Category: Outlets – New York Times

Keeping Up With Being Kept

Posted on April 13, 2009

Seeking arrangement logo NY TIMES — Apr 10 — Critics say SeekingArrangement.com is at best a convenience store for adulterers and at worst a virtual brothel, but Brandon Wade, Seeking Arrangement’s founder and CEO, is unperturbed by the criticism. “We stress relationships that are mutually beneficial,” he says. “We ask people to really think about what they want in a relationship and what they have to offer." The site now claims more than 300,000 registered members. About 30% of arrangements on the site involve the daddy paying an “allowance,” usually $1000 – $2000 a month, though the site claims some reach $10,000. Sugar relationships amount to prostitution is hotly debated among the site’s members. Some sugar babies insist that wives who stay in miserable marriages for an American Express black card, mansion or country-club membership are more like prostitutes than they are. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

Mark Brooks: SugarDaddyForMe.com and Sugardaddie.com are the other two leading Sugar Daddy sites. WealthyMen, MillionaireMatch and MillionaireMate (part of the FriendFinder Network) and the newly launched EstablishedMen, are for well healed guys and the women who would like to date them, but not necessarily sugar daddies. I was rather surprised at the kinds of advertisements MillionaireMate.com is running on their home page. These are great ads for the brainless, but hardly on target for their upper echelon target audience.

Still, when I joined Cupid.com in 2004 they were running banner ads for wheelchairs on their home page, among other equally untargeted and inappropriate ads. Showing these kinds off-target and inappropriate banner ads on dating sites just show that the hand's not on the wheel, for that particular site. (Full Disclosure: WealthyMen is a client of Courtland Brooks)

See all posts on SeekingArrangement

The Recession. Isn’t It Romantic?

Posted on February 12, 2009

Online dating dobry obrazek NY TIMES — Feb 12 — Online dating has had a following ever since dating sites popped up around '94, said Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch. The industry then started leveling off in Feb '05. "Now at a time when money is scarce or uncertain, they don't want to go through it alone," said Dr. Pepper Schwartz of Perfectmatch.com, which had a 51% increase in new members in the Q4 of '08 compared with '07. Speeddate.com's traffic is up 60%. "During recessions people stay at home more, they don't want to pay and go to bars. They're going online to meet each other," said Markus Frind, the CEO of Plentyoffish, a free site, where visits have increased 77% from Dec '07 to Dec '08, and 32% over the last three months. While "marriage" and "children" were always popular key words, Mr. Frind said, during this period last year Plentyoffish.com users mentioned the word "job" in their profiles 5.5% of the time. This year, that number has risen to 7.7%. On BlackPeopleMeet, the percentage of people listing "job" as a criterion when asked 'What are you looking for in a partner?' increased 18% from Jan '08 to Jan '09. Offline romance specialists say they are also seeing a spike in business. From Oct through Dec'08, new membership at The Right One/Together Dating, a dating service with 60 locations across the country, increased ~18% compared with the same period the previous year. The price of membership starts at $1,000. "People are putting down deposits rather than paying in full, which is fine," said CEO, Paul Falzone.

The full article was originally published at New York Times, but is no longer available.

See all posts on PerfectMatch    See all posts on BlackPeopleMeet
See all posts on SpeedDate       See all posts on TheRightOne
See all posts on Plentyoffish     See all posts on TogetherDating

VCs Turn Cautious And Focus On The Short Term

Posted on January 9, 2009

NY TIMES — Jan 5 — The days, when Venture capitalists poured money into Web sites that were free to users and that made money selling advertisements, are over. Instead, investors are looking for sites that make money in ways other than selling ads, like selling subscriptions or virtual goods. Investors are not convinced that selling ads or content like applications on mobile phones can make much money for them.

The full article was originally published at NY Times, but is no longer available.

Going Bust, Again

Posted on January 7, 2009

Friendfinder inc logo NY TIMES — Jan 7 — Friendfinder Networks (formerly Penthouse Media Group) is trying to go public in this market and plans to list on NYSE if it does find buyers. Penthouse went bankrupt in 2003. It was taken over by Pet Capital Partners, which gained control by buying up Penthouse bonds that received stock in the reorganization. If investors will not put up enough money, Bankruptcy No. 2 looms again. The big investment banks seem to be shying away from the deal, even though at $460m it would generate badly needed fees. The only underwriter is a Cyprus-based subsidiary of a Russian bank. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

See all posts on FriendFinder

Matchmaking, The Ultimate Government Service

Posted on May 27, 2008

K_ny_times_clanku NY TIMES — May 25 — Next month, Justin Mei, 20, will be on his way to the Love Boat. That's the nickname for a month long cultural tour of Taiwan sponsored and partly subsidized by the Taiwanese government. The program, officially called the Expatriate Youth Summer Formosa Study Tour to Taiwan is designed to expose young people with Taiwanese roots to the motherland through courses in Mandarin, sightseeing and traditional arts. This trip has a reputation for flirtations, flings and wedding proposals. According to Census Bureau figures, the percentage of Asian women born in the US who marry Asian men has declined to 37% from 59% since 1994. The proportion of American-born Asian men who marry Asian women has also dropped, to 52% from 65%. Taglit-Birthright Israel, a program that sends young American Jews on 10-day trips to Israel, is less guarded about its romantic record. A survey conducted in 2000 and 2001 by United Jewish Communities found that American Jews who married since 1996 had an intermarriage rate of 47%. The Israeli government partly sponsors Taglit (Hebrew for "discovery"). FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

Let’s Say You Want To Date A Hog Farmer

Posted on April 28, 2008

Farmers_only_upoutavka NY TIMES — Apr 27 — A growing number of people have found love on dating sites that pair members based on a specific shared interest or background, like Nerdsatheart.com, DateMyPet.com, STDmatch.net and Veggielove.com. "Singles are increasingly eager to narrow the audience and really target their needs," said Mark Brooks, a consultant who keeps his own blog, OnlinePersonalsWatch.com. "It's the same reason why Procter&Gamble makes so many detergents. We are all drawn to things that cater to our very specific desires." According to Hitwise there are now 1,378 U.S. dating sites, up from 876 three years ago. Mr. Brooks estimates that 44% of those sites in the U.S. are niche sites, up from 35% in 2006. Large companies like Match.com, eHarmony, Yahoo Personals and SinglesNet.com have the general market cornered, Mr. Brooks said, "the only real entrepreneurial opportunities left in the online dating world lie in the niche market." FarmersOnly.com has attracted 90,000 members so far, 50,000 in the last year alone. One month's membership costs $15.95. Mr. Brooks said the most successful niche sites pair people by race, sexual orientation or religion. The 20 most popular dating sites this year as ranked by Hitwise include JDate, Christian Mingle and ChristianCafe.com, Manhunt, Love From India, Amigos, Asian People Meet, and Shaadi. "A few years ago, a company called Spark Networks was putting major funding into its general dating site, American Singles," Mr. Brooks said. "But when executives saw that the Jewish market was huge and relatively untouched, they switched gears and ratcheted up JDate." FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES. Also in THE LEDGER

Computing The Mysteries Of Attraction

Posted on April 10, 2008

A blast from the past. Operation Match was a punch card based dating system! – Mark Brooks

Computersinlove
NY TIMES — Mar 29 ’06 — Operation Match might have been this
country’s first computer dating service. Jeff Tarr and Vaughan Morrill
came up with the idea for Operation Match in the mid-1960’s. They had
some help from a Cornell dropout named Douglas Ginsburg. Operational
Match sent questionnaires to college campuses around the country.
Students rated their own looks, intelligence and interests on a scale
from one to five and described their ideal date using the same
measures. They then returned the survey, along with a $3 fee, to the
Operation Match offices in Cambridge, Mass. Students responses were
transferred to punch cards and fed into an enormous Avco 1790 computer.
Six weeks later, it spat out lists of mates for everyone. By the
time Operation Match was sold in 1968, it had solicited more than a
million respondents, a number of whom actually got married. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

Can This Marriage Be Matched?

Posted on February 12, 2008

Eharmonylogo
NY TIMES — Feb 1 — After visiting the eHarmony Labs for my
Findings column on matchmaking, I wondered if its algorithm would match
me and my wife of 12 years, Dana. So we each registered separately with
eHarmony and answered the 258 questions. After we filled out the questions, we each were given a personality
profile. Our biggest difference was in the category of agreeableness:
Dana was rated as consistently taking care of others, while I was
consistently taking care of myself. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

From 10 Hours a Week, $10 Million a Year

Posted on January 13, 2008

MarkusfrindNY TIMES — Jan 13 — Markus Frind, a 29-year-old Web entrepreneur, developed software for his dating site, PlentyofFish, that operates almost completely on autopilot, leaving Mr. Frind plenty of free time. On average, he puts in about a 10-hour workweek. Mr. Frind operates the business out of his apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has net profits of about $10 million a year. According to comScore Media Metrix for November 2007, PlentyofFish had 1.4 million unique visitors in the United States. In December, the site served up 1.2 billion page views. PlentyofFish does not need a support structure to handle members' subscription and billing issues because the service is entirely advertising-based. Its tagline is: "100 percent free. Put away your credit card." Its success demonstrates that many consumers will tolerate, and even embrace, advertising when a site offers a free service for which others charge membership fees. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

JDate / Spark Networks For Sale

Posted on January 4, 2008

SparknetworksNY TIMES — Jan 4 –  The owner of JDate.com, Spark Networks, is in early talks with buyers that include Yahoo, eHarmony, IAC/InterActiveCorp (Match.com), and News Corp. (MySpace). Analysts suggested that a suitor might pay as much as $185 million for the company. According to comScore Media Metrix, Spark had 2.45 million unique visitors in November 2007, ranking it No. 4 among personal sites behind Yahoo Personals, Match.com sites and Singlesnet.com. Spark reported $6.56 million in net income with revenue of $68.85 million for 2006. "JDate is the best example of a successful niche dating site on the planet," said Mark Brooks, who follows the industry and is author of the blog OnlinePersonalsWatch.com. "It's a very attractive target," Mr. Brooks said, adding that for social (dating) sites to work well, "the big sites need to get bigger. The more people on a site, the more the site has to offer." FULL ARTICLE @ NEW YORK TIMES