OPW – Jan 7 – All things have a beginning and an end, and today marks the end of Hurrydate after 14 years in business. The company was started by Ken Deckinger and Adele (Testani) Tongish. This speed dating company was acquired by Spark Networks in 2007.
Ken left Hurrydate in 2009 and in 2013 started JessMeetKen, a promising little dating app where women put forward their male friends as venerable for dating. So all the guys have at least one woman vouching for them. We like this 'social dating' spin because it effectively bridges the age-old divide between social networking and Internet dating. Social networks have a vouching process that dating sites lack. Dating sites give users privacy, so its tough to get that social vouching process to work in the world of Internet dating. Ken met his wife in a similar process, and they've branded themselves heavily into the dating site storyline, which is great!
Adele left Spark/Hurrydate in 2013. I'll ask her what she's up to and update this post shortly.
These kinds of events businesses can be quite onerous to run. The problem is, Internet dating is a very different kind of business and is a superior business. You should only ever hook an events business to your Internet dating business as a branding piece, and then make damn sure the events are A1 experiences. Otherwise the entire exercise will rapidly become an entire waste of time and actually quite detrimental to your core business. A certain very vocal and social portion of your audience loves events. Its a good idea to captivate them. They're a good audience to have in your fold, provided you please them. But don't expect your events business numbers to outshine your Internet dating business. They won't. And the events business will be the one that keeps you up at night. Therein lies the challenge, for the motley few.
Meanwhile, premium speed dating company Fastlife endures under POF, Predating was sold by Cupid back to its original owner, Speeddater.co.uk s still being operated by Cupid/Together Networks for the UK, 8 Minute Dating somehow endures, and long-standing regional speed-dating outfits like 10 minute dating (San Francisco) malinger and die.
Thanks to Carl at Slowdating.com for giving me a heads up on this morsel of news.
UPDATE: Adele is working with Ken again, and is actually the person responsible for introducing Ken to Jess! 🙂
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Post by Mark Brooks @ 
BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL – Nov 3 – Online dating startup Jess, Meet Ken has ditched its website in favor of launching a mobile app. The app allows women to create profiles of single men they know but are not romantically interested in, who could be good matches for other women. Women can then ask to be introduced to a man that another woman vouches for. The company is backed by $250K in funding and plans to raise more this year. Jess, Meet Ken intends to launch a premium, paid-feature model down the road.
