TECH CRUNCH – Sep 3 – Hot or Not has launched a location-based free iPhone app that will show you who is close to you. It uses the iPhone’s built-in GPS technology. Hot or Not says that the app received ~2,000 sign-ups its first day in the App Store. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
Mark Brooks: Hot or Not was purchased by Avid Life Media in February 2008.
MARKETPLACE – Aug 19 - Noel Biderman is the president a company called Avid Life Media, which runs a bunch of niche dating sites. There's CougarLife.com for older women and younger men, HotorNot.com and AshleyMadison, a dating site for married people for which Noel has gotten a lot of attention. Noel buys traditional ads where he can. But of course, a lot of big media companies won't take ads from Ashley Madison. His response? Fine. He goes to plan B — decrying them in the press for being unreasonable. Avid Life pulled down $30M in revenue last year. Introducing cheaters to each other online has afforded Noel a pretty comfortable life. Noel does tend to defend his business with various theories and arguments about the future of matrimony and where we're headed as a society. But in the end, he says it really is all about the money. There's no way he'd be doing this otherwise.
The full article was originally published at Marketplace, but is no longer available.
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LA TIMES – Feb 14 – "Keep profiles brief and specific. Leave the novel at home. Don't put pictures of you and your pets or children. Don't post party photos."
— Julie Spira, author of Cyber-DatingExpert.com and the book "The Perils of Cyber-Dating"
"It's great when people put five or 10 pictures of themselves that depict things they love to do, pictures that communicate your personality. It's about making it personal [with] adjectives, interests, descriptions and honesty."
— Bob Holden, EHarmony's VP North America
"You should always have one close-up to the face. Post three to five photos. Also run 50 or so through HotorNot.com [and let people vote] for which ones score the best."
— Mark Brooks, editor at OnlinePersonalsWatch.com
"Get a friend to help you write it. Be honest about who you are and what you're looking for."
— Greg Liberman, president and COO, Spark Networks
"If you start on a date with a picture from 10 years ago and you've gained 10 pounds or if you have a lot less hair now, you're starting on false assumptions. Your profile should be three paragraphs. It should be a conversation piece."
— Whitney Casey, Match.com's relationship expert and author of the book "The Man Plan."
"The more someone knows about you, the less they want to date you. If you write a massive essay, they're going to find something to dislike about that person. If you don't know something, everyone assumes you're the same as them. Let everything else come out during the dates."
— Markus Frind, founder/CEO of PlentyofFish.com.
FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES
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MIAMI HERALD – Feb 12 – Virtual gifts have become a $1 billion industry in the U.S. and $5 billion worldwide. Snap Interactive runs the Facebook app. "Are You Interested?'' which introduced a gift store two months ago. CEO Clifford Lerner said the app. is raking in "a couple thousand dollars a day'' just from gift purchases starting at $1.25 for a heart, to $20 for a picture of an engagement ring or gold bricks. "We've actually seen that the higher cost of some of these gifts, the more we actually sell,'' Lerner said. "If a girl is not interested in a guy, and she sees he spent $20, she's probably going to respond. And that's worth it to the guy, just to get a response.''
Avid Life Media's HotorNot.com got the virtual gift ball rolling in the dating scene back in 2002 by selling virtual flowers which now cost $2 to $10 each. At AshleyMadison.com users can send a virtual bottle of champagne or hotel room key. "The growth rate is phenomenal,'' said Noel Biderman, president of Avid Life Media. "If it has the right impact, people will pay to replace words.'' AshleyMadison has 5.2 million members and has seen spending on virtual gifts jump from 2.4% to 4.1% of total user revenue in the past year.
This kind of success is persuading other sites to give it a spin. First Beat Media oversees more than 100 niche dating sites like BikerPlanet, GothScene, LatinaRomance and TattooLovers. It's testing virtual gifts. "Seeing a ton of icons of roses and chocolates from other suitors on your page might turn people away from contacting you — doing more harm than good," said Stephen Ventura, director of operations. "We're approaching it very cautiously,'' Ventura said. "We feel it might detour some folk from the relationship finding process.''
The full article was originally published at Miami Herald, but is no longer available.
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This is the news for the week of December 11th through December 17th, 2009. Here is the news we covered for this week:
THE INDEPENDENT – Nov 11 – James Hong, co-founder of HotOrNot was interviewed by Viral Loop author, Adam L. Penenberg. Hong recounts the origins of HotOrNot and its rise to fame as one of the world's first viral phenomenons. The site was launched on October 9th, 2000 with an email sent to 42 of Hong's friends. By the end of the day, the site had 37,000 unique visitors. Day 8 saw 1.8 million uniques, and by the two-month mark, HotOrNot was in Nielsen's Top 25. Follow this link to read the full interview.
MERGER MARKET – Oct 26 – FriendFinder Networks, formerly known as Penthouse Media, filed for an IPO in December, anticipating $460m in proceeds to help pay off its debt. FriendFinder could look to sell off non-core pieces of its business that may be distracting to potential investors including GradFinder and Christian dating site BigChurch, online dating industry consultant Mark Brooks said. The company would likely keep its highly lucrative adult sites. Its adult social networking and live interactive video sites comprised 95% of the company’s revenue, as of six months ended 30 June 2008. FriendFinder’s international properties could also be spun out to a media company with more expertise in certain geographic markets, said Noel Biderman, CEO of Toronto-based Avid Life Media, the holding company of dating sites like HotOrNot and Ashley Madison. He pointed to IAC-owned Match which took a 27% stake in European dating operator Meetic in February, in exchange for Match’s European operations, as an industry example of this. In the case of FriendFinder, its Latino dating site Amigos has a strong membership base, and could be sold to an acquirer that can better grow and monetize the brand, Brooks noted. FriendFinder’s sites may fetch 7x to 8x EBITDA, Biderman said, using Match’s USD 80m acquisition of People Media in July as a comparable transaction. FULL ARTICLE @ OPW
Mark Brooks: FriendFinder's successful IPO and continued strong performance is critical for the reputation of the internet dating industry. FriendFinder could indeed look to sell its non-core businesses. Here's what I told the reporter…"GradFinder is a significant property that could be developed out to compete with Classmates.com. …BigChurch is a misfit community for them. They have been chastised by the Christian community for running the site. It should really be sold. Amigos has lots of traffic, is a great name, but South America still doesn't monetize anywhere near as well as the rest of the world. So its a longer term play for a potential acquirer, but the future is pretty clear, it will eventually make good money. FriendFinder needs to have money in the bank, and make good money quickly, so I think these communities would be most suitable for selling."
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This is the news for October 18th through October 23rd, 2009. Here are some of the topics we covered for this week:
TECH CRUNCH — Sep 10 — Hot or Not has released a new app for the iPhone which combines features from its website into a card game. You are dealt 5 cards face up, as is your opponent. You then pick whichever one you think has the highest Hot or Not rating and so does your opponent. You do this for 30 seconds and the person with the most victories, wins the round.The game is free and available now in the iPhone App Store. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
OPW — May 22 — Viximo is a new Online Personals Watch site sponsor. They offer a virtual goods platform suitable for Internet Dating sites. Cyworld and QQ alone make hundreds of millions of dollars from virtual goods. Asia loves virtual goods, and Americans are turning on to them. Facebook and Hotornot are two success stories to reference in the U.S. market. I'm told, two of the most important factors for making virtual goods work on a site are: 1. really great virtual goods, and 2. the right pricing and handling of money and virtual money. Viximo can help. We're excited about virtual goods, and virtual currency and proud to have Viximo as a sponsor. As always, we vet our sponsors. No fluff is allowed on OPW. We recommend taking a look at Viximo.