FORBES – Mar 11 – The Internet offer a veil of anonymity that makes it easier to talk before you think. Dating sites are taking some steps to make online dating a much safer and harassment-free experience. Yesterday at SXSW, Elissa Shevinsky, a former dating entrepreneur who helped build OKCupid’s spam filters, shared some developments she was working on. OkCupid had a spam filter that would filter messages with bad grammar or naughty words. OKCupid now has a pilot program that deletes messages with short words. Many entrepreneurs have experimented with making users pay for every message or capping the number of free messages they can send at one time. The goal is to prevent daters from spamming thousands of people with the same message.
Category: Outlets – Forbes
Dating In The Age Of Mobile Is A Full Time Job
FORBES – Mar 10 – At a panel at SXSW in Austin, Greg Liberman, the CEO of Spark Networks, spoke about the history of online dating. Mobile has completely taken over dating. Singles, especially those in their twenties, love texting to get to know people. 50% of those aged 21-to 26 report texting a few times a day before going on a date. 68% of singles still think it's important to talk on the phone before a face-to-face date. Dating is now a 24 hour a day activity. 44% check their phone first thing in the morning. A quarter of all singles aged 21 to 26 actually sleep with their phone in bed with them.
Mobile & Social Will Improve Online Dating Algorithms
FORBES – Feb 15 - Match represents nearly one-third of what is a $2.1B market that grew 7.1% last year, according to IBISWorld. Sam Yagan came to IAC as a co-founder of OKCupid. The 20-year history of online dating, he says, can be read as three epochs. The first few years were about search – the ability to find other singles, and to filter them by age, location, eye color, etc. Then, in 2000, eHarmony introduced algorithm. Now users want easier and faster way to meet. Mobile dating app usage exceeded desktop. Yagan would be first to acknowledge that his beloved algorithms are imperfect. Algorithms depend in large part on the stated preferences of users, and users tend to be bad at “weighting” preferences correctly. “Mobile and social are going to bring new data sets, and you’ll start to see step-change functions in algorithm quality,” promises Yagan.
Matchmaker Christie Nightingale
FORBES – Dec 4 – Christie Nightingale, head of Premier Match, is among the top tier modern day matchmakers. Premier Match has offices in New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C., but has partnerships with other matchmakers in California and London’s Berkeley International. Clients pay $10K – $15K and wider searches can cost as much as $50K for a yearlong contract. In 2012 the company generated $1M in revenue.
by Karsten Strauss
See full article at Forbes
Dating Apps Like Lulu Might Prevent Rape
FORBES – Nov 26 - Lulu is a service that lets women anonymously review men. The men on the site haven’t opted in. Lulu has largely been negatively received by media because of privacy issues. Some women uses Lulu not necessarily to get nitty gritty info from the reviews, but to feel safer about the men they are interested in dating.
Tinder Catches On In UK, Brazil And Dubai
FORBES – Nov 22 – Brazil and the UK, have each added ~1M users in the last two months. Both are growing ~2% per day (20K users). Tinder also sees solid adoption in Dubai and Turkey, along with minor traffic from Egypt, Morocco and South Africa. In total, the company says users match with each other 4M times each day, and swipe 350M times. The 18-24 demographic is still by far the company’s largest, with 54% of users. Another 31.6% are between 25 and 34.
Pew Study Finds Rise In Online Snooping
FORBES – Oct 21 – The number of Americans using dating sites has tripled over the last five years, according to a new study from Pew Internet Project. 24% of Internet users search online for information about someone they’ve dated in the past, up from 11% in 2005. One in three social network users say they’ve sifted ex's profile. 29% Internet users had searched online for information about someone they were dating or were about to go out with, up from 13% in 2005. Similarly, 30% of social network users collect intel on romantic interests.
How CMO Jessica Powell Is Introducing Badoo To The U.S.
FORBES – Mar 23 - Badoo.com is launching a new marketing campaign in New York. Forbes spoke to Jessica Powell, the chief marketing officer of Badoo, to learn more about the start-up, her marketing initiatives, and the purpose of The Badoo Project.
Q: What’s Badoo.com?
A: Badoo is the world’s largest social network for meeting new people. It first launched in 2006, and we now have ~140M registered users worldwide and~125K new users signing up every day.
Q: How is it different than Facebook and LinkedIn?
A: It is all about meeting new people. People use the site for making new friends, chatting, flirting, and dating.
Q: Do you even consider Facebook a competitor?
A: Wonderfully for us, we view them as very separate.
Q: Tell me about your marketing strategy. How do you recruit new users?
A: To date, we’ve benefited from viral and word-of-mouth organic growth. Now, however, we’re at a stage in our company growth where certain more formal marketing strategies start to make sense for our international footprint. That’s how we’ve come to the launch of The Badoo Project, which is our first U.S. campaign.
Q: Explain The Badoo Project
A: To mark Badoo’s official U.S. launch, we’re holding a massive three-day photo shoot in New York to give people the ultimate online profile picture. Based on personality, energy and individuality, a final 24 will then get the chance to say hello to the city they love, by starring in a mixed media campaign, including billboards, banners and other media, across New York throughout the month of May. Judges will choose 22 finalists, and the final two will be crowned “People’s Choice” winners, voted for by the public with Facebook “likes.”
by Jacquelyn Smith
See full article at Forbes
Meet Locals – Facebook-Like Dating Site
FORBES – Oct 26 - Oxford University reports that 15% of people met their current partner online. Free dating site Meet Locals is similar to Facebook in design and navigation. The site allows you to add friends to your profile with whom you can share personal information and private photos. The best features are the video chat and cam feature where members can engage 1 on 1 with their local partners.
ChirpMe Launches a Dating Site for Groupons
FORBES – Aug 3 - ChirpMe sources deals from 200 daily deals sites, from a golf driving range session to sky diving. People can click on an activity to indicate they’re “intrigued.” Then when someone is searching activities, he or she can see who is interested and click to invite that person to go on a date. People can also look at profiles and see what they have in common with them. “ChirpMe is a site about meeting people around hobbies and activities you enjoy doing,” founder Joshua Viner says. “We’re turning Groupons into dates.”