Category: Outlets – CNN

HowAboutWe Buys Nerve.com

Posted on January 29, 2014

Howaboutwe nerve screenshotsCNN MONEY – Jan 29 – HowAboutWe is launching an entire network of content sites based around dating and love. The network is called HowAboutWe Media and contains four sites that will be free and independent from the company's pay memberships: The Date Report, Swimmingly, Famously, and Nerve. Nerve.com was one of the first popular Web-only magazines, launched in 1997 as a somewhat edgy place for opinion, fiction and essays about sex. While Nerve is an acquisition, Swimmingly and Famously are brand-new sites; TheDateReport was an already extant site run by HAW that has been refreshed.

by Daniel Roberts
The full article was originally published at CNN Money, but is no longer available.

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Partimelove.co.uk: For Low Maintenance Relationships

Posted on January 28, 2014

Parttimelove logoCNN – Jan 28 – Partimelove.co.uk launched in early January. Its target demographic is people who want to be independent but also want to fall in love, says the site's founder Helen Croydon. "We are not a no-strings website. We are for singles that have no expectations of moving in after three months and value their free time and independence." Croydon says she never wants to get married or have kids.

by Sarah LeTrent
See full article at CNN

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Grindr’s Performance Issues Could Doom Its Relationships

Posted on December 13, 2013

Grindr logo new dec 13FORTUNE – Dec 6 – One serious glitch is all users need to abandon one service for another. Just ask the Friendster folks. Grindr's consistent user complaints are creating opportunity for competitors like Jack'd or Scruff. Yosuke Matsuda made Jack'd fast and reliable. 5.4M users registered for the app, 1M log on daily. That's still shy of Grindr's 7M registered users and 1.2M daily active users. But Jack'd began outpacing Grindr this spring, adding 100K monthly active users. Grindr's monthly active user base is growing ~200K over at least seven months.

by JP Mangalindan
The full article was originally published at CNN Money, but is no longer available.

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Shanghai’s Marriage Market

Posted on November 4, 2013

Shanghai-marriage-liu-horizontal-galleryCNN – Nov 3 – Each weekend, mothers, fathers and other family members come to Shanghai's People's Park to find Mr or Miss Right for their children. The city even organizes an "annual love and marriage expo" that attracts 18K people. The market has been around since 2004, says Li, who runs a professional matchmaking service from the park. Men can register for free, while she charges $500 for women. Men born after 1970 can sign up, but women must be under 33. There are now 34M more men than women in China. Chinese men tend to "marry down" both in terms of age and educational level.

by Katie Hunt
See full article at CNN

Carrot Dating: Bribery Will Get You A Date

Posted on October 30, 2013

Carrotdating app iconCNN – Oct 29 – Carrot Dating is a new dating app developed by Brandon Wade. The app lets users entice potential partners into romantic outings by offering them gifts. Carrot Dating is just the latest in a fleet of dating sites Wade has founded. They include SeekingArrangements.com, WhatsYourPrice.com and MissTravel.com. All three have been accused of promoting prostitution. The sites may be crass, superficial and self-loathing, but then again so are many people. Why not let them mate….

by Peggy Drexler
See full article at CNN

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Sam Yagan: The Nerd King Of Online Dating

Posted on September 27, 2013

Okcupid sam yagan nov 2012FORTUNE – Sep 25 – Sam Yagan launched OkCupid in 2004 with friends. Before OkCupid, they started SparkNotes, an online alternative to CliffsNotes study guides, in 1999. It sold to iTurf, for $30M. After that he joined his friend Jed McCaleb to launch eDonkey, a P2P file-sharing service that they scaled fast but shut down after pressure from record labels. Only a year and a half after buying OkCupid for ~$90M, IAC made Yagan CEO of its entire Match division. That entire segment contributed $713M of IAC's 2012 revenue of $2.8 billion. Yagan gets emails on a weekly basis from people launching a dating site. He actually roots for new online dating competitors to launch, because he is the only buyer. Match buys so much that the list of significant e-dating competitors is short: eHarmony, Spark Networks, PlentyOfFish, HowAboutWe and Zoosk (rumored to be going public this year).

by Daniel Roberts
The full article was originally published at CNN Fortune, but is no longer available.

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Love And Marriage In China

Posted on May 30, 2013

Zhenai logo new CNN – May 29 – It's called "Shanghai's 3rd Annual Love and Marriage Expo." But the atmosphere at this massive gathering for single Chinese men and women was decidedly unromantic. For some participants, this was the first time they had ever been on a date. Zhenai's founder and CEO is a Columbia University-educated former investment banker named Song Li. He says the one-child policy implemented by the Chinese government in 1979 has resulted in young adults having poor social skills — crucial in the dating game. Many Chinese approaching their late twenties, especially women, are under immense pressure to get married. The Love and Marriage Expo felt like a job fair. There were nearly as many parents as there were single men and women. Some parents stood at the bustling entrance to the convention holding up printed posters advertising the details of their single children.

by Ivan Watson & Connie Young
See full article at CNN

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How Technology Has Changed Romance

Posted on February 13, 2013

Gps dating1CNN – Feb 12 – Technology isn't killing courtship. But for many young couples, it's redefining what romance looks like. We've come a long way since those AOL chat rooms. Using your phone's GPS feature, mobile social apps such as Blendr, Grindr, Are You Interested? and Plenty of Fish help you zero in on potential dates, or hook-ups, right around the corner. OkCupid recently launched Crazy Blind Date, which sets users up on short notice with someone they know almost nothing about. Some young single people today would rather have information than mystery. When Jason (29 years old) was skeptical of a potential date he'd met online, he turned to Facebook. There can be drawbacks to this Facebook sleuthing, said Dr. Corinne Weisgerber, an associate professor of communication at St. Edward's University in Austin. Brushing up on someone's background pre-date means you could skip over some of those foundational moments of discovery in person, she said. Although meeting in person will always be essential, the concept of romance has evolved to the point where weeks of IM or e-mailing can plant seeds of a relationship.

by Breeanna Hare
See full article at CNN

Hate Dining Solo? Site Offers A Solution

Posted on April 23, 2012

Inviteforabite logoCNN – Apr 23 – A new website called Invite For a Bite serves as a sort of meeting place where women who hate supping solo can post invites and make plans to dine together. Cressida Howard came up with the idea for "the site I wanted to join but couldn't find." "I was listening to a BBC radio program that involved an interview with women who traveled alone for business or pleasure. They were all strong women who had no problem traveling alone, but the one thing they all got very animated about was how they hated eating alone," Howard said. Less than two months old, Invite For a Bite has already seen invites for get-togethers in places from New York City to Addis Ababa. For one, in some countries it is frowned upon for women to be out on their own, says Howard. And it can even be dangerous. Not that meeting strangers from a strange city in a strange place via the Invite For a Bite website doesn't bring up its own issues. Which is why Howard has devoted an entire page on the site to safety tips. Another issue addressed on the Invite For a Bite site is why it is for women only. "As soon as you introduce the idea of men and women meeting for meals, it becomes almost impossible to distinguish it from a dating site," says Howard. "No matter how many times you explained that it wasn't, common sense dictates that it would be treated as such by some people.

by Jill Becker
See full article at CNN

Can India Be Persuaded To Date Online?

Posted on March 30, 2011

Ignighter logo new CNN – Mar 29 – Looking for love is a big business in India. Gaurav Mishra, director of digital and social media at MSL Group Asia, a communications company, estimated that ~10% of India's internet users have used a matrimonial website. India's online matrimonial industry is expected to bring in $63M a year, according to a 2008 report by the market research firm Em Power. Internet penetration is currently only  5% but the arrival of 3G services means that many of the country's 600M mobile phone users will soon be online — entrepreneurs are seeking new ways to tap the online matchmaking market. One start-up, Ignighter, is hoping to persuade India that the future of online matchmaking is in group dating. Ignighter now has ~2M registered users in India and 40% of them are women.

by Catriona Davies
See full article at CNN

Mark Brooks: Bharat Matrimony and Shaadi own this market.  I'm itching to go to India to learn more about their fascinating businesses.

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