Category: Match.com

Million Pound Cupid: We Meet Match.com’s Karl Gregory

Posted on February 14, 2012

Matchcom karl gregoryLONDON LOVE BUSINESS – Feb 14 – According to Match.com, ~37M dates take place each year, adding a whopping £3.4bn to the economy. “January and the start of February is incredibly busy,” says Karl Gregory, MD of Match.com UK. Last February, coming up to the 14th, an impressive 6M people visited Match.com – and the team expect no fewer this time around. So what does the MD of the country’s most powerful dating site think of the niche sites that seem to multiply like rabbits? “Niche dating sites are a quite romantic notion but the number and the logic doesn’t add up,” he says. “Daters want to access a pool of individuals that are looking for the same thing, but as soon as you start narrowing it down the pool gets smaller. We find most people don’t want to travel further than 23 miles, narrowing your choice makes it harder to find someone. The area of mobile dating is one area Gregory believes will grow as Match.com develops its apps. Match.com has also upped the ante when it comes to intelligent matching. The site now offers users “the daily six”, this being “six people we think might appeal to you that you might not have necessarily searched for.”

by Gabriella Griffith
See full article at London Loves Business

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Online Dating’s Promise And Pitfalls

Posted on February 14, 2012

Eli finkelLA TIMES – Feb 14 – Many dating sites, like Match.com or eHarmony, purport to have an advantage over random real-life encounters in that they employ special “algorithms” that can help people find their “match” — weeding through all the people who wouldn’t be compatible in the first place. But this practice might be grossly misleading and even counterproductive — especially since none of these formulas has undergone rigorous scientific review, according to a study led by Eli Finkel of Northwestern University. But the fact that these sites provide singles with unprecedented access to others who also want to date means that singles have far more opportunities to meet and form a lasting bond than they would otherwise, the authors point out.

by Amina Khan
The full article was originally published at Miami Herald, but is no longer available.

Read also: The Dubious Science of Online Dating

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Valentine’s Boost For Online Dating Sites

Posted on February 13, 2012

Cupidplc logoFT – Feb 13 – Internet dating companies are expecting a boost in business in the run-up to Valentine’s day as increasing numbers of people log online for love. "We start to see an increase in activity from the end of Dec and that builds up to Valentine’s day,” said Karl Gregory, managing director of Match.com in the UK and Ireland. The UK market, with an estimated £120M a year in revenue, has more than 800 dating websites. Edinburgh-based Cupid, which trades under names including benaughty.com and girlsdateforfree.com, is the sector’s only London-quoted company. The company projects achieving £100M in revenue by 2014, a fourfold increase on 2010. It has spent more than £10M on acquisitions to raise client volumes, expanding operations to 16 countries using 10 different websites. Unlike Match.com, which builds up strong single brands, Cupid focuses on a lot of niche markets such as expat Indian dating and single parents.

by Christopher Thompson and Jennifer Thompson
See full article at FT

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As 20-somethings Take To Online Dating

Posted on February 13, 2012

OREGON LIVE – Feb 12 – More 20-somethings are on online dating sites than ever, and their numbers are growing. Only 8% of users on Match.com are under 30. Free sites like OkCupid and PlentyofFish report much stronger numbers among 20-somethings. In fact, the majority of OkCupid's 8M members are under 30, with the most common age being 24. In the past year, countless more sites have sprung up promising to be the next big thing in online dating for the young adult. They tend to be more tech-savvy, carefree and interactive. There's MeetMoi, a mobile-based site that tracks your location through your phone, allowing you to invite nearby users on a spontaneous date. There's Clique, a site that lets New York City singles meet friends of friends by linking their profile to social networks like Facebook. There's Assisted Serendipity, which uses Foursquare check-in data to monitor a user's favorite hangout spots and notify them when the male-to-female ratio tips in their favor. There's even Spoondate, which lets users plan dates based on a mutual craving for, say, udon noodles.

by Kelly House
See full article at The Oregonian

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Features We Like: Match Email Filtering

Posted on February 10, 2012

Match.com logo dalsiOPW – Feb 9 – Women especially are often inundated with lots of emails from guys they are not interested in. Match.com has done a good job with their email filtering. Users can select what they'd like to filter out (smoking, age, location, body, etc.) Their inbox is split in two – regular inbox and filtered inbox. Messages from those who don't meet user's requirements, will go to their filter inbox. If they happen to respond to someone from their filter inbox, Match.com will move that message to their regular inbox.

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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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Match.com President On The Formula For Love

Posted on February 6, 2012

Matchcom mandy ginsbergFORBES – Feb 5 – Now, at least one in every six new marriages are between people who met on a dating site. This, of course, is fantastic news for Mandy Ginsberg, President of Match.com. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, Ginsberg shares her own “algorithm” for success, why business school doesn’t have anything on single parenting, and why flirting at work may not be such a bad thing after all.

Q: What advice would you give other women who want to be innovative and “follow the rules” at the same time?
A: Being agile, innovative and decisive are critical.

Q: What’s the best thing you’ve ever done for your career?
A: Pushing myself to do things that were out of my comfort zone.

Q: What your advice is for someone who has a crush on a colleague?
A: I met my husband at my last company while we were working on a project together. Sometimes acting on those crushes at the office might not be a bad thing. Happily, it worked for me.

Q: Match.com is a company that has managed to grow amid a very significant recession. Aside from having a great product, to what do you attribute this success?
A: Even in a recession people want to fall in love. Still, I attribute success to a few things. One, build a brilliant team. Second, take calculated risks. Two years ago we had this unique idea of focusing our TV ads around those first dates. So we asked a few Match.com members if we could film them on a first date. Now over 100 TV ads later from 30 real dates across the country, we have created the most successful campaign in our history.

Q: If you could go back and give one piece of advice to your 20 -year-old self, what would it be?
A: Don’t be afraid of failure.

by Emily Bennington
See full article at Forbes

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A Lawyer Finds His Perfect Match

Posted on February 6, 2012

Matchcom greg blattFT – Feb 5 – Greg Blatt is talking fast and loud. So loud that, after a while, your ears begin to hurt. But as the CEO of IAC – the company behind Match.com – enthuses about his business, his big voice ricochets around his glass-walled office with a view of the Statue of Liberty. “It’s been a great year,” he booms. Mr Blatt is excited because it has indeed been a good first year on the job. Full-year results, released last week, showed annual revenues up 26% to $2.1bn, with profits up 75% to $174m. He is unmarried – and has even cancelled his subscription to Match.com. “I’m a single guy,” he says. “I have a bunch of friends in the city. I date ladies from time to time.” Blatt helped Diller spin off the companies that didn’t fit, starting with Expedia in 2005, and continuing with Home Shopping Network, Ticketmaster and others in 2008. “We disaggregated to a group of businesses that have far more commonality among them,” he says. After six years as general counsel, Mr Blatt was tapped to run Match.com, and in 2010 he took over as CEO. Likewise, he does not see Facebook as a direct competitor. Yet the skyrocketing valuations of internet start-ups, led by that company’s pending IPO, has made it harder for IAC to find acquisition targets to fuel its growth. “I went to law school because I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he says. “If someone had asked me if I would be working in the internet after law school I would have said: ‘What’s the internet?’”

by David Gelles
See full article at Financial Times

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Singles In America Study By Match.com

Posted on February 2, 2012

Matchcom singles in america studyMATCH.COM BLOG – Feb 2 – "Singles in America", Match.com's second annual study on singles, dives deep into how singles are living and thinking in 2012. ~5,K singles participated in the survey. The Singles in America study was funded by Match.com in association with biological anthropologist, Dr. Helen Fisher; sex and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman; evolutionary biologist with The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, Dr. Justin R. Garcia; and the Institute for Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) at Binghamton University. Here are just a few of the study’s most groundbreaking results:

  • Fidelity is regarded as a more important quality in the U.S. president than in a partner. 62% of men and 80% of women say that sexual fidelity in a relationship is a “must have.” But almost 9 out of 10 respondents believe there are “no acceptable excuses” for infidelity by a political candidate (87% of men and 91% of women).
  • Men are more willing to make a commitment without being in love or feeling sexually attracted to their partner.
  • Singles over 60 are most likely to insist on a partnership that includes sexual attraction and romance.

See full article at Match.com Blog

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Singles Spend More Than £3 Billion Annually Looking For Love

Posted on January 30, 2012

Match.com logo dalsiDAILYMAIL – Jan 27 – A recent poll of 2,000 singles in Britain’s major cities has found that Brits collectively go on 37M dates a year, spending an average of £47 each time, spending a national average of £1.3 billion on food and drink alone. The dating industry has made a major impact on the UK economy, the study found, revealing that £421M goes towards transportation and another £324M in grooming as people get their hair cut to look their best. The study was commissioned by Match.com and produced by the Centre of Economic Business Research.

by Sadie Whitelocks
See full article at DailyMail

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