Category: LikeIt

$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.

Love, Sex And Tech – Life 3.0 – A San Francisco Event For Funders & Founders

Posted on April 12, 2012

Love sex and tech logoOPW – Apr 12 – Funders And Founders is hosting an innovation show for Internet dating startups and funders. 50 of them, and 800 attendees. The event will be held in San Francisco, on April 18th at 7pm at The Fairmont Hotel.

I will be keynoting and on the panel of angel investors and influential reporters. Other speakers include Shayan Zadeh, CEO of Zoosk, Brian Bowman, CEO of theComplete.me, Rob Theis who currently serves on the boards of BrightRoll, HubSpot, RingCentral and Scale Computing. 50+ startups will showcase their products to early adopters, potential customers, reporters and investors. The 3 winners will pitch form the stage to a panel of angels.

theComplete.me Social Dating Network Launches In Beta

Posted on March 14, 2012

Thecompleteme logo new March 2012PR WEB – Mar 13 – Social dating network, theComplete.me, launches Beta site. Members can meet each other through the real interests, experiences and friends from eight social networks, and via images and videos pulled in from around the Web. Founded by Brian Bowman (CEO), former VP Product Match.com & VP Community Yahoo!, and Shashikant Joshi (CTO), former Founder/CTO Perfode, theComplete.me startup team and Board of Advisors include Fran Maier, Co-founder of Match.com, Trish McDermott, former VP Public Relations Match.com, and other former Match.com and Internet executives.

See full article at PR Web

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TheComplete.me Wants To Be The Pinterest Of Dating

Posted on March 9, 2012

Thecompleteme pictureGIGAOM – Mar 7 – TheComplete.me, formed by former Match.com executives, connects people through their interests using their real identity and encourages users to express themselves through Pinterest-like pinning of objects. TheComplete.me, which went public today at the Launch conference, pulls together a person’s profile using data from social networks. Their interests get visually represented on a FraME similar to a Pinterest Board. And like Pinterest, people can use a bookmarklet to add items to their FraME from anywhere on the web. The more a person shares, the higher their ME score is, indicating how authentic and real they are. Brian Bowman said he decided to leave Match.com after he realized that the company was not prepared to leverage the social web. Trish McDermott, former VP of Public Relations Match.com who is also on the founding team, said the old way of checking off boxes and creating lists of interests doesn’t reflect the true personality of people and actually keeps people from learning who someone really is. But with social networking, people are learning to be transparent and authentic.

by Ryan Kim
See full article at GigaOm

Interview With Frances Maier, Co-founder Of Match.com

Posted on February 7, 2012

OPW INTERVIEW – Feb 6 – We interviewed Gary Kremen last month.

  

You’re the co-founder and were the first GM of Match.com. How did you get involved with Match and what’s your side of the founding story?
Gary and I are good friends, and we were back then.  Gary was looking for somebody to run Match.com. We connected at our reunion and he told me he wanted somebody who really knew how to market women. He thought it was important to get women to Match.com so men would follow.

Gary’s idea was to charge per email or contact. I pushed forward the membership model and of course that’s the model in most online dating sites.

The other important thing was giving people advice on how to use the site better. A lot of people didn’t get that we were creating, not just personals online, but that we were really inventing something. This was back in 1995, before anyone knew about social networking.

What were the companies back them?  Webpersonals.com, matchmaker.com and Match.com?
There were a few but they weren’t sophisticated about the marketing and customer acquisitions.  They didn’t work with any partnerships and I don’t think they thought about targeting women.  We were doing really well at attracting women and keeping them.  

On that point you went on after Match.com to work as VP of Women.com.  What do women want from idating that many dating sites are missing?
Safety, anonymity and fun is really important . If you take care of this, you’re going to do well.  Any respectable dating site gives you enough control to control pics, messages, blocking and filtering etc.  I also think that people need more specialized advice.

You are involved with two Internet dating start-ups.  Could you tell us about those?
The first one is TheComplete.me and I think it’s very unique and very exciting because it really talks about your social graph on Facebook. The other start-up I’m involved in is “Three Day Rule”. It’s a completely different approach although it shares that social aspect.  It’s based in LA and focuses on high end events.

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iDate Demonstrates Shift In Dating Technology

Posted on January 30, 2012

Idate2012 logoFAST COMPANY – Jan 26 – Author Dan Slater, who is writing a book about the online dating industry, attended the iDate Conference in Miami and took a look at the way technology is influencing the way we date online. Things are changing now that one third of America’s 90M singles date online, and it’s no longer the “unspeakable underworld” it once was. Seventeen years ago, when Gary Kremen founded Match.com, anonymity was key to success, protecting people’s privacy and allowing them to reveal their “true identity” on their own terms. In 2007, Zoosk was formed on the basis that the younger generation grew up on technology and the conventional online dating platform was of no interest to them. Zoosk “is for a social life – with dating in mind” where privacy concerns are not as rampant. New sites continue to pop up in the ever-changing industry challenge our notions of privacy and what we should expect going forward. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is right – morality may be divine, but it’s also fickle and shifts in technology make new things possible.

by Dan Slater
See full article at Fast Company

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