Category: All Interviews

Table For Six Founder, Julie Paiva – OPW Interview

Posted on July 11, 2007

Julie_blackOPW INTERVIEW — July 11, 2007 — Table For Six is expanding to Orange County and Sacramento after ten years of operation in Northern California. The model is simple. Tables of six people, dinner, that’s it. Simple on the surface at least. There’s a lot more going on underneath. I interviewed the founder, Julie Paiva. – Mark Brooks

What will Table for Six do for people?
First of all, we combine being the only full spectrum dating service in the country with a social networking club. To make our members feel comfortable, we create a social community. I believe, when people feel at ease, they appear the most attractive to others. In their comfort zone, their true self emerges, allowing them to meet like-minded people, which leads to longer relationships.

So all of our members are involved in all three departments.

The first is our 3 Men/3 Women dining. Here, we put together three men and three women who are carefully matched. We match according to interest, life style and physical characteristics. Each of our five clubs sits more than 15 tables a week.

Secondly, we provide our members an adventure department. These groups go out and enjoy sporting events, wine tasting, hiking, white river rafting trips, even trips to Vegas. Cooking classes are popular. In another arena, we work with volunteer activities. For example, more than 60 of our members built a Habitat for Humanity house. Community activities score with our members because they meet other like-minded members who give their time and talent. We offer three of these activities each week for each club.

Thirdly, there’s our Just for Two department, our one on one matching. Each member gets 12 matches per membership year. Our staff is out there in the field with our members before we match them for one on one, so we really get to know them. We learn about their sense of humor, what they do for fun, and what their values are. By the time we match them, we’re more likely to have a successful match.

By creating this community for members, the average member is meeting about 50 new singles every month. More importantly, they’re able to really get to know them by seeing them in real life. Almost as important as matching, they make friends. And friends make happy lives and happy lives make happy relationships.

What’s the founding story? How did you start the company Julie?
I was the West Coast Director of Barbizon, a modeling school and agency. And I was also a dating and relationship coach. Once I helped them get rid of the barriers keeping them from connecting with others, then I wanted to refer them somewhere where they could start meeting people. So I went out and I visited personally, posing as a prospect to companies like Great Expectations, for example. I didn’t feel comfortable referring my members to these agencies. I was looking for something that would help them learn to get past the first superficial image of an individual. The concept of Table for Six resonated for me.

So I gave up a six figure income and risked everything to start Table for Six. I had a 5-year-old daughter at the time and a husband who thought I was crazy. But I just felt a compelling need. There was nothing that could stop me. So we find we’re able to serve and solve all of our member’s social needs from finding someone to fall in love with, to helping them make great friendships to leading them to community. So we’re dealing with the entire person.

What does it cost to join the Table for Six community?
It depends on the different locations. Our prices range from $2,495 to $2,995 for a one year membership.

Did the matchmaking industry go through a slight slump in the last several years?
We never personally experienced a slump because we always were a very social activities, social community based company. People were attracted to the whole Table for Six concept. 

So how has business been in the last year for the industry and for Table for Six?
For Table for Six, we’ve seen an enormous increase in memberships. I think that’s because people are disenchanted with Internet dating sites and that they’re look for an opportunity to meet real people. I believe loneliness is the number one disease in America. One of my driving forces is we’re helping people have real connections. People develop a lot of social self-confidence. Often, they are successful in their business life, however, in their personal lives they need coaching and direction. All of our members have at least three membership directors for them to work with per club. 

How has business been overall, the actual industry?
I think the industry has picked up because people are getting a little bit bored perhaps with Internet dating sites. They want to meet people who are who they say they are. I think, especially for women, there’s definitely more safety in an on the ground dating service then there is on the Internet.

What do you think of Internet dating?
I think that Internet dating will always have a place. I think that they’re very attractive to men because they’re able to scroll through and look at all of these pictures of women. Men are very visual. For women, it could become a fun hobby to just scroll through. It’s so inexpensive and I think for a lot of people its just sheer entertainment value. But I think people are turning to on- the-ground dating services because they want to have more one on one contact. Often, they need coaching and direction and they want to meet more quality people.

How do you currently work with Internet dating sites?
We don’t.

How would you like to? How do you think the industry could?
Certainly we’ve been contacted by a couple of different Internet dating sites. They wanted us to do their events program and possibly their dining program. We have talked with several of them. They could have an opportunity to be unique within their own industry and offer something specialized. So that can be a really nice marriage for us as well as, of course, it’s an opportunity to develop another lead source for us through their database.
 

myPartnerPerfect CEO, Patrick Perrine – OPW Interview

Posted on June 24, 2007

PatrickOPW INTERVIEW — June 24, 2007 — It’s Gay Pride! Time for an interview with the gay Hitch, Patrick H.Perrine, the CEO and Founder of myPartnerPerfect.com. – Mark Brooks

What is your background?
I originally started with St. John’s University where I studied psychology. My main focus was on human dating preferences, specifically drawing parallels from Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory research and Kinsey’s research on sexuality, then applying those to the LGBT community.

From there I continued on to get my Master’s in Human Sexuality Studies and started focusing again on the gay male population, doing counseling and working with individuals. Following my Master’s I continued on to get my PHD in Psychology.

myPartnerPerfect.com just launched. Why did you start myPartnerPerfect?
It was when I was doing my counseling for gay men that I uncovered that a lot of gay men, like myself, have issues based either around the lack of relationship or in the current relationships that they’re in. Once I started doing research as to how I could better serve these individuals through the counseling process, I uncovered that there really aren’t that many tools for gay men to develop healthy and happy relationships.

The online dating world was pretty void of any site that would help facilitate those relationships. That’s why I started the private matchmaking service to work with clients one-on-one to help them identify their needs and wants. We’re specifically going to work for them to develop that happy and healthy relationship that they’re seeking. That’s what brought us to today.

How does heterosexual compatibility testing differ from homosexual compatibility testing?
They’re very similar when you look at relationship styling, personality profiling and elements of relationship compatibility. The difference with gay men and with gay relationships is that there are a multitude of different cultural factors that go into how they seek and pursue a relationship.

I think one of the biggest differences we need to look at is that from the get go there aren’t too many relationships for gay people to identify with as they’re growing up, identifying and uncovering their sexuality.  There’s a major gap in representation. Just that alone affects the way that gay men are able to identify the appropriate relationship styling for them.

Who would you say are your competitors for myPartnerPerfect?
I think the direct competition for services like ours are going to be the comprehensive relationship based sites. Sites that offer profiling systems, compatibility systems that are, of course, focusing on the gay men market. I think Chemistry.com does a great job of presenting a relationship focus for the gay community unlike any other site. eHarmony obviously doesn’t provide these services for the gay community, which is what opened the door for myPartnerPerfect.

Are there any particular sites that have inspired you as you were working on myPartnerPerfect?
Definitely, eHarmony. I think eHarmony does a great job of presenting the message of commitment and there’s a large segment of the gay community that is looking for a long-term life partnership. The methodology that eHarmony uses, even though it is applied to heterosexual couples, is very similar to the methodology that myPartnerPerfect.com uses in the sense that we’re looking for compatibility based on a series of different dimensions. They were a good model for us.

In closing, what are your goals for 2007 through 2008?
Our goal is really to be able to position myPartnerPerfect as a sophisticated and classy website that caters to the gay population and not only is provides a lot of successful matches for that user base but also just presents a representation that’s different from the current online environment. We will let people know that gay individuals do, in fact, want to have committed relationships and that it does take work to make those relationships happen.

See all posts on myPartner

Marc Simoncini, Meetic CEO/Founder – Video Interview

Posted on June 17, 2007

OPW INTERVIEW — June 17, 2007 — Marc Simoncini's Meetic.com is taking on Match.com head on to become the pre-eminent matching service in Europe. Marc (French) knows Europe. He says that Meetic is different from other dating sites becuase Meetic merely promises 'dates' and that's a more European approach. But Marc hasn't stopped short of Europe, he's advancing on China now. In an acquisitions spat earlier this year, Meetic acquired Yeeyoo in January and Match acquired eDodo in China, and picked up Netclub around the same time to take a stronger position in Meetic's back yard, in France. Here's my video interview with Marc at the Asian internet dating conference. – Mark Brooks

Thomas Enraght-Moony, Match.com CEO – OPW Exclusive

Posted on June 8, 2007

Match_ceoOPW INTERVIEW — June 8, 2007 — Match.com continues to go from strength to strength. Here’s a summary of key financials from the last three years.xls. Here’s my interview with the new CEO, Thomas Enraght-Moony. – Mark Brooks

The new Chemistry.com TV ad campaign is the most competitively aggressive campaign I’ve ever seen in the online dating industry. Why are you gunning for eHarmony?
Oh I wouldn’t say that Mark. It’s a lighthearted playful campaign based on factual statements that pokes a little fun at our competitors. But I think the broader point is that Chemistry is a product that is built on a value proposition that we call ‘Come as you are.’

The nature of relationships in 21st Century America is changing and we don’t think it’s for us to prescribe to somebody what the right kind of relationship is. We think it’s up to the person looking for a relationship to define what success means for them and that’s one of the underlying philosophical basis’ on which we built Chemistry. We’re very pleased with the results so far.

Earlier this year you introduced a pilot platinum program out of Dallas. How is the Match Platinum program going for you?
We’re very pleased with the early results and we’ve seen good response to this product. One of the things that is tremendously exciting for us is the insight and information that it gives us into our customers. Having someone from Match who is in daily contact with people seeking a relationship is a little different than what we’ve ever had with the online side of the business. So we’re really pleased with the early results and it’s a great source of customer information too.

What major hurdles do you think Match.com, and the market as a whole, will need to go through as you work towards building Match.com into a billion dollar a year company?
When I think about taking Match to being a billion dollar business, I think about doing it in two ways. The first way is we’re going to execute on our current strategy of product innovation based on customer insights.  So whether it’s a service like MatchTalk that we added last year, the Dr. Phil Mind Find Bind program, our platinum pilot, and Chemistry.com, these are all products that are driven by profound customer insight and which are aimed to help us further penetrate the category in the United States. There are over 92 million single people in the US and about 3 million or fewer are paying for some kind of online dating service. I think there’s a tremendous amount of runway ahead of us here in the US market. 

The second area of growth is in the international markets. The recent acquisition of eDodo in China and Net Club in France are examples of how we’re expanding internationally. We’ve got tremendous traction in all of the other countries that we are in as well. 

Do you see social networks as posing a threat or offering an opportunity? And how would you say the online dating and social networking industries might be able to work with each other?
I see the social networks as offering a real opportunity for Match. They bring more people online; they get more people to engage online. They get people comfortable with online. And what we know from our research is that social networks are a tremendous way for people to keep in contact with people they already know. There are huge benefits to being on the social networks. But what we also know at Match is that our only focus is on helping someone find a relationship. We created this industry when we launched Match in 1995 and we give customers the best opportunity to find a relationship that they’re looking for. From the upfront screening that we do with profiles to make sure that the people on Match are real to our advanced matching algorithms. Everyone in this building that comes to work every day is focused on nothing but helping people find the relationship they’re looking for. Match is complimentary to social networks. Social networks are a fast growing acquisition channels for us.

What’s your primary measurement of success right now?
When I talk about how do you get this to be a billion dollar company, it’s about driving more people into the category. That’s the primary metric that I look at for long term success of the business: Are we bringing enough new people into the market with innovative products and services? That’s how I measure our success.

Dr Song Li, SinoFriends Founder/CEO – Video Interview

Posted on June 6, 2007

OPW INTERVIEW — June 6, 2007 — Dr Song Li is Founder/CEO of SinoFriends.com a.k.a. 96333.com, the oldest online dating service in China. He also runs Yeskee.com, one of the leading social networks. Here’s my video interview with Dr Li, the father of online dating in China. See About Us page at SinoFriends. – Mark Brooks

Dr. Li can you tell us more about the site that you run?
I'm the founder of SinoFriends Inc., which operates an online dating site 96333.com. We started about 2 years ago and now we have a database of about 5 million registered users. It's a paid online dating site with a business models similar to business models in the West. It's free to search and pay-to-communicate. Most of our paid users are professionals over 30 years old. We are based in Shenzhen, which is right across the river from Hong Kong.

How much are people paying on the site?
Our price is 999 RMB per year ($140) and we only offer yearly subscriptions. One of the major reasons that we do that is because in China most people don't have credit cards so therefore it's not possible to set up auto renewals, so we offer the annual fee. 

Michael Jones, Userplane CEO – OPW Interview

Posted on June 2, 2007

MikejonesOPW INTERVIEW — June 2, 2007 — Michael Jones is CEO of Userplane and VP at AOL. AOL acquired Userplane last August. Userplane offers instant messaging  and chat tool with text, voice and video capability, for online communities.  A web recorder for users to record voice and video, a site search tool, and a Desktop user presence tool. Userplane has come a long way, and it’s tools are now best in class, reliable and scalable. – Mark Brooks

What are Userplane’s biggest clients to date?
Well looking at network usage overall, we have a few top tenors, PlentyofFish being one. MySpace uses a tremendous volume of our products, Spark Networks uses a tremendous amount, and Date.com. Currently our client base ranges from major brand names down to small, completely unknown websites. There’s around 1,500 clients in our integrated portfolio.

Did you have to customize the Userplane service for many of your clients?
No, they typically use the API driven application as it stands. When clients have specific needs we slate their requests for development for a future release and then we work with them on those timelines. For instance, we’re doing some large media partnerships with companies like NBC that have some specific needs. But in general, everybody works off the same API driven version, which makes it very scalable and very safe for everybody. We have a centralized hosting center that hosts all of our applications in basically the same cluster. So if NBC is using it or MySpace is using it they’re all pulling from the same network. 

What improvements have you made to improve scalability?
We upgraded our network substantially and added a substantial amount of redundancy in the standard application service. We’re now working on opening up a point of presence internationally to diversify some of our bandwidth. We architected quite a bit of our system to be able to deal with large volumes of overflow or unexpected traffic bursts, as MySpace is growing. We implemented a better system to balance out the volume. So if a client starts with us on a 10 connection package and then they suddenly bump up and they’re hitting 5,000 or 10,000 connections we can actually handle that unexpected jump. At this point, we can handle MySpace size traffic and AOL size traffic.

Why are you offering an ad-supported version?
We’re using what we love to term as the “freemium model.” We have premium services, which are not ad-supported, but then we also have free services that are ad-supported. We had so many clients move over to ad-based websites, they were expecting large volumes of traffic growth and they didn’t want to have cost associated with our services. Even a large Userplane client on a premium model may only be paying us $10,000 or $20,000 a month, if they are extremely large. Our hope is to be able to open up a revenue sharing system back to all of our clients and become a key portion of their revenue. That’s what we’ve really been working towards.

What sort of CPM’s rates are you charging for advertising on Userplane products?
Anywhere between a dollar, up to tens of dollars for video ad units. It depends. We have in-house ad sales here that handle a lot of requests and we also work with AOL media groups that take care of monetizing some of our traffic as well.

Can a site customize the kind of ads that will appear on their Userplane services?
Yes. It’s customized automatically through preferences you select in the set up process for the instant install services. If you don’t like particular ads showing, you can email us the ad ID’s you want pulled, or if you want a specific type of category shown you can notify us and we can make sure we’re only showing that category.

What new products and developments do you have in the works Mike?
We just rolled out our integrated user list, which is a new type of buddy list for our integrated clients. That’s pretty exciting. It’s a fun list that shows when your friends are online, or the people you’re interested in are online. The sites that have started playing with it now are seeing substantially longer engagement times for their users, and a better frequency of communication between their users.

We are also pushing out a new version of our desktop application called Userplane Desktop. Originally we saw the desktop application as being a component of IM to allow people to generate IM’s down to the user’s desktop. That’s definitely one feature of it, but we found that the clients that were deploying it most successfully and were getting the most usage out of it were actually using it primarily for alerts to say you have a new email to view, somebody has marked you as a friend, somebody is interested in meeting you, and driving traffic back to their website. This is actually the first product that we’ve ever had that has really driven external traffic back to the website. Most of our products are about increasing user engagement once you’re at the website. So we think this is actually going to be a pretty fundamental shift for us and also really improve our client’s traffic patterns.

Clients so far that have used it have had impressive adoption rates. Its definitely at a point that a lot of the fears that our clients had about users downloading an application are being shown as unfounded. If users love your community they probably will download a desktop application, install it, and be pleased if you tell them, “Hey there’s this activity and you should jump in right now and find your friend” or “You should jump in right now to respond to this message.” I think that’s being welcomed.

Dominic Penaloza, WorldFriends Networks CEO – Video Interview

Posted on May 31, 2007

OPW — May 31, 2007 — I interviewed Dominic at the Asian internet Dating and Social Networking Conference. He runs a white label dating service to help existing sites launch their own dating services. The equivalent of category leaders Vintacom and WhiteLabelDating, but for Asia. – Mark Brooks

What can you do for people who are interested in starting their own Internet dating site?
We help them with the greatest challenge they will ever face, which is (getting to a) critical mass of users.  There's nothing worse then an empty bar or an empty dating site. Our partners today instantly have 1.2 million users in their database by joining our network. In addition to that we provide customer service, and the technology as well.

What are your primary target customers? Do you mainly focus on Asia?
Yes we are very focused on Asia, Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. We are the only private label operator in Asia operating in the Asian languages and the Asian currencies. We have almost 300 partners now. So.net, which is Sony, japan-guide.com, japanzone.com, shanghaiexpat.com. Look at worldfriendsnetwork.com to see a list of our partners.

Greg Pierson, iovation Founder & CEO – OPW Interview

Posted on May 26, 2007

Iovationlogo OPW INTERVIEW — May 26, 2007 — For the last three years at the internet dating and social networking conference I’ve heard requests for a service for sharing scammer IP addresses amongst dating companies. I never quite got around to setting up such a sharing service. Instead, I’d like to introduce you to iovation. They provide a device fingerprinting and and sharing service that goes way beyond the simple scammer IP address list sharing service I’d considered setting up. – Mark Brooks

What does iovation do?
We are the device reputation authority for the Internet. We’re building a real time platform that an online entity can reach out to understand something about the reputation of the laptops, PDA’s, cell phones, the physical devices that consumers use to connect to the web and ultimately to an online service.

The founders of iovation founded a previous business that we sold in 2004 for several hundred million dollars. The technology that under pins what Iovation is doing today was really born in this company.

How does iovation work?
We track every device that is used to connect to an online service and identify that device uniquely in the world, not unique to network A but unique period. When that device, in the future, connects to network B, network C, etc. we will still see it as the same unique device (laptop 101, for sake of discussion).

In addition to identifying devices uniquely in the world, we associate logins to a network to all the physical devices that they ever used to connect to that platform. When an account causes a problem on a network, understanding device to account relationships helps you understand all other accounts and all other devices related to that problem. Now what a network can do is associate the problem that occurred through account Bob but not just stop there. They can then understand all the physical devices that account Bob has ever used to connect to their network. They can then understand all other accounts that have ever used those devices and you can see how this could go from there. Account to multiple devices to multiple accounts to other devices, etc. We are identifying an entire collection of accounts and devices related through common log ins.

Many abusers of online retailers, social networks, and dating services require consumption of massive numbers of accounts. And generally speaking good Internet citizens don’t have that same type of behavior. So far first starters device to account relationships help identify potential problems that require investigation.  More valuable is that we stop the revolving door that exists on those networks. When most networks experience a problem with an account, they simply close the account, the problem is it doesn’t really do anything. So the actual individual behind that abusive account isn’t prevented from coming right back and potentially getting another chair, I mean right back into the network through the same computer and setting up another fraudulent identity and repeating the behavior you’re trying to stop in the first place.

So what we are doing again through this platform we’re building is help organizations to better understand all related accounts and devices and shut them all off and prevent them from coming back and continuing the abuse.

Most important of all, we share reputation; we share the problems that are experienced with physical devices across all of the networks that use our platform. So if a computer is associated with say posting inappropriate content at site A, if in several months down the road that same computer attaches to a different social network, even if that computer has never before connected to that second social network, they will be made aware of the problem that occurred on network A, if they’re both subscribers to our system.  They get to make a better business decision as to what to do. It doesn’t mean they have to deny access, it just means they will be informed of that fact and they get to make a business call.

What industries do you work with? 
We have a strong presence in the gaming industry, so massive multi-player online games.  We’re also strong in financial services and e-commerce/online retail.

How can you help online dating companies specifically?
We have both online dating services and social networks coming to us with different issues but the issues are related to behavioral problems more than financial problems. Those networks, of course, some of them take financial transactions and when there are financial transactions taking place virtually there’s generally a use of financial instruments. So we can certainly help address that problem. (credit card chargebacks, for example).

But the thing that is unique to social networks and online dating services is that some of the abuses taking place there are not finance related, they are behavior related, posting of inappropriate content for example, stalking kids or using a platform to spam other accounts, using a platform to perpetrate other types of fraud against members, the so called Nigerian scam for example. So those types of non-financial related frauds aren’t addressed by many of the other risk mitigation platforms. And while the cost may not be “financial” in terms of actual dollars and cents; it is indeed financial if it affects the reputation of the site—and creates a sense of lost confidence in the safety of the site. This of course then can mushroom, and affect the reputation of the entire industry—so this is more than just an individual network problem; it’s a macro problem facing the entire online dating industry.

So I believe the reason there’s been tremendous interest among social networks and dating sites for what we’re doing is that we happen to have a platform that, in fact, helps stop the revolving door that exists relating to behavioral abuses and behavioral problems of those networks. Our system works the same way for say preventing the posting of inappropriate content at a social network or using a dating site to spam other members as it does when it’s being used by an online retail site to stop the passing of stolen credit cards. Same exact technology implemented in the same exact way, used exactly the same way, it’s just that it’s being targeted to stop one type of abuse in one vertical and a different type of abuse in another vertical but it’s the same platform.  So we’re allowing clients to share the information across multiple industries. And interestingly, we’re seeing very interesting cross-over; namely, a device associated with credit card fraud at a traditional eCommerce site that is trying to establish an account at a dating site. This is potentially very predictive information.

Ultimately, we don’t make the decision as to whether a device is allowed to set up accounts or post content or interact or transact with a site. We allow each of our subscribers to set up rules that are unique to each of their businesses. We follow rules that are unique to our subscribers. That’s a very important distinction.
The other thing that is very important to understand is you don’t have to share to use our service. So we do have, although it’s a very small number,  but a few of our current customers don’t share. That is an option. The catch is if they don’t share they don’t get the benefit of seeing device reputation data from other subscribers..

Can you work with other device print vendors?
Yes, although we haven’t had this come up. We’ve never been asked to do that but we are certainly open to it. What makes us valuable is our reputation authority. We believe that we do device printing as well if not better then anybody else in the world. But the real value of what we are building is a reputation authority. If we had a potential customer that had their own device printing technique or they liked the device printing solution of some other organization, we would be happy to try and incorporate that.

How many devices do you currently have on record?
I believe the current number is 8 ½ million.

Over how many years?
Iovation is in its 3rd year as a company; but the device reputation database was established five years ago (going back to our previous company), and has been growing from there.

What are iovation’s goals for 2007 with the online personals industry?
In ’07 we want to have a marquee subscriber to our service that we can work with as a partner to understand the issues that are unique to that vertical and make sure that we can understand those problems and can work with other social networks as a partner.

This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch

Jason Tian, Baihe.com CEO – Video Interview

Posted on May 25, 2007

OPW — May 25, 2007 — I’ve yet to see online services successfully integrate traditional matchmaking services. They need to. They’re leaving money on the table. Users want choice AND service, and are willing to pay for it. Actually, the nearest I’ve seen so far is the MyPartnerPerfect.com service which will go live in the next few hours. It’s niche targeted at the gay male population. I know The Right One/Together Dating is looking for online partners now. Here’s my interview with Jason Tian, who has been quietly pioneering an online/offline amalgamation of services in China with Baihe.com, the eHarmony of China. I conducted four video interviews at the Asian internet dating and social networking conference. Here’s the first one. Click on the image to play the video. – Mark Brooks

Can you tell me more about your new pricing system and matchmaking services?
At first we wanted to allow the user free profiling and free search or free match. But if they want to communicate they need to upgrade to a membership. That's what we needed to understand. But after we tried it for 9 months we found it very difficult to work in China because there are some people who want to pay but the percentage is much lower than in the U.S.

We found that users pay a lot for offline matchmakers. They pay thousands of U.S. dollars. So want to combine the off line and online. When we changed the pricing model we also hired some matchmakers. They interview the customers and do identity verification and recommend matches. But compared with the offline matchmakers, we have a very large online user base and can provide more high quality matches to them.

With the online model the users are reluctant to pay 30 RMB ($4) a month but for this offline model they will pay up to 30,000 RMB ($4,000).  So our average pricing is 5,000 RMB ($700) per user.

After 3 to 4 months of service, 30%  to 40% of our web users find somebody they want to stay with for at least several months and there are many couples that get married. So we deliver a high service with a high success rate and privacy protection and the users feel they are well treated. So that's why the users want to pay us.

But the difficulty for us is making it scalable. You can have good love consultants but how to manage hundreds of love consultants and still deliver service at a common standard. So we built a training program and a CRM system and we have an independent QA team. By the end of this quarter we will have established the majority of the services and infrastructure, including the IT system, the training system, the people system and some of the branding. So that's our new model. Of course, I think there is a gap. We need to develop a medium tier.  So that's what we want to try.

What is your regular online pricing?
Current pricing online is zero but they can upgrade to 1,000 RMB ($140), which allows them to use the matching system. A self service system. Then there's the gold membership, which is 3,600 RMB ($500). Our consultants will recommend the matches to them. Then there is a platinum service around 7,000 RMB ($1000) for the users have very high requirements. The highest price is something like a headhunters service. They pay 30,000 RMB ($4,000) and we will help them find someone. If we cannot do it in one year, we will return 2/3's of the fee. So that's our current pricing scheme but I think we can have something between that zero  and the 1,000 RMB. Maybe 100 RMB. I think a mid tier service will attract more users and will be more scalable.

How do users communicate with the matchmakers?
The majority of the communication happens through the telephone and at the beginning we may interview them face to face.

Saïd Amin, World Singles CEO – OPW Interview

Posted on May 24, 2007

SadOPW INTERVIEW — May 24, 2007 — This is the fourth in a series of five interviews I recently conducted on the subject of scamming. Saïd Amin runs World Singles, which includes such sites as ArabLounge.com, EligibleGreeks.com, HyeSingles.com, IranianPersonals.com and SoulSingles.com. – Mark Brooks

What kind of scamming do you encounter on World Singles?
Most of the scammers originate from Africa and parts of the Middle East, but they are increasingly working with people in the USA/Canada. I think that scammers are a big problem for the entire industry. They pose as someone they are not, usually as a very attractive male or female and prey on unsuspecting members This is usually done by showing interest in those members via a flirt/email or by waiting for someone to contact them first. The more aggressive scammers will buy memberships and usually proceed to send a bevy of emails.

Scammer networks have since become more sophisticated. Two years ago it was a lot easier to review profiles and detect them. They have become more sophisticated with how they cover up their profiles. For example, we identify blocks of IP addresses originating from certain countries as high risk and take a second hard look at those profiles. Nowadays we are seeing an increasing number of profiles from USA/Canada based members that are also being logged in from IP addresses in other countries. So it’s essentially someone overseas working with someone in the States who, let’s say, has an AOL or Comcast account, and are working in tandem. It makes it more difficult for us to detect them. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are overseas scammer conferences or published books available on the black market that cover scamming 101 tips and strategies.

How serious is this scamming issue?
How serious? Every dating site is plagued by scammer activity; some sites and niches attract more scammers than others. I think one scammer is one too many. Singles are bravely taking ownership for their journey, posting a dating profile and putting themselves out there in the hopes of increasing their chances for finding a romantic partner. Members who join dating sites are trusting us to help them find a partner in a safe environment. Scammers, work to undermine this trust with our brand and the dating industry as a whole.

I agree and that’s my next question actually, what kind of effect do you think it has on the industry for the long term?
It hurts the industry but it is also an opportunity because it increases the value of the companies who diligently invest time and energy to ensure a safe space for singles to meet. I think that a lot of sites in the dating sector are not responsible enough in how they address scammers as far as educating their members and being transparent when scammer emails are sent and read by unsuspecting members.

When catching a scammer we suspend their profile, remove the messages that they sent and replace them with a message explaining that they have received an email from a person/scammer who is posing as someone he/she is not. There’s certainly a PR hit when this occurs; a member may have invested time emailing back and forth and now the site is recommending that they cease all communication with this individual whom we suspect to be scammer. Talk about taking the air out of a balloon of someone who may have been really excited at his or her initial communiqué with a member. Some members appreciate our proactive nature, but generally speaking there’s still a PR hit. Nevertheless, I feel that this is a responsible way to address such cases. I rather be up front with our members rather than brushing it under the rug and let our members continue emailing back forth on or off the site and risk getting scammed out of money, time, and emotions.

What else are you doing right now to combat scammers?
We double check every membership sold and review screened profiles with high risk IP addresses a second time. The same applies to profiles that have been accessed by multiple IP addresses.  There are some internal tools that we use to help us and are looking to companies like Iovation for additional measures to assist us in eliminating scammer activity.

What time does scamming take from your day?
It takes up time and resources. From dealing with charge backs, reviewing IP addresses, profiles, double checking the profile/billing details for sold memberships etc., we spend a few hours each day on this.

How do you think the industry can work together to combat scammers?
The idea has been floated around by others, but it would be great to have one company that specializes in cleaning out databases or one place where all dating site operators can share banned IP addresses, email addresses, pictures, nicknames, etc. Doing so would behoove dating operators, the dating industry as a whole and most importantly, help protect our members.

What do you think the industry would pay?
I can’t speak for others but we are open to spending a good chunk of money for a service that would help fight scammer activity. The price points for such services should be determined by their value, as defined by a decrease in charge backs and overall effectiveness in catching paid/non paid scammers. Preventing scammers from joining our niche dating sites is of utmost importance and something we take pride in addressing on a daily basis. I have a responsibility to protect our members from scammers and while I’m probably not going to bat 100%, I’m striving for 100% nonetheless.