Category: Courtland Brooks Press

Can GPS Find You A Mate?

Posted on August 6, 2012

Gps dateBOSTON GLOBE – Aug 5 – OkCupid Locals is meant to follow you wherever you go and find you matches along the way. “Mobile dating has created a new promise, an enticing one,” says Aaron Schildkrout, co-founder HowAboutWe. “When you see these people on your phone, you think, ‘This person is real, they’re near me, and I may actually be able to encounter them in the real world". Grindr was the first app of its kind to get traction. By March 2012, Grindr had 4M users in 192 countries. MeetMoi, which came online as an iPhone and Android app in 2010, alerts users when another MeetMoi user is nearby. SinglesAroundMe, also released in 2010, features a singles-locator map of sorts. OkCupid launched its Locals app in 2011. Sam Yagan, founder of OkCupid, says two-thirds of its mobile users activate the GPS-positioning info. Mark Brooks, a consultant to Internet dating sites, points out that men tend to use location-based dating features more than women, and that location-based dating apps are most often used by singles in big cities. What’s more, the singles that use them are using them all the time. “People don’t view as many pages on their mobile dating apps as they do when they’re looking at profiles at home, but they’re logging in as many as eight times a day,” says Brooks. Mark Brooks jokes that one reason location-based dating hasn’t yet gone mainstream is that there are too many men running the sites. Match is the only major dating site run by a woman, and its CEO, Mandy Ginsberg, has said the company won’t rely on location-based tools. Robinne Burrell, the company’s director of mobile product and distribution, says its experts don’t believe the location-based approach puts singles on the path to long-term relationships.

by Brooke Lea Foster
See full article at Boston.com

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Dating In A Mobile World

Posted on July 19, 2012

Mobile dating cell with heartHUFFINGTON POST – July 18 – Eight single daters used eight mobile dating apps over one month as part of the first-ever Mobile Dating BootCamp. The group came together at the iDate Mobile Dating Industry Conference in Beverly Hills to discuss their experiences. They touched on key topics like location-based features and the ability to message and browse matches from anywhere. Mark Brooks, editor of OPW states "top tier dating sites are seeing 40-60 percent of their logins on mobile." Brooks feels that mDating services will surpass web-based dating when they effectively combine Vicinity Based Dating, Active Matchmaking, and Social Awareness. Match.com reports 40% of their logins are on mobile and PlentyOfFish reports that 40% of their signups are on mobile. According to Juniper research, mobile dating revenues should reach $1.4 Billion by 2013.

by Julie Spira
See full article at Huffington Post

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Hinge Social Dating Facebook App Launches

Posted on July 16, 2012

Hinge logoWASHINGTON POST – July 13 – The Hinge application uses Facebook friends-of-friends as a source of potential dates through a game-like interface. The service is live in the Washington D.C. Area using a freemium model with a $7 per month premium subscription. According to Mark Brooks, Editor of Online Personals Watch, “No one has gotten this right. The privacy concerns are incredible.” But, he adds, “it’s one of the last big opportunities in the online dating space, for sure.”

by Ellen McCarthy
See full article at Washington Post

36% Canadians Have Tried Online Dating

Posted on May 7, 2012

POFVANCOUVER OBSERVER – May 4 – Canadians have experienced a major increase in online dating popularity over the past few years. With Canadians spending 74 minutes online per day, and 81 minutes a day on mobile aps, it's no surprise that people would turn to the Internet as a dating tool. POF claims a 40%t increase in membership holders over the past two year and 33M registered users. "The fear of initial rejection isn't as great when you don't have to see someone face to face," Rebecca Liu said about her experience with Match.com. Liu explained that she gave online dating a try because of a lack of dating resources in the analog world. Many find workplace romances taboo. Approaching a cute guy or girl at the library is almost more likely to creep people out than get them interested. Dating online is refreshing because it gives you an avenue to meet people outside your daily routines.

by Jessica Kalbfleisch
See full article at Vancouver Observer

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$1.22 Million Funding For TheComplete.me

Posted on April 17, 2012

Thecompleteme logo new March 2012TECH CRUNCH – Apr 16 – TheComplete.me launched a Facebook app in March that pulls in and analyzes data from Facebook and other social sites to figure out who you might be a good fit with. Led by Brian Bowman, the former VP of product at Match.com, it’s also announcing $1.22M seed round from Intel Capital, psuedo-rival dating site PlentyofFish, the CrunchFund, and a list of prominent angels. The app goes further than Facebook, too. Once you’re logged in, you can also connect with LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Photobucket, Flickr, Foursquare, GoodReads, and Instagram. It then pulls in unique data about you from each service to figure out even richer matches. In private beta testing so far, it has amassed ~1.5M profiles of users and their friends, which is already helping to shape recommendations. At the same time, theComplete.me preserves anonymity. Users only see each others first names initially, and nothing gets posted to Facebook for others to see (unless you manually enable it to do that).

by Eric Eldon
See full article at Tech Crunch

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Are You Selling Profiles?

Posted on March 29, 2012

Saledatingprofiles logoBETABEAT – Mar 29 – Online dating is a fast-growing industry, with current revenues estimated to run between $1.5 and $3 billion a year. But every new dating site faces the same problem: finding souls to mate. Recruiting new customers is expensive; industry experts put the customer acquisition price at $1 to $5 per person. SaleDatingProfiles and its competitors BuyProfiles.com and DatingProfilesSale.com offer a shortcut. They sell bulk packages of profiles that seem to include a fair number of actual singles alongside somewhat more questionable Russian beauties, Nigerian bankers and half-empty profiles, which sometimes sell for less than a dime a dozen. SaleDatingProfiles is based in Israel and Russia, a representative told Betabeat over Skype, and operates 150 dating sites of its own, which she declined to name. SaleDatingProfiles says its profiles come from users who signed up for a dating site in its network. Mark Brooks, a consultant who works exclusively with Internet dating companies, said he once fired a client for buying profiles. “When people have a bad experience on any Internet dating site, they just label it ‘Internet dating. ‘Internet dating sucks!’” he told Betabeat. “I don’t work with anybody who’s bad for the industry because in ten years time I won’t be working with anybody, because there won’t be an industry.” 

by Adrianne Jeffries
See full article at BetaBeat

Mark Brooks: We did a study recently on profile selling companies.

Operation Match Version 2012

Posted on March 6, 2012

Online dating - couple walking on keyboardUNLIMITED MAGAZINE – Mar 6 – In 1965 a group of Harvard students started Operation Match that used questionnaires to identify compatible matches. When the students sold it three years later they had received ~1M responses which resulted in a few marriages. Today North America’s dating sites attracts 22M users a month, says online dating industry analyst Mark Brooks. Online daters have upwards of 1,000 dating sites to choose from, aside from industry giants Match, eHarmony, OKCupid and PlentyofFish. "Starting a dating site is like starting a restaurant," Brooks says. "It’s very attractive but there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye."

Brian Schechter and Aaron Schildkrout created HowAboutWe.com in 2009. The site is built around going on "awesome dates," with users able to see a list of date proposals in their immediate area. The company has raised ~$19M. Another site Sparkology is invite-only dating site. Other startups include Soul2Match, which links potential dates based on their photos and facial features, and Luv@FirstTweet, which uses Twitter to match singles. At TheJMom.com, matchmaking is left up to parents.

In a report in the Journal of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team looked closely and critically at the online dating industry. The researchers found that while online dating has great potential to improve meeting potential romantic partners, the exclusive matching formulas many online dating sites claim to have are unsubstantiated and likely little more effective than randomly approaching strangers at a bar. Sites and apps can facilitate face-to-face interactions quickly. Mark Brooks agrees. "I don’t think people want to come home and spend hours and hours tappity-tapping on the keyboard. They want to be in front of people," he says. "Computer-mediated communication is not gratifying enough for the human soul." Brooks thinks three trends will define the future of the industry: location-based services, mobile services and behavioral matchmaking. "Dating sites that do well will be serving their users’ interests, which means a little more immediacy, a little more help and going mobile," he says.

That instant face-to-face interaction is what MeetMoi, a location-based mobile dating company led by CEO Alex Harrington, has been facilitating since 2007. Users are matched with one another based on preferences and proximity, through application-based and mobile web-based dating.

by Cailynn Klingbeil
See full article at Unlimited Magazine

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Is Social Dating The New Way To Find Your Next Date?

Posted on February 29, 2012

Social-DatingLOCKERGNOME – Feb 17 – Of course, as online dating has become mainstream, so has social networking. A recent white paper published by Courtland Brooks, “What is Social Dating?", says that “Social dating is more than simply having Facebook Connect as a registration and log in option on a dating site. It entails creating a social experience that allows users the freedom to discover and create any type of relationship they desire at any given time without a serious time commitment.” In an article published this past week in the New York Times, Dr. Eli Finkel and Co. refuted the science behind sites such as eHarmony, explaining that in an study to be released later this month they found these sites failed to take into account “things like communication patterns, problem-solving tendencies and sexual compatibility.” The ultimate conclusion of Dr. Eli Finkel and Co. was that “None of [their study] suggests that online dating is any worse a method of meeting potential romantic partners than meeting in a bar or on the subway. But it’s no better either.”

by Kelly Clay
See full article at Lockergnome

POF.com – The Business Of Finding Love

Posted on February 21, 2012

Pof markus frindSYMPATICO.CA – Feb 14 – Business News Networks(BNN) has interviewed Markus Frind, CEO and founder of POF.com.

Q: How do you make money ?
A: Through advertising and we also have optional online subscriptions. With a couple of million people visiting our site a day it’s pretty easy to make money.

Q: How much do you make a year?
A:  $10’s of millions.

Q: In online dating does price matter?
A: Our users spend on average $700M per year on paid dating services so virtually all the users that are on a paid online dating site are also on POF, there’s a massive overlap.

Q: So what differentiates you from the others?
A:  POF is free and it’s the largest free site.

Q: And what’s the success ratio for every 10 people who use your site
A: We track the relationship numbers and they are usually over 30%.

Q: Is it true that most people lie about their age in online dating?
A: We really don’t see that much.

Q: Have you had any thoughts about taking it public?
A: As a sole shareholder it doesn’t make too much sense for me to go public.

Read the full transcript

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Plentyoffish Fires Darts At eHarmony, Match.com On Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 15, 2012

Pof.com logo use january 2012IT BUSINESS – Feb 14 – Plentyoffish has released a white paper indicating that its social media dating formula may be more effective at hooking you up than the matchmaking algorithms employed by other dating sites. “Traditional online dating sites provide a very linear and singular experience,” said Mark Brooks, principal analyst of Courtland Brooks, a media relations and marketing company that does work with POF. Brooks released a whitepaper titled What is Social Dating? Courtland Brooks released a graph showing that feature-for-feature it outguns both Match.com and eHarmony. Brooks said the process of making users browse through numerous profiles based on specific criteria with the intent of finding a potential date or partner is too time consuming and requires “significant commitment.” With most online dating systems, he said, users have to create profiles to “sell” themselves to others. “This leads to misleading information or a frustrating experience.” On the other hand the social networking focus such as that employed by POF offers a “more relaxed environment,” Brooks said.” Social networking is very much centered around activities and interest, which give excellent representation of who a person really is.” Brooks also pointed to as study authored by Dr. Eli Finkel, associate professor of social psychology at Northwestern University, in New York, who pointed to several “pitfalls” of online dating. “To date, there is no compelling evidence that any online dating matching algorithm actually works,” Finkel said in statement. “Our report concludes that that it is unlikely that algorithms can work, even in principle, given the limitations of matching procedures that these sites use.”

See full article at IT Business CA

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Heart small All 2012 Valentine's Day News