MARKETWATCH – Sep 28 - AnastasiaDate.com has launched "CamShare", a video dating service. CamShare lets two users interact with each other in real-time within a premium, high-definition video environment.
The full article was originally published at Marketwatch, but is no longer available.
SALON – Mar 8 – Ten years ago, Katerina was a 22 years old student when she advertised in a catalog. Her old-fashioned values caught the attention of a plumber from Atlanta. Within a year, she was married and living in her new American home. That's when he told her the reason he brought her to the US was for housekeeping and sex. Katerina was a victim in the world of international marriage. In 2006, the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA) was enacted as a means of protecting foreign women like Katerina. It requires a client check against the National Sex Offender Public Registry, a lifetime cap of two visa petitions per male client and a shift of responsibility to the organizations involved. Anastasia International is one of the world's largest international marriage brokers with ~460K male clients. The IMBRA legislation is a sticking point for the company, a measure it considers costly and disproportionately onerous. GM of Anastasia International Dan Sykes says: I don't get involved with my clients. I consider my business a communications and translation company. We do not make matches or arrange marriages in any way."
by Shonna Milliken Humphrey
The full article was originally published at Salon, but is no longer available.
PRESS RELEASE – Feb 14 – Guinness World Records has recognized Anastasia International as the new world record holder for Most Kisses Received in One Minute – 118 smackers. The new record was set this Valentine’s weekend in the popular Black Sea resort of Odessa, Ukraine, where a small army of Ukrainian women precision smooched a single American man and together broke the existing record. American-Russian owned and operated Anastasia organized the records breach as part of an extravaganza charity event. Proceeds benefit the Ukrainian Red Cross Society.
PR NEWSWIRE — June 6 — Anastasia International, the international introduction and romance company has recently launched video chat. Language is not a barrier, since Anastasia International offers live interpretation done by professional interpreters. FULL ARTICLE @ THE EARTH TIMES
Mark Brooks: Most dating sites have IM now. Userplane and OmniDate are great options for plug-in IM's. OmniDate is avatar based. (Disclosure: OmniDate is a client of Courtland Brooks)
OPW INTERVIEW — Sep 15, 2006 — Alexei Negin is the General Director of AnastasiaWeb, a top three Russian internet dating site. I was curious how his service works and how it’s different from other dating sites. Here’s my interview with Alexei. Please comment with your questions for Alexei. – Mark Brooks
What is Anastasia?
It’s the fastest way to meet Russian women via the internet. It’s an online dating website that allows people from Russia, North America, Europe and other parts of the world to connect and correspond with each other. People from different countries can write letters to each other in their native language and the letters are delivered and translated. We have a network of over 200 agents in the former Soviet Union who make sure the messages get delivered.
Who are your target customers?
Most of our male customers are based in the U.S. or Canada. We also have some male customers from the EU, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. We have female customers from all over the former USSR. We have slightly more women on the site then men, which is actually a part of why the site is successful. We currently have more than 10,000 active women profiles on AnastasiaWeb; however our overall database is much larger. We only display the profiles of women who are actively using the site.
We don’t allow every applicant to become a member. We verify profiles and personal information and allow only those individuals that pass the verification process. We do everything we can to protect our customers.
What is the age range?
We don’t allow men or women under 18 and I would say that the average female age would be about 24 or 25 years old. So these are rather young women. The male audience is older in general. The average age would be between 34 and 40, in that range. In Russia and Ukraine it’s very common that women date and marry men that are older.
What’s AnastasiaWeb’s founding story?
We were founded in 1993 by a Russian/American couple, Elena and David Besuden. Elena and David met through an introduction service in 1992 and were married the same year. Initially, Anastasia used catalogs to introduce profiles to men in the US. This format was used at first, because the internet wasn’t so well developed. The first AW web site was launched on Jan 21, 1997. Also, in 1997, Anastasia International formed a partnership with IT Online, to handle its business operations in Russia and the CIS. There are now more than 90 employees working in the US and Russian offices, handling web development, maintenance, marketing, customer service, verification and other administrative services. Elena and David grasped the idea of online dating rather early and succeeded.
How do you make money?
We make money on the correspondence. Each letter being delivered is translated. Most of the women do not have a computer or regular access to the Internet, so we formed a network of agents that could deliver and translate messages. We charge for a letter but we actually provide more than just a delivery service. We provide additional services that go along with the letter itself. One of the services is a direct telephone communication service, which allows clients to speak to each other with the help of a professional translator. It’s like a conference call. Women don’t pay at all. The cheapest correspondence service level is $3.99 per letter and the most is $8, but membership to the site is free. They can use a lot of other additional free services.
How do you protect the users from potential scammers?
There are many companies who used to say, “We don’t have fraud. We’re fighting fraud and 100% scam free.” We can’t say that, we are not 100% fraud free. But we realize the problems and we make every single effort to protect our customers. We have initiated a fraud fighting campaign and have invested heavily on investigation, protection and different ways of tracking fraud. We can protect the correspondence; we can make sure that the message is delivered and that it is translated in the proper way.
A women coming to an agency provides her personal ID that will be scanned and entered into the database. We verify that she’s not under age and we also verify that she’s not married. We verify information about her kids and other information. Then the agency will estimate the language ability of the women. It’s a rough estimate but we like to provide this information to our members. The agency tries to verify that the photograph is definitely her photograph and that it’s not an outdated photograph. Then they enter her profile on the AnastasiaWeb site. Our verification agents in the Moscow office will call her within three days. They will review all the information. We have a call center that is devoted to calling the women and further verifying that they’re legitimate clients. They will verify identity, ask if the woman wants to participate, and verify other important information. The profile is then considered a checked profile and will be activated when our system updates in two or three days.
What are your goals for AnastasiaWeb for 2006 through 2007? What kind of partnerships are you seeking?
One of our goals over the next year is to expand our “offline” activities. To provide more organized opportunities for members to meet in-person. Regarding partners, we are looking for companies that provide great traffic. We have a good affiliate program with hundreds of affiliates. We are looking to expand that. We’re also interested in speaking with other western online dating companies that would like access to our large database of verified profiles from throughout the former Soviet Union. Finally, we’re looking to cooperate with companies that have know-how with mobile communications and video. Mobile phone dating will be a benefit for our customers, because it should speed-up the communications process. We want to take every step possible to help our clients really find someone special.
PR NEWSWIRE — Aug 3 — Nearly 4000 women attended AW social events this year, internationally. The tours are fully organized from air-tickets and hotels, to sightseeing, to the social events where the single members finally meet each other, in person. OnlinePersonalsWatch.com editor, Mark Brooks, recently commented, "There's a need for more singles events. Singles, online daters, need to occasionally pry themselves away from the computer and go and meet 20 new people in one night. Even if they don't meet a new partner, they're having a good time and doing something that's good for the soul. Meeting, partying." Nate Elliott, Jupiter Research said, "I think the offline singles services are the only other format that can compete. Events have advantages – they're fun, social activities, and there's no substitute for meeting someone in person." At AnastasiaWeb's last event in Odessa, Ukraine, more than 400 women attended, with 50 male members from more than six countries.
The full article was originally published at PR Newswire, but is no longer available.