Category: Outlets – BBC

Ashley Madison: Infidelity Could Be A $1B Business

Posted on May 25, 2015

Ashleymadison logo new apr 2010BBC – May 25 - AshleyMadison attempts to raise $200M in an IPO in London – which would value it at ~$1B. This isn't the first time Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison's parent company, have sought an IPO. In 2011, the company attempted to list in Toronto, but was forced to withdraw its offering. European investors might be willing to overlook a few things if the top line figures look good. But some potential investors have questioned the firm's numbers, after former staff and users have complained of a plethora of fake profiles on the site. The company admits many people sign up and never actually do anything. And of course, there is the competition. Gleeden, a French infidelity service that launched in 2009, says it has 2.6M members, primarily in Europe. Manuel Montevidoni, the CFO of Gleeden said: "I don't understand why Ashley Madison is looking for financing." But he supports Ashley Madison's efforts, mostly because it brings public awareness to the ubiquity of infidelity.

by Kim Gittleson
See full article at BBC

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Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

Gleeden Sued For Targeting Married People

Posted on March 18, 2015

Gleeden screenshotBBC – Mar 18 – A dating site for married people is being accused of breaking the law. A court in France must now decide whether the company is illegally encouraging spouses to cheat. Fidelity in marriage is written into French civil law. In France, all law is based on written codes which can be amended by parliament. Judges are free to interpret the codes, but their room for manoeuvre is much more limited than in a common law system like the UK's. And in Article 212 of the Civil Code, it states: "Married partners owe each other the duty of respect, fidelity, help and assistance." The ads which caused such horror among conservatives and Catholics encourage wives to think that cheating is both permissible and fun. One poster displayed on buses and metros shows an attractive young woman in a bridal dress with her fingers crossed behind her back. The message is clear: vows are for suckers. Founded in 2009, the website says it has 2.3M members in Europe including one million in France. It has smaller operations in the US and other countries.

by Hugh Schofield
See full article at BBC

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Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

The Mathematical Formula For Love

Posted on February 10, 2015

Love formulaBBC – Feb 10 – How do we find the right person and keep them? Hannah Fry, author of The Mathematics of Love, says three things make the magic formula.

  • Be proud: Play up to whatever makes you different.
    OkCupid team discovered that those that were rated as both very beautiful and very ugly – did far better than those who everyone agreed were quite cute.
  • Be proactive: Go out and get what you want.
  • Be provokable: Speak up if something bothers you.

See full article at BBC

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Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

Markus Frind: The Man ‘Behind A Million Babies’

Posted on August 20, 2014

Pof markus frind aug 14BBC – Aug 20 – "Everyone is unique and individual but when it comes to dating and relationships, people follow a very common set of patterns", according to POF founder, Markus Frind. "Nearly 70% of the time we're able to predict exactly who you're going to end up in a relationship with," he says. At POF's headquarters, dozens of TV screens display charts and graphs that monitor, in real-time, the millions of messages that users are sending each minute on the site. With all this data, POF can quickly suggest matches to new users who fill in detailed questionnaires about themselves upon joining. POF gets ~2B page views each month and 29% of users find their partner in less than a month. Frind says the transition of users to mobile phones over the past two years has been one of the biggest challenges the company has faced.

by Kim Gittleson
See full article at BBC

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On “Pheromone Parties” People Are Matched By Dirty T-shirts

Posted on March 27, 2014

Pheromones partyBBC – Mar 26 – At en event organised by Pheromone Parties, men and women are huddled around a table full of plastic bags stuffed with t-shirts. They are taking out the shirts, pressing them to their noses and sniffing them. If someone then likes the smell of a shirt, they can have their photo taken holding the numbered bag. These are then projected onto a wall, and the shirt's owner is free to find the person holding up their number.

by Nastaran Tavakoli-Far
See full article at BBC

Big Data Might Not Be The Key To Long-lasting Romance

Posted on March 25, 2014

Okcupid logo aktualniBBC.COM – Mar 24 – "If you want to know if a prospective date is relationship material, ask them these 3 questions", says Christian Rudder, co-founder of OkCupid.

  1. Do you like horror movies?
  2. Have you ever travelled around another country alone?
  3. Wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat

According to him, these are the questions first date couples agree on most. Some dating sites ask as many as 400 questions, and the answers are fed in to large data repositories. Match.com estimates that it has ~70 terabytes of data about its customers. Applying big data analytics is helping dating sites provide better matches for their customers. And more satisfied customers mean bigger profits. But people lie. Many users also supply inaccurate information about themselves unintentionally.

by Paul Rubens
See full article at BBC

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BBC Interview: Peekawoo CEO & Marc Lesnick (iDate)

Posted on February 17, 2014

PeekawooBBC – Feb 14 – BBC spoke to Valenice Balace, the founder of Peekawoo, and Marc Lesnick, the organizer of iDate (Internet Dating Conference). Peekawoo is an online speed dating app based in Philippines. The app launched in September 2013 and claims 16k users; 32% are active users that come back every week. 65% of users are from Philippines.

"Video chat is the next big thing coming", says Marc Lesnick. "There are people that do really well in the offline world and have no problem of walking up to a woman/men. But some people are shy and the technology allows them to behave a little bit more aggressively and to have a more active social life." Listen to the interview.

Tinder App: Leader in Hook Up Culture

Posted on November 27, 2013

Tinder sean rad2BBC.CO.UK – Nov 26 – "We've created ~150 marriages that we know about," says Sean Rad, Tinder's co-founder. Tinder has emerged as a market leader in a growing culture of "hook-up" apps, designed to find partners, quickly, with minimum effort. Tinder will sooner or later need to look to monetise its app. One suggestion would be to charge people to back swipe, in case they accidentally dismissed someone they did in fact like.

by Dave Lee
See full article at BBC

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Jiayuan: Startup Story Video

Posted on November 25, 2013

Jiayuan gongBBC.CO.UK – Nov 22 – Rose Gong is China's number one matchmaker. After being disappointed by her own online search for love in 2003, she started Jiayuan. The site now employs hundreds of people and is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Ms Gong has now launched another business, 91Waijiao, which aims to connect English language teachers through the internet to students in China.

See full article at BBC

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Gong Haiyan: China’s Number One Matchmaker

Posted on September 11, 2013

Jiayuan gongBBC – Sep 11 – Gong Haiyan, the self-made millionaire, was born in a village in Hunan Province where everyday life was a struggle. She won a place at Peking University, then moved to Fudan University in Shanghai for her Masters. Her love-life, however, was non-existent. So Gong paid 500 RMB to register with a dating site. But she got no replies and discovered the company had stolen profiles. "I felt very angry," she says, "so I asked a friend of mine how much it costs to set up my own dating service." Like Facebook, Gong's website was set up from her college dorm. Ten years on Jiayuan.com, which means beautiful destiny, has ~100M users and offices in several Chinese cities. Her company went public In May 2011.

by Lucy Ash
See full article at BBC

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