mobile. AnotherFriend.com members who subscribe to the service now can view other members via their mobile phones. At the moment, they can only view very, very short profiles that are purely for SMS. We are looking at adding photos and more stuff later on. We need to do more work on this and it might be another year or two before Online dating gets popular, but we aim to have the technology in place.

We've also partnered with Vivox, a Voice Over IP (VOIP) company, that combines instant messenger with voice. This will allow people to do speed dating either through a phone or computer. Several people can go into a "room" and talk to each other for a specified amount of time before being switched to the next person. I think from a revenue point of view this will be quite good. They also have "bar stools", which are five people going into a room and chatting away via phone or instant messenger. All the while, we can micro bill and generate extra revenue. We'll release this hopefully within the next three or four months.

Are you planning to launch any new sites?
Yeah, we actually moved our development over to Poland and, as a result, are really looking at the Polish market. We've recently launched http://www.nightlife.pl but it will be a few years before any money can be made, but there are 38 million Polish citizens and I think that market can be quite lucrative in a few years. We've also launched ProfileApproval.com, which is more of a B2B service for other online dating sites. It's a way for them to outsource the approving of profiles, photos, etc.

What are your thoughts on being acquired?
Actually, six months ago we probably had no planned exit strategy – we were quite happy with building the business, which is growing rapidly. Over the last few months, though, we've been approached by a number of different people, so it certainly is something we would consider now. We pretty much have the whole dating market in Ireland tied up. So, if anyone was looking for a starting point, we certainly would be a very good one. I'd say we're worth between 6 million and 10 million Euros. We're talking to a couple of people but we're still growing rapidly and are very happy with the business, so we are not in any hurry to sell.

Saïd Amin, CEO World Singles – Interview

Posted on July 14, 2007

Said_amin_pictureOPW INTERVIEW — July 14, 2007 — Saïd Amin runs World Singles which operates several leading niche dating sites such as Eligible Greeks and Arab Lounge. I often inform prospective dating industry entrepreneurs to shoot for a niche, or plan on raising $10 million+ if they want to build a generic dating site. Saïd tells me that building a niche dating site is not that easy these days. Many search terms have been bid through the roof on the search engines. – Mark Brooks

What's your background Saïd?
I was born in Iran. I lived there for three years before moving to Paris. Five years later, once my mother finished her PhD work at the Sorbonne, we moved to the US.

Professionally, I worked at Fannie Mae in Washington DC for several years after graduating from Clark University in Massachusetts. My responsibilities at Fannie Mae ran the gamut from admin work, to project manager. While at Fannie Mae, I had the good fortune of getting lots of exposure at the executive level and learned a lot from the experience. It's really a top notch company with very talented and politically well connected folks.

From there I went on to work for a small telecommunications company specializing in Voice Over IP, with operations in over 45 countries. I was in charge of business development and implementation for East Africa and the Middle East. My work had me traveling extensively between Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, the UAE, Bahrain and Yemen.

The nature of the work was quite risky and illegal in the countries where we operated. It entailed getting a trustworthy partner, successfully getting our equipment into the country and then setting up hardware like a 2.4 meter dish at our partners' location without getting caught by the authorities. Man, the crazy stories I could share about this job. I loved that it was such an adventure and challenge. 

Why did you start World Singles?
In my mid 20s I had an itch for connecting with like minded Iranian Americans and was tired of working for others. The Internet and all of its possibilities for bringing people together was blowing me away and so, after launching a few niche online sites for fun, IranianPersonals.com was born. There was very little competition in the Iranian market and I thought that I could do better than the Iranian dating service that many were using at the time. Having traveled extensively my whole life and as someone who embraces diversity, I thought to myself, why not offer a similar service to other ethnic groups.

World Singles was created in 2001. Michel, who at the time was my web designer for IranianPersonals.com and other sites, became my partner – he taught himself Cold Fusion and built our dating application from scratch; a rather brilliant dude if I may say so and more importantly, he's a great guy.

The first thing I looked to do with World Singles was target ethnic niches that had little to no competition from other niche dating services. World Singles was operating on fumes; I think that my initial investment was a mere 10 or 12 thousand dollars with even less in reserves. Bootstrapping it, we really had no choice but to go after those "blue oceans" and went at it for several years without pay. Heck, for a while we tweaked our business and offered a private label service because we could not afford to advertise on any of the niche sites that could drive traffic to our sites. Once money started coming in, we managed to reverse our deals with sites using our private label service in favor of pushing our own brands. To this day, we have not taken any outside investment.

What sites have inspired you?
The netzine Iranian.com was a huge source of inspiration. I first stumbled upon it back in 1999/2000 and I think that it was the first time that I came across a niche site that offered compelling content that brought Iranians worldwide together through articles and comments. I remember thinking, damn, where did all these Iranian Americans come from? Very cool.

Dating sites that inspire…mmm…despite rejecting my profile a few years back because I was deemed not pious enough, I generally like eHarmony's angle – they introduced a new way to find matches. The industry has not seen that sort of creativity in some time. I definitely like to check Match.com regularly. They are always up to something, testing this or that.
 
Other sites…hmm, I really take something from every site but the Internet as a whole is inspiring. It's alive, evolving and has amazing reach. The world is shrinking.

What is Nuzizo?
Nuzizo is a social network that my good friend Darren Romeo and I launched a few months back. It's an online city and culture engine that brings together dozens of ethnic and lifestyle communities. Rather than launching stand alone ethnic sites, we created a place that unites people from all backgrounds and celebrates culture. Operating as a portal, Nuzizo City offers a great opportunity to make connections with people from similar and different backgrounds. Again, the world is shrinking.

The site is still in beta, but we really believe that in time, Nuzizo City will be one of the most visited sites on the Internet. My mother, knowing how passionate I am about this project, enthusiastically asks me several times a week, "Has Nuzizo taken off yet? Does it have millions of users yet?" She's very cute but I politely remind her to exercise patience. After all, great cities like NYC and Rome were not built overnight.

What are your goals for 2007/2008?
Well, for starters I'm looking for us to more than double World Singles revenue in 2008. We have been giving away so many features for free. For example, it's currently free to read and reply to messages on all World Singles sites. We won't go as far as charging people to read emails, but members will soon be required to pay for some of the features that are currently free. Until recently we operated with only one programmer and limited staff. In the last few months we have hired some quality folks who are helping us get through our "to do" list faster. As a result, we're getting better at converting our traffic and the extra horses have freed me up to do more business development. In the next few weeks, we will be announcing several overseas partnerships with highly trafficked sites and I am looking to launch two ethnic niche sites that I feel are wide open and there for the taking. Life is good!

Ross & Steve, WhiteLabelDating.com – OPW Interview

Posted on July 12, 2007

WldOPW INTERVIEW — July 12, 2007 — I talked with Ross Williams and Steve Pammenter the co-founders of White Label Dating. I’ll be interviewing more executives of white label services shortly. Meanwhile, email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com if you’d like a copy of my preliminary overview of white labels services. – Mark Brooks
 
Ross, what’s your founding story?
White Label Dating actually originated from a web development company I started back in the mid-90’s. In 1998 I founded a digital media company called Rawnet Limited that developed websites and web-based applications for a range of clients. Like a lot of web design companies at the time, we had done a few dating sites here and there, but I felt the market really wasn’t being utilized in the most effective ways. Everyone was focusing on their own brand dating site but all these sites that we developed they had their own database, they had their own technology. So the concept was to develop an application that anyone with a brand, anyone who could do design, any web master could use to launch their own online dating site in a few minutes and then get access to a shared database of members and both shared payment technology and shared support and hosting. That original idea is what evolved into Whitelabeldating.com.

What are both of your backgrounds?
Ross: I’ve been an Internet entrepreneur and the owner of  a web development company since we established it in 1998. Since then we’ve set up Whitelabeldating.com as well as a couple of other web orientated businesses. 

Steve: My background is actually remarkably non-technical. In fact, my previous career was almost entirely based in sales. That experience has been invaluable in helping us in acquiring partners. So I tend to concentrate on the acquisition side of the business.

What kind of partners are you targeting?
Right now, a lot of our focus is on the targeting of offline partners. Typically, we are talking about magazine publishers who have an existing website but no dating channel. We have obviously targeted the existing online communities who are looking to monetize their existing databases by adding a free, fully populated dating channel onto their database.

What kind of money can they earn?
Depending on what partner does with what we give them, they can do quite well. Some of our partners earn thousands of pounds and up per month. Last month, our top earning partner earned 175,000 pounds.

Ross, what do you regard as your biggest differentiators over other co-brand dating service providers?
First and foremost, we are a really strong community. We have integrated instant messaging that works without any plug-ins that members can use across the network. Say for example,  members from site A find someone in the database that interests them who happens to be a member of site B. Through our integrated chatting instant messaging system, the customers from each site can talk to each other. We also have dating diaries which are very popular feature. It’s surprising how many people amongst the customer base will actually create a diary of their dating experience. These diaries can be viewed and shared across the network to all members.

We also have articles; real content that is distributed through the site that gives a compelling reason for people to join, for people to pay for our partners to make money.

And moreover what is a critical differentiator for me is the ease of use for our partners. It is incredibly easy to set up sites. Someone can go to WhiteLabelDating.com, click on the new site button and have their own co-branded site up within a minute or two. That’s the biggest differentiator I feel.

What are your goals gentlemen for 2007 through 2008?
Steve: I think the first goal is really to become the number one White Label provider throughout the world, obviously. Really, to show we are working with some of the largest brands at the moment and that we are attracting some of the real big names.

Ross: I think also to follow on that, we recognize what our skill is in; we have a technology platform that works. People pay, our partners earn a lot of money but we’re not the marketing experts and we don’t have the brand.

So we want to attract partners in the US and Europe and in Asia and China, India, places like that who know their local market and know how to market to these people and just want a platform to make money on. And that’s where we want folks to be for the next year.