ONLINE BARRONS – Sep 18 – JDate, a dating site for Jewish singles, is a
hit with its clientele, but its parent company is a bust with the
shareholders. Spark shares are languishing~$3 a share, amid
disappointing financial results and after a proposed buyout at $3.10 a
share earlier this year by the company's largest holder, Great Hill
Equity Partners, was rejected by a special committee of the board. Spark
shares look reasonably priced, based on the company's profits, solid
balance sheet and JDate's franchise value. Osmium Partners, an
investment firm that owns 6.7% of Spark, opposed the Great Hill bid,
arguing Spark's intrinsic value exceeds $6 a share. "Spark is highly
undervalued, and it would be a nice fit for an acquirer at the right
price", says John Lewis, a principal at Osmium. In 2009, JDate generated
$29M in revenue. While that was 63% of Spark's sales, it's a small
fraction of the $1 billion in annual revenue generated by the online
dating industry, which is dominated by eHarmony and Match.com. In
contrast, general dating sites spend heavily on TV and Web ads. eHarmony
may spend $125M on marketing and advertising, or more than 40% of its
estimated $280M in 2010 revenue. JDate spends as little as 5% to 10% of
sales on marketing and advertising. FULL ARTICLE @ ONLINE BARRONS
Category: JDate
As Dating Pool Shrinks, Love Matches Grow
ABC NEWS – June 18 – Spark boasts 32 dating sites in all. Adam Berger,
CEO of the Spark Networks, calls it "niche" dating. "Niche dating makes
people instantly feel comfortable," said Berger. "They're among people
who are just like themselves in many different ways." JDate, which
caters to Jewish singles, is Spark Networks' most successful and
popular web site. It claims 750,000 active users. While JDate may be
the most well-known of the dating web sites, Spark's other niche web
sites are booming. "ChristianMingle has probably been one of the sites
that's grown faster than any other lately," said Berger. Subscriptions
to Spark Networks sites cost from $9.99 to $39.99. The company
maintains call centers where Spark representatives help love-starved
subscribers find ways to improve their profiles and dates. The center
takes more than 1,700 calls a day. FULL ARTICLE @ ABC NEWS
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JDate Goes Mobile
MARKET WIRE – May 25 - JDate announced the official beta launch of JDate Mobile, a mobile application compatible with any web-enabled phone in the world. Unlike most other mobile apps, JDate Mobile works not only on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices, but across all mobile platforms, regardless of handset model or carrier.
The full article was originally published at Fox Business, but is no longer available.
Date Site Operator To Play The Field
LA BUSINESS JOURNAL – Apr 26 – Spark Networks turned down a March 2 offer from Great Hill Equity Partners III, a Boston-based private equity fund that owns 44% of Spark, to buy the rest of the company for $3.10 per share. The bid represented a 5% premium to Spark’s March 1 closing price of $2.95 and valued the company at $64M. The offer was widely denounced as low ball for Spark, which owns 29 niche dating sites, including JDate.com. Osmium Partners, another fund that owns 6.1% of Spark, called the deal “grossly inadequate” and vowed to fight any offer less than $6 a share. Shares have since risen, closing at $3.59 on April 22. Mark Brooks, editor of OnlinePersonalsWatch.com and a dating service consultant, believes the Great Hill valuation was probably about right – for now. “I think the valuation is pretty solid at $3.10,” Brooks said. However, he believes that Spark can do better. “I know the management at Spark Networks and they are smart people. Someone is going to acquire them,” he said. “They have a hallmark brand and they think they can do better once the market picks up.” The decline in Spark’s business corresponds to a slump in the entire online dating sector, as paid providers face new competition from free dating sites and social networks such as Facebook, Brooks said. FULL ARTICLE @ LA BUSINESS JOURNAL
Niche Dating Sites Attract Date ‘Crashers’
MSNBC – Mar 29 - According to a study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, men are “more likely to misrepresent personal assets, relationship goals, personal interests and personal attributes whereas women are more likely to misrepresent weight.” JDate – has been crashed by so many non-Jews over the years. "I think people don’t pay attention to the specialty aspect of the site” says Tina Tessina, psychotherapist and author of “The Unofficial Guide to Dating Again.”“Whether a relationship can make it or not depends on the character of the two individuals,” she says. “Not their external circumstances.” Furthermore, pretending to share some common interest might make a potential partner angry. “You can only fake it for so long,” says Wellman, who advertised on SugarDaddy4Me.com. “It’s not like the girls are going to ask to see your bank statements but if you take them to Jack in the Box for dinner, the jig is up.”
The full article was originally published at MSNBC, but is no longer available.
Finding The Right Online Dating Service
LA TIMES – Feb 14 – Piper Jaffray Investment Research predicted U.S. spending on online dating would reach $1.7 billion annually by 2013, and $1.2 billion was spent in 2008. The Internet is essentially the world's largest bar, explains Mark Brooks, editor of OnlinePersonalsWatch. The first step is figuring out which nightspot is for you: There are those with no cover charges, PlentyofFish and OKCupid, and hookup spots Fling.com and OnlineBootyCall.com. There are "theme nights" geared toward particular interests, such as BikerPlanet.com, and "neighborhood watering holes" based on religion or culture, such as JDate or AsiaFriendFinder. There's comfort in name recognition from eHarmony and Match. Or get a yenta through eLove.com.
"One of our more popular sites as of late is DateaCougar.com," says Stephen Ventura, VP of First Beat Media, which owns GothScene.com, BikerPlanet.com, FitnessDates.com and others. Want a dash of romance with your social networking? Brooks says to look to Zoosk. It syncs with a users' Facebook's profile page. Spark's Kizmeet is attempting something similar. Still, Brooks says it's unlikely that social networking sites will kill the online dating market. "If people are anonymous, people tend to be more aggressive and more outspoken," he says. "On an Internet dating site, if you want to cut somebody off, you can easily. When you're on a social network, you have to be [polite] because their friends are watching."
Match.com's mobile members alone grew 250% from 2008 to 2009, says Whitney Casey, Match's relationship expert. Industry experts Brooks and CyberDatingExpert.com's, Julie Spira also praise GPS-based mobile applications like Skout and Foursquare. "I'm looking forward to people using Internet dating on the iPad," Brooks adds. "You can look up a profile very easily on that format. The iPhone is still a phone." Spira says to look to webcam dating sites, Speeddate.com or WooMe.com. Hitwise reports that visits to free dating sites like PlentyofFish rose 19% over the previous year.
FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES
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From Cougars To Dog Lovers, You Can Find A Match
NBC – Feb 12 – Ronnie Ann Ryan, known to her followers as "The Dating Coach," and author of "MANifest Mr. Right," says 12% of today's marriages start in cyberspace. Ryan often sends her clients to sites like match.com and plentyoffis
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JDate User Perspective
NY TIMES — July 2 — Spark Networks, the owner of JDate, runs 32 dating sites. In the first quarter of 2009, JDate’s sites accounted for $7.6m of the company’s $12m revenue. JDate is the oldest of the company’s services, which partly explains its success. Ron James’s marriage of 13 years ended so he joined JDate. In 18 months, he e-mailed 500 to 600 women and dated 40 to 50. “Internet dating in the 21st century is a hard process,” he said. Over that year and a half there were women he met who lied about their age, posted photos that were 10 years old, misrepresented their jobs and pretended to be more successful than they were. “A lot of the photos didn’t look like them,” he said. “I learned to watch out for sunglasses.” FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Dating From The Dorm Room
BOSTON GLOBE — June 24 – In 2007, eHarmony lowered the minimum age for completing its membership questionnaire from 21 to 18. Mark Brooks, who runs a consulting firm for online dating sites, said interest in online dating among young people has increased over the past few years. “These youngsters started on social networks; they warmed up on Friendster, they drifted to MySpace, then Facebook,’’ he said. “They are used to having a world of choice under their fingertips, and they are more demanding of a good match. And so, according to Brooks, today’s 18-to-22-year-olds are far more likely to look for love online than previous generations were. Most dating sites like eHarmony, Match.com, and the Jewish dating site JDate accept members 18 and older. Others like Universityloveconnection.com and Campushook.com are restricted to people enrolled in school; Studentlove.com requires users to have a “.edu’’ e-mail address to sign up. FULL ARTICLE @ BOSTON GLOBE
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JDate Gets Face Lift
PRESS RELEASE — June 18 – JDate has rolled out a full site redesign.
Based on direct feedback from members, the new and improved JDate
includes, among other things:
— a fresh, modern design;
— redesigned profile pages
— keyword search
—
enhanced search filtering to allow Jewish singles to more easily
find matches who share a similar level of religious observance
– JBlog
– JDateTV, a new video section featuring JDate's own Webisode reality series, "JDating."
FULL ARTICLE @ EARTH TIMES
Mark Brooks: Nice realistic home page pics. Real pictures are more compelling than stock photos. The blog is very readable. The navigation still needs attention. Your comments please.