THISISMONEY.CO.UK – Sep 16 – Lucinda from London signed up to match.com last Dec on a 6-month contract totaling £89. In May she told Match she would not renew it – only to discover later that another £89 had been taken for six more months. The Financial Ombudsman Service says the number of complaints it has received about regular payments is rising. Last year it handled 500 complaints about regular payments – a quarter of which were for continuous payment authorities.
Category: Match.com
Match.com Doesn’t Have To Make Sure Their Profiles Are Accurate
VERDICT JUSTIA – Sep 11 – In mid-August, a Texas-based federal court dismissed claims brought by a group of disgruntled daters, via several class-action lawsuits, against the Match.com. The lawsuit alleged that Match.com fooled them into subscribing with empty promises and the display of old fake profiles. Match.com does not conduct background checks on its subscribers, and it tells subscribers as much. The site does, however, reportedly hire investigators to read and approve profiles before they are initially posted. This is a general precaution against scammers. The court held that Match.com had no duty to ensure that profiles on the site are current.
Macth.com Owner Sues Match.com And CitizenHawk After Losing UDRP
DOMAIN NAME WIRE – Aug 31 – Liz Eddy, the owner of Macth.com, has sued online dating company Match.com and domain name recovery firm CitizenHawk after losing a UDRP for her domain name. She is asking for declaratory relief and financial penalties. She says Macth.com is a generic typo. Eddy lost a UDRP for Macth.com on August 15. She alleges that Match.com fabricated evidence by bidding on the term “macth”.
Cupid Looks Attractive To Match.com
STANDARD.CO.UK – Aug 22 – The word on the street is that Cupid plc is being eyed up by Match.com. Cupid beefed up its own portfolio earlier this summer when it paid £2.9m for Assistance Genie Logiciel, a French dating firm. Cupid more than doubled its revenues in 2011, notching up £53.6M against £25.7M in 2010. Profit at the company was up from £4.2M to £7M.
Meet In A Bar: The New Dating Technology
NY TIMES – Aug 21 – Both Match.com and OkCupid, which was bought by Match last year but operates independently, are getting behind the offline idea. Match bought commercial time during the Olympics to promote “The Stir,” as it calls its gatherings. Match.com has held a few hundred events each month since May in more than 50 cities. OkCupid has organized ~100 events in New York since early July and plans to bring the idea to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and a few other cities in October. Smaller services are also offering gatherings. MeetMoi has been hosting get-togethers to bring more of its users to the same space at the same time. And Nerve, a sex and dating site based in New York, says it is working on a mobile app that will emphasize nearby events. The move toward real-world meetings follows some well-publicized studies that cast doubt on whether personality tests and data can accurately predict whether two people will be compatible. “We still use our matching algorithms,” said Mandy Ginsberg, president of Match.com. “But maybe it is slightly easier to walk into a room full of people meeting and talking.”
by Jenna Wortham
See full article at NY Times
See all posts on OkCupid See all posts on MeetMoi
See all posts on Match.com See all posts on Nerve Dating
Match.com Gives Singles Something To ‘Stir’ About
EXAMINER – Aug 15 – Match.com Stir events are a series of offline social events for singles, where members of the Match.com database get invited to mixers in a variety of cities. The last one was held at the Ocean Club in Hermosa Beach, CA. Pulling from Match.com’s large database of members, singles were allowed to invite up to three of their friends to create a social dating experience. Match has also incorporated mobile into the activities by sending a text reminder about their Stir event the day before and asking members to check in while at the event. Match recently organized a cooking class at the Grove in Los Angeles.
by Julie Spira
See full article at Examiner
Mark Brooks: Events are a double edged sword. Dating sites must produce quality events for them to have a positive effect on their brands. OK events just don't cut it. Match ran Matchlive.com several years back and pulled the plug on it undoubtedly because they realized this. Now they have simplified their event formats and have made them free and low cost. They're proliferating their brand by spawning good events. Good move, I think. A long time coming, but a good move.
Match.com Wins Dismissal Of Lawsuit By Online Daters
REUTERS – Aug 10 – Match.com won the dismissal of most of a lawsuit that contended the company duped consumers into believing it had millions of subscribers when more than half were inactive, fake or scammers. U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay ruled that Match.com had not breached its user agreements, finding the pacts do not require it to remove dormant or inaccurate profiles. The lawsuit, which had sought class-action status on behalf of Match.com subscribers, was filed in 2010 by several users of the site. Other dating sites also have faced similar consumer lawsuits. In 2007, Yahoo agreed to pay $4M to settle a lawsuit accusing it of allowing fake profiles from people not interested in using the site for dating.
by Nate Raymond
The full article was originally published at Orlando Sentinel, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: I'm sure over 20% of former paying members on Match come live again within 18 months of leaving. The problem is, Match can't be sure which 20% will pay again.
Can GPS Find You A Mate?
BOSTON 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
See all posts on OkCupid See all posts on MeetMoi
See all posts on HowAboutWe See all posts on SinglesAroundMe
See all posts on Grindr See all posts on Match.com
Match.com New ‘Stir’ Events For Singles
PR WEB – July 30 – This summer Match.com launched a new program they call ‘The Stir,’ local mixers and events that take place in real-time versus the virtual landscape. ‘The Stir’ invites individuals who are part of Match.com’s online database to attend events like a Tequila tasting, a cooking class, bowling or a Happy Hour, all things that a lot of singles are familiar with doing as part of their daily lives. Everyone there is single and looking to meet someone.
