Category: MeetMoi

Can GPS Find You A Mate?

Posted on August 6, 2012

Gps dateBOSTON 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

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Operation Match Version 2012

Posted on March 6, 2012

Online dating - couple walking on keyboardUNLIMITED MAGAZINE – Mar 6 – In 1965 a group of Harvard students started Operation Match that used questionnaires to identify compatible matches. When the students sold it three years later they had received ~1M responses which resulted in a few marriages. Today North America’s dating sites attracts 22M users a month, says online dating industry analyst Mark Brooks. Online daters have upwards of 1,000 dating sites to choose from, aside from industry giants Match, eHarmony, OKCupid and PlentyofFish. "Starting a dating site is like starting a restaurant," Brooks says. "It’s very attractive but there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye."

Brian Schechter and Aaron Schildkrout created HowAboutWe.com in 2009. The site is built around going on "awesome dates," with users able to see a list of date proposals in their immediate area. The company has raised ~$19M. Another site Sparkology is invite-only dating site. Other startups include Soul2Match, which links potential dates based on their photos and facial features, and Luv@FirstTweet, which uses Twitter to match singles. At TheJMom.com, matchmaking is left up to parents.

In a report in the Journal of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team looked closely and critically at the online dating industry. The researchers found that while online dating has great potential to improve meeting potential romantic partners, the exclusive matching formulas many online dating sites claim to have are unsubstantiated and likely little more effective than randomly approaching strangers at a bar. Sites and apps can facilitate face-to-face interactions quickly. Mark Brooks agrees. "I don’t think people want to come home and spend hours and hours tappity-tapping on the keyboard. They want to be in front of people," he says. "Computer-mediated communication is not gratifying enough for the human soul." Brooks thinks three trends will define the future of the industry: location-based services, mobile services and behavioral matchmaking. "Dating sites that do well will be serving their users’ interests, which means a little more immediacy, a little more help and going mobile," he says.

That instant face-to-face interaction is what MeetMoi, a location-based mobile dating company led by CEO Alex Harrington, has been facilitating since 2007. Users are matched with one another based on preferences and proximity, through application-based and mobile web-based dating.

by Cailynn Klingbeil
See full article at Unlimited Magazine

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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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5 Location-Based Dating Apps Worthy Of Your Love

Posted on November 22, 2011

Skout logoMASHABLE – Nov 22 – A study by Skout noted that 69% of people were comfortable meeting up with someone they met on their iPhone, and 40% were using a mobile dating service while out at bars, clubs and restaurants.

1. Brightkite – It isn’t a “dating” app per se, but rather, introduces local users on a basic level.
2. MeetMoi - The company’s goal is to “strip down dating to what’s essential — the introduction.”
3. OkCupid - OKCupid introduced its geo-location app to help users keep watch for local singles in July.
4. Sonar.me - By connecting to Facebook and Twitter, the app lets you see, in real time, how to connect with those physically around you. 
5. Skout - With ~1M users, the service hosts one of the largest and most popular location-based dating apps on the iPhone and Android markets.

by Layla Revis
See full article at Mashable

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Location Based Dating: Concerns Over Privacy

Posted on May 4, 2011

Meetic philippe chainieux BLOOMBERG – May 4 – Meetic is joining start-ups including MeetMoi in offering location-based dating services. Meetic will introduce features this year that let handset users find out real-time who’s around them and interested in meeting, and match potential soulmates who, for example, frequent the same gym, Managing Director Philippe Chainieux said in an interview.The number of European Web users visiting a dating site “almost every day” through their mobile rose 49% between February 2010 and 2011 to 2.8M, according to comScore. The number doing so at least once a week climbed 44%. Convenient mobile services will give dating sites a chance to boost their “conversion rate". Location-based iPhone and Android app FlirtMaps topped 500K downloads last month, with that figure expected to double by the end of the year. Grindr, an app for gays boasts 62K users in London alone. Still, safety concerns may slow the adoption of location- based dating. To ease some of those concerns, FlirtMaps limits geo- localization to a one-kilometer radius. Meetic is considering making only men visible on its pending real-time “flirting” service, keeping women’s locations at a given moment mostly off the map.

by Matthew Campbell
The full article was originally published at Bloomberg, but is no longer available.

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A New Kind Of Love Story

Posted on May 3, 2011

Mobile-dating1 AD WEEK – May 3 – Not so long ago, you’d assume that a girl alone at a bar on a Friday night, furiously thumbing her smartphone, had been stood up. Now, thanks to apps like meetMoi NOW, SinglesAroundMe, and Skout, she could just be planning her evening’s assignation. While dating sites sift and sort according to compatibility, apps pre-screen for something else: instant availability. There’s another name for the inefficiency these apps eliminate: courtship. They might dance around it, but what the apps are really offering is the ability to order up sex on demand. One of the pioneering location-based apps is Grindr. Launched in 2009, it allows gay men to locate other nearby users. It claims ~1M users. The developers of Badoo, Facebook’s fastest-growing third-party app, liken its ambiance to a club. Friend.ly makes the search for love a more convivial experience by quizzing users about friends and interests. It has ~4M monthly active users. Among the newer apps is Singlesquare, a Foursquare offshoot launched in Jan.

by Hephzibah Anderson
See full article at Ad Week

Mark Brooks: Finally, location aware apps are gaining significant traction. Facebook has driven people to be more willing to share private info. The tech is now mature. Apple has driven the smart phone into ubiquity. iDating will morph considerably now.

(Full Disclosure: Friend.ly is a former client of Courtland Brooks)

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Love In The Location-Aware World

Posted on February 14, 2011

Meetmoi logo new FOX NEWS – Feb 13 – The fastest growing trend in social networking is location-based iPhone and Android apps, which tell the online world exactly which restaurant you're eating at or driveway you're parked in. Apps like FourSquare and Gowalla profess to better connect us with our friends. But more and more apps use them to let people hook up. "Mobile dating is different," explained Andrew Weinreich, founder of a mobile-dating app MeetMoi. "You’re literally dating as you go. You have less time to be discriminating and can easily meet up with someone nearby.” Juniper Research predicts that by next year, over a quarter of a billion people will be using mobile services to date. Weinreich agrees, saying romance simply has to keep up with our fast-paced society. FULL ARTICLE @ FOX NEWS

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MeetMoi Integrates With Facebook Places

Posted on September 2, 2010

Meetmoi logo new PRWEB – Aug 31 - Through Facebook’s Open Graph API, MeetMoi users who link their accounts with Facebook will benefit from integration of the two services. MeetMoi is the first mobile dating company to integrate with Places. MeetMoi users who connect through Facebook and share their location with MeetMoi will immediately see more potential matches in their area. In addition to Facebook Places check-ins, MeetMoi will continue to capture location through the mobile web browser and on an automated, persistent basis through the MeetMoi NOW Android app. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

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MeetMoi Launches Android App

Posted on August 3, 2010

Meetmoi logo new PR WEB – Aug 3 - MeetMoi, the location-based mobile dating company, is launching MeetMoi NOW, an app for AndroidTM devices. MeetMoi NOW is a free app introducing proximity-based matching, which takes advantage of the background processing capabilities of Android. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

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Flirting With Mobile Phones

Posted on July 15, 2010

Flirtomatic logo bigger WSJ – July 14 - According to Handmade Mobile Entertainment, the operator of online flirting network Flirtomatic, more and more people want to use the computer and mobile phone for quick, romantic fun, rather than to merge their soul with another.Handmade Mobile raised a $9M Series C round. Juniper Research has estimated the market will grow to ~$1.4 billion in revenue by 2013. Other services include MeetMoi, which is tied more to a user’s mobile location, and BigCafe, which rewards members the more they play with points and “coins” used to send virtual gifts. Flirtomatic’s goal is to make it as easy as possible to meet others through a mobile device. A user can sign up and begin flirting with the 2.7M registered members in less than a minute. FULL ARTICLE @ WSJ

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