Mark Brooks: Enpocket built Match.com's mobile app. Match mobile users can search a database of a couple hundred thousand other match mobile users. Match made the decision to spend less on the initial application development which does not allow the Match mobile users access to the millions strong entire Match.com database of users. Webdate allows access to the full database.
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE REVIEW — Jan 22 — Engage.com allows members' friends and family to log on and act as matchmakers. Trish McDermott (formerly VP Romance at Match.com) calls it "intervention dating." Cupid.com, founded in 2001, acquired Predating, the nation's largest speed-dating company, in 2004. They triangulate their online dating service with radio promotions in more than 100 local markets and coordinate speed-dating events. "Our view is that dating is very much a local business," says Eric Strauss, CEO. "eHarmony is great for matching somebody up with you, but if you're in Pittsburgh and they're in L.A., what good is that?"
The full article was originally published at Pittsburgh Tribune Review, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Cupid.com/PreDating will attempt the world record for the largest simultaneous speed-dating on Feb 8th
ASSOCIATED PRESS — Jan 12 — Subscribers who pay $12.99 a month for Match.com's new "MindFindBind" premium service will get access to McGraw's folksy tips on dating and relationships in the form of short video clips. The service launches with about 50 clips, covering topics such as communication, making good first impressions and having meaningful conversations on a first date. In one clip, McGraw advises: "If you want to be a winner in love, you want to be a winner in relationships, then do what it takes." Match.com CEO Jim Safka said McGraw also will contribute occasional unscripted "audio blogs" as well as written guidance for the Web site. FULL ARTICLE @ ABC NEWS
Jan 12 — Match says, 'We'll Show You Who, He'll Show You How.' MindFindBind is Dr Phil's 'provocative' advice for finding the right person. Dr Phil paired up with Perfect Match but moved to Match.com. - Mark Brooks
NY PRESS — Jan 4 — Nerve has greatly increased the site’s price. Site pictures are easier to view, but fewer search tools are available for regular site members, and the site crashes or fails to execute simple search commands. Match.com is technically superior. Searches are fast and pictures of members are displayed in a large, easy-to-see format. Because Match is so big, there are more members and more types of people to choose from. RightStuffdating.com costs $55 for a six-month membership plus $3 for every member contact. It claims only 4900 members worldwide. Membership is limited to graduates of selective colleges. The main competition for this niche audience would appear to be TheSquare.com.
The full article was originally published at NY Press, but is no longer available.
NEWS 14 CAROLINA — Jan 3 — Many of the big online dating sites have gone mobile. Match.com, Lavalife and sms.ac, for example, have all linked with Sprint PCS to offer matchmaking on the go. Said Michael Galluccio of Sprint PCS, "you can set up your profile (on a cellphone) and go through profiles, find somebody who peaks your interest and start to communicate back and forth with them. Really, the only difference is that it's smaller. And what you're giving up in size you make up for with mobility." In the future, the service might use a cell phone's GPS. Sprint is enabling all of their phones with GPS services, and they need to find a way to make that a very strong selling point. Having the GPS tell you if there are cute singles in your vicinity is a fun selling point.
The full article was originally published at 7 News Boston, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Sites will typically bubble up expiring profiles in searches. Nothing new there. However, product managers, employees, please make sure to delete test profiles. The profile used in this video looks to me like a test profile. Not date bait, but a profile that an employee might put up to test the site. I can see 3rd tier, one-man-band sites succumbing to the temptation of using date bait to raise their conversion rates out of the ashes. Match, Yahoo, nah! I have great respect for these companies and their integrity. As an industry, I think we need to freeze profiles from search results that are completely unresponsive after 20 contacts/2 weeks.
The full article was originally published at Great Falls Tribune, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: A concerted effort, a great profile, and considerable commitment of time is needed to make it with online dating.
Dec 27 — The November rankings are live (see left bar). Nielsen has tidied social networks Myspace, Facebook, hi5 and Friendster out of their online dating rankings, leaving Yahoo Personals (1), Match (2) and TRUE (3) with the November 2005 top spots.
Not much change with the Alexa rankings. Plentyoffish and Friendfinder bump Date.com down two spots to #6. For the social networking rankings Facebook bumps Friendster out of the top 3. Myspace now leads the social networking category, followed by Hi5 and Facebook.
TRUE trumps American Singles on the Hitwise top 15 rankings for November and takes the #5 spot. Singlesnet moves up one spot to #7 and wrestles Plentyoffish and adult oriented Mate1 down one place. MSN leans on it’s online dating and moves up five full places to take the #10 position. Niche site Blackpeoplemeet impressively moves up a spot to #11 and Perfect Match gets squeezed out to #12. Youngsters online dating site, Hotornot, moves up a spot to #13. – Mark Brooks
MIAMI HERALD — Dec 18 — Beth, a leggy brunette and successful lawyer who lives in Dallas, says she enjoys clubbing and rollerblading. But some of these women don't even exist according to a Coral Springs businessman who alleges that Yahoo Personals posts fictitious profiles, date bait. Lawmakers in Texas, Virginia, Michigan, California and Florida are weighing legislation that could make it a crime to misrepresent oneself on a dating site, or fail to inform consumers that they offer background screening for their customers. Analysts say matchmaking sites believe that they can patrol themselves. Most of them use 'report this profile' options to report problem subscribers to a team of 'abuse' monitors who look for risqué photographs, insincere profiles, and users looking for a place to advertise their own business. Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch, concedes that there is endless potential for abusing the rules. But, he said, that doesn't mean the site owners should be subject to government monitoring. He calls the suits against Match and Yahoo 'ridiculous.' 'If you were sitting in a product development meeting [at Match or Yahoo] and said, 'Hey, let's just have someone do that,' (send bogus emails), that person would be fired,' Brooks said.