All Interviews – Page 30 – Online Personals Watch

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

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

OPW 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.

Kevin Greene, AnotherFriend CEO – OPW Interview

Posted on May 18, 2007

OPW INTERVIEW — May 18, 2007 — Kevin Greene is the CEO of Ireland's leading internet dating site, AnotherFriend.com. This is the second of five OPW interviews on the subject of scamming in the internet dating industry. – Mark Brooks

What kind of scammers do you normally encounter in Europe and Ireland?
Firstly, someone dies and they have stashed away $30 million and if you send over some money they can transfer the money into your account and you get 50%. These scammers will send messages to hundreds and hundreds of members. The second is the Russian angle. A girl develops relationships with a number of men on the site and basically tries to scam them for cash. “I’m trying to get my ticket to come over to Ireland and I don’t have enough money for the ticket,” etc. Those are the main two types of scams that we’ve come across.

Is scamming a serious issue?
For us, we probably catch it pretty quickly and if we don’t catch it pretty quickly our members will let us know. It’s more of a problem for customer support when we get a 100 emails in from our members saying that somebody is scamming. It’s also an issue if we catch a scammer and delete their emails. Then we have members saying, “I got a notification that I had this email in my inbox and its not there, where is it?” So from customer support point of view, it’s a lot of time but if we can catch it quickly it saves that problem.

Is it affecting your site’s reputation?
To a certain extent. Where we have some problems is in chargebacks because scammers will generally come in and pay straight away, then we get chargebacks. Obviously, we lose money and we get kind of fined for the chargebacks. Our gateway only allows so many chargebacks before they could possibly cut us off. That’s a big, big issue. Probably about 50% of the chargebacks tend to be from scammers.

So you could half your charge back rate if you didn’t have any scammers?
Yes. We would catch a lot of them but sometimes they actually come in and set up an account and upgrade and leave it for a month or two before they actually do anything with it. So it’s very hard to catch them at that stage.

Generally speaking what are you doing right now to combat scammers?
We have a number of different things that we’re doing. We block IP address based on location. Our membership primarily comes from Ireland and a certain percentage from the US, the UK, and Australia. We block pretty much the whole of Africa, Russia and a few other places. That certainly has reduced our chargebacks by 80%. Now people still get through because they could be in the US or whatever, which is a bit harder.

The other thing we do is we scan for certain keywords in the mail and if it matches the criteria we’ll stop the mail. The mail will never be sent but the person sending it thinks it is. They can see everybody but nobody can see them. I know a number of sites that are using that system and I would say it’s pretty common in the industry. If they’re in the ‘ghost table’ and they try to make a payment a page will just keep saying the card was rejected. We also have triggers. If an extreme amount of mail is being sent by a particular user. If its over a certain number of emails in a certain time period it rings an alarm bell somewhere.

What would you save if you could eradicate scamming?
If we had no system, it would be a lot of revenue. We have a pretty good system in here at the moment very few get through. What I would worry about is the problems that we would have with Mastercard or Visa.

How can the industry work together to combat scammers?
One is educating the users, but the problem with educating them is you don’t want to scare them either, especially if they’re new to online dating. I think it’s important that your customer service is pretty much on the ball and you have systems in place that minimize scamming activity. I think it would be great if there was a central resource whereby the industry as a whole got together. But the problem is anyone I’ve talked to is very secretive about what they’re doing. Personally, I reckon everyone’s doing the same thing but no one’s saying what they’re doing. It’s kind of surprising that people still fall for scammers. It happens though.

Nelson Rodriguez, Love Access CEO – OPW Interview

Posted on May 15, 2007

OPW INTERVIEW — May 16, 2007 — Scammers are a proverbial pain in the neck for internet dating and social networking companies. Over the next ten days I’ll list five interviews on your least favorite subject matter. These will be slow news days while I’m at the Asian Internet Dating Conference. Nelson Rodriguez is CEO of LoveAccess, along with TogetherChristian.com and MatchRanger.

What kind of scamming do you encounter?
Primary scamming comes in three flavors. The first flavor is the typical Nigerian Ghana. Over the last 6 months to a year, they’ve changed tactics. They say they are either a traveling businessman and they’re overseas or they’re a young girl overseas. They befriend people and instantly fall in love with their target. Then there’s the tragic event that occurs. Their mother’s very sick back in the States and they don’t have enough money to go travel back or they were coming home from work and they were mugged and had their rent money stolen and they’re going to be thrown out by their landlord.

The second set of scams is where they’re basically trying to find targets for mail drops. The scammer will make up some story where they are traveling abroad and they have an important package, something happened (e.g. their laptop failed) and they need to get it delivered, and they need someone they can trust that can sign for it and forward it over to them wherever they are. (The merchant ships the laptop before discovering the purchase was made off a stolen credit card. The forwarder sends the laptop on to the scammer in Nigeria, etc. The forwarder may be liable for the laptop).

Then there’s the Russian mail order bride scammers, which fall into two distinct groups. There’s the one set where a girl will string “x” number of men along at one time, befriend them, talk to them on the phone, instant message them, then the tragic event occurs where they need some financial assistance. Then there’s actually a second set which is quasi-legitimate. There are actual dating agencies in Russia who charge top dollar, I mean ridiculous amounts of money, for these Russian women to find them American men. So basically the girl comes down to the dating office and signs up for whatever service and the agency then goes and floods all the dating sites with their profiles to get the correspondence going immediately to their Yahoo or Hotmail addresses. So the girl pretty much doesn’t know anything about where this person was contacted. They go to the office, because most of them don’t even have computers, open up their Hotmail account and they correspond back and forth. So the dating agencies in Russia use our dating sites to basically spam everybody to try and get a few leads for these girls.

The majority of scammers are just looking for money. And then the other form of abuse we encounter, which is not a scam per se but still a problem for us, where our site is used for credit card verifications. What happens is, they want to buy something at a Best Buy or Circuit City or something and these guys need to make sure that when the transaction goes through its perfect the first time around. So they’ll basically just run credit cards on us first before they go make their big purchase. This is a problem for us. We end up voiding the transaction if we catch it in time but the sad part is there’s no mechanism to be able to report to Visa or Mastercard or Amex that this is a very suspicious transaction and we believe that this credit card could be compromised. There’s no recourse for it. So there is no repercussions for them to use us. That’s really problematic because if we get enough of those we could lose our merchant account.

Have you encountered much in the way of affiliate scamming?
There’s always some scam they’re trying. And even the affiliate scamming guys have gotten really, really good. Before they would just go at it with a brute force method and all of a sudden make 500 accounts in one day. Now they’ll make 2 or 3 accounts every day and they’ll spread them out over the day. The CPA’s that we have to pay these days is very significant. Any affiliate program we use we pretty much have to assume we’re going to have to write off 10% to 15%.

Is that worthwhile for them?
Yeah I mean look if you make 10 profiles a day you know its $40 a day in commissions times 30 and, especially overseas, $40 a day turns into a lot of money. So like I said it’s not that hard, it takes a matter of 2 minutes to make a profile and they’ve gotten very, very, very good at doing it.

How much worse has scamming gotten and how serious of an issue is it?
I don’t think the levels have really changed much. It’s always been just a part of the business that you deal with. But as a percentage of the business as a whole it’s actually very small. You figure maybe 5% or even less of the profiles are fraudulent but that small percentage causes a lot of headache because in order to catch the 5% you have to scan the 95% to make sure everything is good and that’s what adds to all the operational overhead that we get. It’s very frustrating to catch that 5%.

Beyond the financial effects the scammers have, how do they affect your site’s reputation?
Oh it’s terrible. People send us customer service emails, ‘well I’m thinking about upgrading but I don’t know if this person is real or not.’ It’s not good for a business if the consumer isn’t confident what they’re getting is legitimate. Then it becomes very problematic because let’s say the person upgrades and then we catch the scammer, they’ve upgraded and the account they were trying to contact is basically banned, and these people are frustrated. They get very upset and then question anything and any kind of contact throughout the whole site. It leads to a full loss of confidence. If you’re getting let’s say five emails today and three of them are coming in from scammers, any reasonable person is just going to assume that all of them are fraudulent and basically you’re going to sign off the site. It hurts both sides and ultimately we’re the main losers here. It’s definitely a big problem.

We’re offering matchmaking services and doing background checks and that’s been very, very effective in keeping the scammers away. Most of them won’t come through but a couple of them have tried. They still try. They’re very, very aggressive and they’re always looking for new creative avenues.

You have to remember one thing with these guys, this is how they make their living. They have nothing to do all day long except try to figure out how to beat the system, work around it, and look for any holes in the armor. So they have every single advantage while we’re at a complete disadvantage. I’m focused on building services and quality into the site, not trying to figure out how to stop scammers.

How much time does it take from your teams day?
We have one person who manually reviews each and every single credit card transaction. And then we have a couple of people that review every single profile that comes through the system. Like I said, as they get better they slip through. You can only be so proactive and then you have to be reactive and wait for customer feedback. They’ll say, “Hey there’s something with this profile, check it out.” And then you can go in there. We’re always at a disadvantage waiting to react rather then trying to nip it in the butt before it becomes a problem.

How can the industry work together to combat scammers?
We could have some sort of common database that we can run like a hash on say an email address and IP address or something and compare it against the database and say, this IP address and this email address have made 40 accounts on 20 different dating sites today. But still it’s a lot of work. While valuable who wants to spend the money and time to do it.

How high on the priority list should it be for the industry to stamp out this problem?
It’s a daily priority for us. It’s built into operations. Like I said if it affects 5% of the business it’s not that ‘big’ of a problem. But is it a top priority? Of course it is, it always has to be. We have to work Saturday a
nd Sundays because those scammers realize that on the weekends we were staffed less. So they would start working much harder on Friday nights and Saturday mornings to try to get some mileage out ahead of us, until Monday morning. We had to put on weekend people.

Erik Neraal, Plutolife CEO – MobileDatingWatch Interview

Posted on May 6, 2007

MDW INTERVIEW — May 5, 2007 — Plutolife loves mobile dating (MobiloveTM) and is the company behind several well known mobile dating services. Beyond that it also offers speed dating (Mobiflirt) and a picture dating product (Mobimodels). – Mark Brooks

How much can dating companies make with mobile dating?
Pay-outs vary a lot depending on the country, regulations and the operator pay outs. In North America and Europe we get 15 to 33 Euros of average revenue per user (ARPU), generated over the course of 3 to 4 months average user lifetime. The carriers take a cut of 40% to 70%. Carrier cuts in Europe are less aggressive than in America. The ARPU also depends on the country. Some countries have very strict regulations on the way you can price and bill customers while most leave it to us.

What factors should dating companies consider in their selection of mobile dating enabler?
The experience and commitment of the mobile dating company is most important. The experience because there are lots of hurdles and regulations that can knock you over in different countries. Look at the international track record of the partner. Plutolife has rolled out mobile community services in 22 countries. And that’s something that is not easy to do because you’re talking multiple languages, different cultures and a wide range of technical capability. Your mobile dating partner needs to know how to deal with multiple networks per country and multiple billing systems per country. The last thing, and tough thing is understanding the cultural differences because you want to run the most efficient marketing campaign in every country.

What branding and advertising strategies have been successful in the past for you?
Having a strong online brand will make it relatively easy to convince mobile operators to provide a good position on their mobile Internet pages. However, “off deck,” activity is becoming increasingly important and lucrative. We create many simplified WAP versions of a web portal specific to mobile community installations. For advertising, you’re TV and radio on youth oriented TV stations. You’re talking web advertising, Google ads, banners, other search engines, etc. What is on the decrease, we’ve noticed, is the “quick print ad.” The return of these kinds of investments is going down. Consumers are now looking for new types of marketing stimulation.

Also, there are a range of advertising opportunities specific to each country in Europe. For instance, in most Scandinavian countries Teletext is usually efficient. If you know how to play with it, it’s one of the most profitable advertising investments you can make. In Ireland and the UK, I didn’t believe teletext would be as good as in Scandinavia but it looks like it is. In Southern Europe teletext doesn’t really fly but other media like print seems to be more efficient than in Northern Europe. We have tried radio and TV focused on local markets, if possible, or focused on youth markets. MTV is a good example. We have bought several thousand spots on MTV in Scandinavia, Norway and Sweden and it works nicely.

Do you have any market numbers you can share for any of your markets?
We have a very strong position in Norway, for instance with a thriving mobile dating activity. I just looked at the stats this morning again. In Norway we have a base of 300,000 registered users. That’s out of a population of 4.2 million. Not all are active, of course. We have over 1 million users total worldwide including the USA.

What makes Scandinavia such a hotbed for you?
Norway and Sweden are dream markets because the mobile industry is open. Mobile operators are “copeting.” They’re not restricting competition or putting up mobile “walled gardens.” They are not creating artificial walls but allowing each other’s customers to subscribe to content where they want to; as a result they’ve created quite an amazing mobile content market. It’s equal to 900 million krones just for Norway, so let me do the division, you want it in dollars? You’re talking $150 million dollars (i.e. $35 mobile content spend per year per subscriber). We were the first to offer mobile dating here and we are the leader but we’re not alone anymore, we have a few competitors, but that’s good because, in fact, it helps develop the market. We have got a better position then the competitors because we convince the main operators here that we are a thriving community, so we move up on their mobile Internet (WAP) pages.

What will you and Plutolife do in the next year to rock the world of mobile dating in Europe and USA?
One thing, we plan on doing is integration. Handsets are getting more and more advanced, so they can be a natural extension of online communities, whether it’s dating or chatting or blogging, we’ll be there. We’ll do it over multiple handset technologies (e.g. SMS, mobile Internet and Java) because we need to be able to address the whole mobile market. You can’t confine yourself to only having a java solution, if only 10-15% of mobile owners will use a java download. We guide them little by little through the different technologies and let them pick the best one for them.

What technology are you most excited about for the future?
I dream of the day when there is so much technology embedded in the mobile phone that you can use it almost as if you were on your laptop. I think we’re going to go that way. I think people who are major online players, whether they are dating players or community players, like MSN or Yahoo or MySpace are going to push for that and that’s going to have a very healthy effect on the whole industry. This reminds me of the days when we went from narrow band to broadband on the Internet and suddenly there was a second burst of the Internet because all kinds of new usage exploded. Sharing video is now hot on the Internet and nobody dreamed about that 4 or 5 years ago. It’s possible because of the broadband explosion. The same with mobile, high speeds and third generation and fourth generation speeds and more powerful handsets will enable more and more video sharing. Right now it’s a little bit like wishful thinking, but it will happen.

This interview also appears on Mobile Dating Watch