This week: news on Match.com, SNAP Interactive, EasyDate, Zoosk, AreYouInterested, GameCrush and Executive Dating.
Category: MeetMoi
Alexander Harrington, President Of MeetMoi
OPW INTERVIEW – Mar 30 – Meetmoi has one of the best mobile dating offerings around. We interviewed Andrew Weinrich, the CEO, in January 2009. Andrew was the founder of SixDegrees.com, no less. Here’s our interview with Alexander Harrington, a Wharton MBA grad, and the President.
What is your background?
I joined MeetMoi as President in June of 2009. Prior to that I had been Senior Vice President of Strategy Operations for Zagat, most known for its print and online restaurant guides.
How would you say work with Zagat has influenced what you’re doing with MeetMoi?
MeetMoi had a great strength in technology and direct marketing and I had a direct marketing background. I think I managed an enterprise that was very brand focused and had strength in licensing and these are directions I’ve taken the company.
Zagat is certainly a great service and I use it every couple of weeks. MeetMoi of course is a great name as well. How are you going to build that into an unique dating service?
The thrust of MeetMoi is centered around the value of bringing dating into a mobile context. People carry their devices with them wherever they go. The real time communication channel and the location based element add a new dimension to dating. It makes it much more immediate and reduces the friction to help people connect in person in a way that traditional dating websites don’t.
How do people really react to location based services? Do you find you have a majority of users using it?
One of the hurdles to get over is getting consumers comfortable with sharing their location. When people share their location with us they’re sharing it with us alone and we don’t disclose it to other users. We can then return matches nearby.
I can’t help thinking some users would imagine somebody walking up to them using their phone like a homing beacon. How accurate is it? How closely defined location wise is it?
Right now what we share is distance; we don’t share direction or specific location. So you can’t very well track someone down with that information. It just gives you a sense of who is nearby and who could potentially be available to meet in person, which is the most natural way of getting to know someone.
You’ve introduced virtual gifts recently. How is that going?
It’s going great. One of the things we discovered about virtual gifts in a dating context is that consumers are less price sensitive and we found our higher price point $5.99 is actually in some days the best seller, better than the $3.99 and $1.99 price points. It’s a great differentiator and users are willing to pay because there are additional services that come with it, for example “a la carte” communication that you would otherwise have to subscribe to.
Have you done an analysis on how much more people respond once they’ve received a virtual gift?
We have looked at the numbers early on. I would say users are two to three times more responsive.
I can imagine people who are using mobile dating to be a little more active and a little more interested in events. You have just teamed up with Time Out. How is that working out?
They’re a tremendous partner for us. For years they have been creating content around single lifestyle and nightlife in major cities around the US. So it is the right kind of brand to work with. We provide them both mobile dating and traditional online dating in an integrated experience. The users that they’ve added to our network have been really active and engaged.
What does the future hold for MeetMoi? Where would you like to end up 2010?
We would like to be the largest mobile dating company in the world. We see mobile dating not just as a niche business. We see mobility as a killer app especially for people in their 20’s who are interested more in casual dating.
meetMoi Partners With Time Out New York
PRESS RELEASE – Feb 18 – meetMoi is introducting its white label service with the launch of TONY Singles, a partnership with Time Out New York. The mobile and web-based dating service is powered by meetMoi and went live in conjunction with Time Out New York's Singles issue. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE
meetMoi Launches Virtual Gifts On Its Mobile Dating Service
PR WEB – Oct 7 – meetMoi, a mobile dating company, has released virtual gifting as a new opportunity for user-to-user interaction as well as revenue generation. In addition to traditional messaging, users are able to send virtual gifts without the step of purchasing virtual currency first. meetMoi has found virtual gifts to be not just a revenue source, but also a great way for users to flirt and communicate. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
Internet Dating Industry June News – 12 Mins
June 2009 OPW News Summary from Mark Brooks.
This is actually the news for June. We're playing catch up. July and August are in process. Here's the news we covered for June.
- eHarmony survey finds 51% of single parents believe that they and their children are better off emotionally when the parent is in a committed relationship
– Match and eHarmony success rates.
– Spark Networks revenue down
– DatingTrail.co.uk launches
– Virtual goods startups raise $69 million funding in Q1
– Great Expectations complaints
– PlentyOfFish.com and rapper Flo Rida team up
– McGinn vs Match.com lawsuit
- ChristianCafe.com and Single Christian Network combines
– IAC completes transaction with Meetic
– Meetic signs partnership with MSN for distribution in 12 European countries
-meetMoi location based mobile dating partners with ClearSky
– Virtual Greats and Viximo partner
– Attivio’s Active Intelligence Engine selected to power Deutsche Telekom’s FriendScout24
meetMoi Partners With ClearSky Mobile Media
PR WEB — June 10 – meetMoi, a leader in location based mobile dating, announced a strategic alliance with ClearSky Mobile Media, a provider of content and managed services to wireless carriers. The relationship will add meetMoi to ClearSky's product suite. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEBAndrew Weinreich, CEO, Meetmoi.com
OPW INTERVIEW — Jan 31 — Andrew Weinreich is the CEO of an interesting location based mobile dating service. He was also the founder of SixDegrees.com. – Mark Brooks
You’re the founder of SixDegrees.com. Why did MySpace steal your thunder?
We started SixDegrees in 1995. We sold it in December 2000, well before Myspace started. I think we were the first to define that space on the Internet. Social networking was invented and reinvented and reinvented again. We were the leading social network and then it was Friendster, Myspace and now Facebook.
Did you have it in mind when you started SixDegrees.com that it would help people with their dating prospects?
No. There were only a handful of websites, and I was looking into opportunities on the Web. What was compelling to me was publishing a database that wouldn’t have existed but for the Web. There has always been this notion of meeting people you don’t know through the people you do know, and that’s really what SixDegrees or any social network is.
What inspired you to start Meetmoi?
What excites me are spaces where something’s about to become reinvented. Online dating is one of those areas that generate real revenue and where people have shown a real inclination to change their behavior. Instead of limiting yourself to meeting people in an offline context, it may be that you can meet more people, present yourself in a better light, if you do it online and if you have the time and patience to be deliberate in what you say and how you say it.
Everything is going to go mobile. Dating lends itself to being reinvented from the online medium to a mobile medium. That is exciting, an industry that can be reinvented and a new player has a chance to dominate.
How does the Meetmoi service work from a user perspective?
You can register from your PC or phone. Some users can self-identify their location or we have a tiny snippet of code that you download and it’s all permission-based, but you have the ability to share where you are on an ongoing basis so we can look for people that meet your requirements that are around you. We will show you people not just based on the online criteria of, for example, age, but distance from you. Making dating more efficient because we incorporate location is really what mobile dating is all about.
Are people concerned about stalkers? What are the concerns with mobile?
I have a very simple principle. Users control every single aspect of their information. They control what they share, when they share it, to whom it’s shared and for how long it’s shared. If you stick to that rule, users will trust you and you can deal with a lot of these very legitimate privacy and safety concerns.
How is the service growing and what kinds of people are using the service so far?
We’ve been very pleased. I would say 20s and early 30s, these are people that are very comfortable on their phones, they have a bit of technological sophistication and their time is precious to them. They’re looking for someone who can have a cup of coffee with them now. They’re not interested in setting things up 2 or 3 weeks down the road but being able to plan last-minute and that’s what Meetmoi offers.
How does the service make money?
Meetmoi has free and paid memberships. With free memberships, you can browse profiles, people can contact you. The paid membership allows you to initiate contact with another member and that costs $9.99 a month. We have relationships with the carriers that allow us to charge you directly on your phone bill.
Do you have plans to extend internationally with the service?
The service works internationally now but not with SMS messaging; it works with email. We absolutely intend to extend SMS alerts and SMS interactions internationally in the near future.
Is there a way that other internet dating sites can work with you?
Yes, we will in 2009 announce partnerships but we’re absolutely open to helping dating sites extend their brand and extend their offering into the mobile arena.
What would you say your goals are through the end of 2009?
To expand membership, expand the functionality that we offer and to structure partnerships with other communities looking to work in the mobile arena and generate revenue in the mobile arena. Those partnerships can take many forms but I would expect us to announce a number of them both domestically and internationally over the course of 2009.
meetMoi Launches Real-Time Location Updates
PR WEB — Dec 5 — meetMoi, the location-based mobile dating company, enables users to see and securely contact nearby prospective dates. Users control every aspect of their personal information including who can see their profile and location. meetMoi works across all phones and models. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
Latest Dating Tool: Your Cell Phone
LA TIMES — Nov 10 — Tech-savvy singles are now relying on cell phone-based services to find new dates and friends. Americans send about 75 billion SMS a month. In the U.S., about 143m wireless subscribers have GPS on their phones, according to Nielsen Mobile, and there were 43.3m active mobile Internet users in August. Juniper Research projects that the mobile dating industry will see $1.4 billion in global revenue by 2013, from $330m in 2007 (much of that business currently comes from Japan, where mobile dating is already very popular). MeetMoi is a mobile dating service that shows singles which potential mates are nearby so they can text each other to meet up. Mobile companies such as Loopt and Earthcomber help members use their phones to search for others nearby with similar interests, such as cycling or hiking.
The full article was originally published at Statesman.com, but is no longer available.
Can You Date Me Now?
STAR TELEGRAM — June 13 — According to a 2007 study by M:Metrics, 4m mobile users connected, in one month alone, to their preferred dating service. Setting up a mobile-dating account is fairly straightforward and is facilitated by such major carriers as AT&T Wireless, Nextel and Sprint. "The exciting thing about mobile dating today is that from that little screen of your everyday cellphone, you can finally do just about anything in today's dating world," says Mark Brooks, editor of onlinepersonalswatch.com. "It certainly makes for a far quicker, even nicer experience than just plain old texting." Fast Flirting offers, for an estimated $3 per month, the chance to mobile-meet in an online "lobby" where users can fire off as many text messages as possible in 10 minutes. Perhaps the most ambitious "location-based" mobile-dating site is Meet Moi, which has been in operation since March.
The full article was originally published at Star Telegram, but is no longer available.