THE GUARDIAN – Apr 7 – Ukraine's internet romance industry is booming, despite the unrest. Odessa is the biggest hub. There are legions of western men in town meeting with young women they have met online. Anastasia International is one of the companies organizing romance tours to Odessa. Men pay for every minute they chat online to a woman and ~$5K for a week in Odessa hoping to find a wife. Many of the men on the tour are patently unrealistic. The majority of them fall victim to a number of sophisticated scams. Anastasia International, while not directly colluding in the scams, runs a highly profitable business model (annual projected revenue of $140M) that allows them to flourish. The company insists that it weeds out scams whenever it finds them, and has banned some women from the site. It also says it will reimburse clients who fall victims to scams, and provides advice on how to avoid them.
Category: All UK & Europe
Cupid Plc’s 2013 Annual Results
OPW – Apr 2 – 2013 has been a challenging year for Cupid plc with negative press on both Cupid and the online dating industry. In July Cupid completed the disposal of the casual assets removing ~70% of their revenue. Revenues including discontinued operations fell 31% to £56.1M (FY 2012: £80.9M) and adjusted EBITDA fell to £0.5M. Stripping out the discontinued operations, revenue for the continuing business was flat at £26.6M (FY 2012: £26.7M).
Secret Diamond Club Is Launching In UK
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK – Feb 24 - Secret Diamond Club is a dating site for beautiful women and wealthy men. It started in Demark in 2010 and has recently launched in the UK. The site was started by serial entrepreneur Gus Terkelsen, who has a rather controversial reason for his decision to launch in the UK, claiming rich British men can't find love as the women here are unattractive. It costs up to $100K a year for men to join, women pay less but have to meet the strict looks criteria of a panel of twenty ‘experts’ and submit three photographs, including a full body shot.
by Katy Winter
See full article at DailyMail.co.uk
850,000 UK People Are Cheating Online
MIRROR.CO.UK – Feb 23 – ~850K people (5% of UK's married population) have registered on IllicitEncounters.com, the UK's largest extra-marital dating site. Men as old as 94 and one 76-year-old woman are among those to have signed up. The youngest user is just 22. Illicitencounters.com has been slammed by The Marriage Foundation and a dad from Merseyside who is going through a divorce after his wife used a similar site.
by Richard Wheatstone
See full article at Mirror.co.uk
New German Dating Site Offers In-home Profile Creation
VOCATIV – Feb 18 – Two best friends, Annelie Kralisch-Pehlke and Jule Müller, launched a new dating site in Berlin, called "Im Gegenteil" (On the contrary). They go to the homes of singles, do interviews and take stylish photos. Then Anni writes up a description of the singleton, which reads more like a fun suggestion from a friend, while Jule puts together a group of photographs for the profile. They are cagey about how to monetize the site. “It sucks to take money from people who are searching for love,” says Anni. The response and traffic suggests they have something special on their hands.
by Joel Stonington
The full article was originally published at Vocativ, but is no longer available.
Online Dating Association Interview With CEO George Kidd
OPW INTERVIEW – Feb 18 – Germany has SPIN Kodex, a code for online dating sites that defines clear rules related to cancellations policy, recurring payments and privacy issues. UK has Online Dating Association (ODA) that gets standards in place. 13 UK internet dating companies are supporting the initiative now, including Match.com, eHarmony, FreeDating.co.uk, ChristianConnection.co.uk, DatingFactory and others. Here is our interview with George Kidd, the CEO of ODA.
What is ODA?
It’s a trade association for online dating businesses offering services to UK users. We work to set and maintain standards to protect users and to create a climate in which businesses can invest and innovate. We aim to inform and influence Government, regulators, the media and businesses on whom we have a reliance and close relationship.
Who are the founding members of ODA?
We had thirteen founders. This was an informal group of people who decided to take a lead in testing the case for an association and willing to put in the backing to get it off the ground. I am particularly grateful to Duncan Cunningham, our Chairman and his board; Jackie Elton, Karl Gregory, Julia Porter and Dan Winchester for their work.
How is it funded?
We have a hybrid funding model with a membership fee and a fixed payment for each site registered with ODA and carrying our logo and links.
We want to accommodate different business models including “white label”. We charge £50 per site alongside our core membership fee addressing the cost and complexity of dealing with a potentially very large and variable number of sites via the WL provider rather than each individual partner. But we do want to open membership to a broader set of those with interest and investment in the sector, including WL partners, IT, marketing, finance and other players.
What's your role and background George?
I had 20 years in Government, including time setting up the “Better Regulation Task Force and the Food Standards Agency. I worked on enforcement policy across Government and on deregulation drives in the leisure, employment and other sectors. I left over ten years ago to be CEO at PhonepayPlus, a telecoms content regulator.
I have been Chief Commissioner at the Direct Marketing Commission and Chair of UKPAC – the UK register of lobbyists. I have had non-exec board roles in legal services regulation and consulted for UK firms and an overseas government. I was British Consul in Chicago for four years promoting US investment in the UK.
Who's helping you?
eHarmony and Match and newer and niche sites like Muddy Matches, Lovestruck, Christian Connections and Would Like to Meet have helped with technical advice, media back-up, thoughts on funding models and ideas on what we and all members might be telling users when it comes to safe as well as enjoyable dating.
Leading white label firms have taken us through their customer service and support arrangements and they have coached us on the fraud issues.
What can you do for owners of iDating companies?
We want to be the eyes, ears and voice for the industry. We also want to play a role in developing and sharing best practice, as we have started to do with guidance on user safety. We will certainly be looking at what members say on subscriptions and renewal arrangements.
Do you function similarly to the BBB? How do you help users when they take issue with iDating sites performance?
The ODA has standards in its Code and we need to be sure these are being met. We would not want to get between companies and their users. ODA member has a duty to us and other members to have appropriate and effective arrangements in place for handling complaints.
Where can we find information on the code of conduct required by members?
On our website – www.onlinedatingassociation.org.uk. You can go direct to the Code at http://www.onlinedatingassociation.org.uk/membership/code.html.
The Code has some general rules:
- Be honest and clear in your communications
- Protect users
- Deliver what you promise to meet user needs
- Protect data and privacy
How much is the membership, and how does it work?
It is based on their revenue. We have had to think about how to deal with pure start-ups, including those who launch with a free model. We then had to think about the need for a cap at the top-end to recognise that even the very largest business will have limits on the support they can be asked to give.
The fee is far less than half of one percent of turnover. This puts funding between £1,250 and £6,000 for all but the very smallest and largest of businesses.
Secret Diamond Club Is Launching In UK
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Feb 14 - Secret Diamond Club is a dating site for wealthy men and beautiful women. It first launched in Denmark, and now it’s after the UK market. Women must submit three photos of themselves – face, full body, one of their choice – and then wait to hear if they are beautiful enough to be accepted. The most attractive pay the least for their membership (max £30 a year). Men pay ~£6K a year for a local membership and £60K a year for a global one and remain anonymous until they decide to make contact with a female member.
STD Dating Sites Are Growing Space
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Feb 14 – ~500K new cases of STIs were diagnosed in 2012 in the UK; ~90K were living with HIV and one in two people under 25 tested positive for Chlamydia. Studies show that one in four students catch a sexual infection during their first year of university. Positive Singles has 30K registered UK members, while Herpes Dating says it has 795K members. A lack of support available led Max to set up H-YPE! in 2006. Sites like H-YPE! enable people with herpes or HPV to find answers to their questions in a safe and secure environment. For some, they’ve even given the hope for a future of marriage and children that they thought lost when first diagnosed.
Traffic To French Dating Sites Up 40% On Valentine’s Day
AFP – Feb 13 – Of the 18M single people in France, one in two uses Internet dating, said Jessica Delpirou, director in France of Meetic. On Feb 14 last year, Meeic saw a 38% increase in people signing up compared with other Thursdays in the month. Lovoo says it has seen recent monthly increases in users of ~30-40%.
The full article was originally published at FMT, but is no longer available.
SPIN Kodex Certifies Safe Dating Sites
W&V – Feb 10 – The Federal Association of the Digital Economy (BVDW) has agreed on rules for dating sites. The "SPIN Kodex" defines clear rules related to cancellations policy, recurring payments and privacy issues. The first companies that have been certified are FriendScout24, Neu.de, eDarling.de, Shopaman.de, secret.de and partner.de. Companies wishing to submit to the SPIN Kodex have to go through an extensive auditing with numerous documentation requirements. This process has to be completed again in two years.
by Annette Mattgey
See full article at W&V